Well ATI sure kept us waiting, but it will finally be introduced this month, the R520 architecture, the successor to the X800 family of graphics cards and a contender for the 3D graphics throne. But why wait for that introduction when you can have a sneak peak today? Normally we would?ve adhered to ATI?s NDA and published results the moment it expired. However this time around ATI decided to just not bother with us as they made it very clear that we did not make the cut, as we have written some articles about CrossFire, R520 and ATI?s financial situation that were apparently not appreciated. Hence we?ve not been briefed by ATI, nor did we sign an NDA, or have been invited to the launch event, so basically they decided to cut us off.

Jim Louderback, Editor-in-Chief of Ziff Davis Media, was lucky enough to attend the 61st International Motor Show in Frankfurt Germany, where much of the future of the automobile was on display.

Toshiba has announced their development of a compact methanol fuel cell capable of powering a digital music player for up to 60 hours on a single charge.

Badcomedown

Sony today launched three new notebook series to its lineup: the VAIO TX, FJ and BX.

The VAIO BX is designed for businesses while the VAIO FJ series are designed for a wider audience. There's also the ultraportable VAIO TX, this series offers an impressive battery life of 7.5 hours.

Imagine you have a notebook with a flash hard drive? The first thing you?ll conserve is power, the second thing you?ll save is space and the third thing you will achieve is durability, as you?ll no longer have to worry about a hard disk crash. And of course, your notebook will be somewhat lighter.

We're giving you the chance to win a 'so new it's not even out yet' ATI R520 based graphics card and a motherboard to go with it, courtesy of Sapphire.

All you have to do is fill in the HEXUS Readers Survey and you'll be automatically entered!

The newest generation processors are said to be an amalgamation of its erstwhile P4 (Netburst architecture) and the Pentium M (Banias) processors. The idea is that more and more users are getting energy conscious and will want processors that are more efficient, but they would not want to compromise on the performance aspect of it. Thus, Intel?s focus at IDF was not just performance but performance/watt.

Sony seems to be on a roll today when A/V equipment is concerned, and this time they introduce the RDR-AX75, a home DL DVD burner with 250Gb HDD that is capable of encoding video in Mpeg-4 AVC (H.264_, and these files are 100% PSP compatible! Once the video is stored onto the HDD, you just need to stick your MS Duo in the slot and transfer the video onto the memory card.

AkihabaraNews

Those wonderfully leaky sources at Taiwan's motherboard makers have let slip another nugget of news to the folks at DigiTimes. Word is that Intel's upcoming 975X chipset will support dual-graphics technologies from both ATI and NVIDIA:

TechReport

Thermochill's history has been a success story since its inception. Thermochill was born in Winter 2002, releasing it's first radiators in February of 2003,when two UK companies joined forces to remedy a situation of severe stock shortages of PC Watercooling focused radiators in the UK market. Thermochill was thereby created to build radiators in the UK, for the UK Market, and thus the HE series of radiators was conceived and released.

We got hold of some performance figures of the Radeon X1800 XL and using the beta Catalyst 8.172 drivers, it outperforms the Radeon X850 XT PE slightly.

After months of hype ATI's answer to SLI is nearing release. APC Labs has the scoop on how it performs, including benchmarks and exclusive pictures.

ASUS has previously came out with their 6800Ultra-DUAL and 6800GT-DUAL cards but sadly they never really make it into the market. Nevertheless, ASUS has again kicked off development on the 7800GTX-DUAL card this time round as evident from the PCB layout above though no components are being soldered on yet. It will be interesting to see how the final version of the card will look like.

VR-Zone

What does it take to destroy an iPod nano, and what's inside this tiny package? We wanted to answer both questions and strangely enough answering the first allowed us to answer the second. We could take our turns at purposely rendering the iPod nano broken, and then when it had endured more damage than it could handle we'd end its misery with a respectful autopsy. Now, we know that destroying the iPod nano makes some (strange) grown men want to cry. Rest assured, you can still buy one yourself, and the local priest said all iPod nanos go to heaven.

At the recently concluded Intel Developer?s Forum (IDF), Intel launched its next-generation of digital home platform called VIIV. The name in itself is quite interesting with VI and IV standing for 6 and 4 in Roman numerals, which further translate into 64-bit. VI IV are also mirror images and could perhaps signify dual-core. According to Intel, its latest digital brand is pronounced as "vīv" and rhymes with "five" which takes care of showing that this is the next level from the Pentium 4 platform. The naming was either brilliant or a fluke (or both).

Lexmark has presented the P450 inkjet photo printer which is world's first printer with a built-in CD photo burner. The printer can read a variety of flash memory cards, including CompactFlash I & II, SmartMedia, Sony Memory Stick, Sony Memory Stick Pro, SD, MMC, xD, Sony Memory Stick Duo, Mini SD and Sony Memory Stick Duo Pro.. Read on at DV Hardware

Many AIB partners have received the ATi Radeon X1800XL (R520XL) card samples last Friday and the die size seems to be larger than the R520 sample we received previously.

VR-Zone

Intel is upgrading its Xeon DP processor line-up to introduce a pair of extra EM64T instructions. The move will finally bring the 64-bit server chips into full compatibility with AMD's AMD64 technology.

The Register

" If you're a serious or a hardcore gamer, no doubt you have heard of Jonathan 'Fatal1ty' Wendell. ABIT's Fatal1ty series of motherboards is just one example of how gamers and hardware complement each other. Even big names like Creative are joining the fray - their latest X-Fi sound cards also carries the 'Fatal1ty' moniker. The end results of this cooperation: no bar gaming hardware. Today, we're going to put the ABIT AN8 Fatal1ty SLI to the test.". For full review read, visit tech-hounds.com .

Given the fact that ATI rumors are a dime a dozen these days, when I received the initial ATI market advisory for R520 this week, I somewhat disregarded it -- ATI changes their roadmap plans faster than I change my socks. However, with the copious amounts of incorrect speculation lately, we decided to go ahead and produce another roadmap update. Here is a glimpse of the confirmed cards launching in the upcoming months.

AnandTech