Nintendo on Monday upped the ante in the hotly contested video-game market by cutting the price of its GameCube consoles by up to 24 percent in Europe, two weeks before its launch.

GameCube machines will go on sale in Europe on May 3 for $177 (199 euros), down 20 percent from the earlier announced price of $223, and for $186.7 (129 British pounds), a 24 percent discount.

Just got word from Crow that they have managed to get their hands on ATI's Radeon 8500LE 128MB retail card...

The suspicion of the existence of an Athlon XP 2200+ hardens today with official information from AMD on peripheral manufacturers that offer 2200+ compliant parts. The new processor is expected to run at 1800Mhz.

Abit HQ Taiwan has announced their second VIA KT333 based motherboard namely the KX7-333. Compared to the AT7 which comes without all legacy connectors the KX7 will be fully equipped. Read more...

Lian Li Industrial Co. has two new aluminium cases available. These sport a more sleek design and seem even more valuable to the eye. Lian Li also is going to include some nice accessories so be sure to read more.

At WinHEC 2002 - the leading industry conference for information about future directions for systems and peripherals that run Microsoft Windows operating systems - the PCI Special Interest Group and Arapahoe Work Group have announced that the code-named 3GIO draft 1.0 specification has been successfully completed and is being transferred on schedule to the PCI-SIG, where it will be renamed PCI Express. Read more...

Creative Labs Japan has announced a new graphics card based on the Radeon 7500LE GPU which is going to be called 3D Blaster 4 RX7500. Next to Hercules, Creative is the second major brand to join ATI distributors. Read more for a shot of the card and specifications.

Trident Microsystems, Inc. and UMC today announced that Trident is now sampling the XP4, the industry's first 3D graphics processor fabricated using UMC's advanced 130nm (0.13um) CMOS process technology. The XP4 fully implements the DirectX 8.1 graphics standard from Microsoft and delivers one billion pixels/sec performance while consuming less than three watts (max). The breakthrough performance-per-watt is more than twice that of all other competitors. The XP4 uses only 30 million transistors, which is less than half the number of transistors of the nearest desktop equivalent in functionality and performance. UMC's leading edge 130nm process allows the XP4 to benefit from three significant technical advances: Faster transistors that enable higher clock rate, corresponding to higher performance. XP4 engine clock reaches 250MHz and DDR memory clock reaches 666MHz, both of which are the industry's highest clock rate for notebooks with DX8.1 capability. Smaller device geometry that produces smaller chip sizes and results in lower production cost. Lower operating voltage which causes much less power dissipation. A voltage reduction from 1.8 volts (in 180nm process) to 1.2 volts (in 130nm process) can reduce the power dissipation to less than 50%.

AMD today announced the new mobile AMD Athlon XP processor, the first AMD processor manufactured on its state-of-the-art 0.13 micron technology. "Extending the award-winning AMD Athlon XP brand name to our mobile lineup conveys the overwhelming success our flagship AMD Athlon processor family represents," said Ed Ellett, vice president of marketing for AMD?s Computation Product Group. "AMD has always focused on providing what matters most to business and home consumers: leading-edge software application performance and an exceptional computing experience. AMD's transition to 0.13 micron technology allows us to provide a roadmap to higher performance and lower power options."

Thanks to HardwareZ for spotting this Info @ VR-Zone!

This is picture of an updated version of the GeForce4 Ti4600 GPU and apparently NVIDIA has updated their GeForce4 Ti4600 stepping from A2 to A3. If the new stepping can improve its overclockability...

To see the picture and the new clock speeds hit Read More.

Just got word from DarkCrow that they have posted two new previews. Here's what their saying:

ATI FireGL 8800 Preview This contains the products images of the ATI FireGL 8800 and a test result (SPEC ViewPerf v6.1.2) against the Nvidia Geforce4 Ti4600 / ELSA GLoria4 900XGL / Synergy 550XGL.

Canopus SPECTRA Series Preview Canopus in Japan, have announced Canopus SPECTRA series with pictures and product spec's for Geforce4 Ti4600 / GF4 MX460 / GF2 MX4

Just got word from Visionary that Canopus have released a new Nvidia GeForce4 card. Here's what he's saying:

Canopus has unveiled their latest SPECTRA WX25 card based on NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600. THis card comes with 128MB DDR SDRAM, 300/325DDR (650) Core/Mem, Advanced Power Supply 4.0 (Power Consumption directly from PSU without drawing power from motherboard to reduce power noise level to GPU) , SSH2 TypeDD , Exhaust Control Structure - FireBird G2 Twin Blow (Cooler specially designed to suck in air and propel upwards and rightwards for efficent cooling.

Just got word from Crow that Suma have released a New GeForce4 MX 440 Platinum Card! Here's some of the Spec's from Darkcrow.

S/U/M/A (www.suma.co.kr) in Korea, announced the GeForce4 MX 440 Platinum Power-Up(64MB) and is clocked@ 270/400 MHz = Core @ Memory using 4.0ns BGA type Memory.

The company GSM-International has the Radeon 8500 PRO available on April 16th 2002. Here is some information I got about this card: The spec. is: BGA DDR by using 128 bit Samsung 3.3ns memory (4 x 64M). With external RAMDAC which can support double D-sub output. However, the sample passed to editor for testing was just 290/300MHz. Speed is similar to Ti4400. This card could be a nice Geforce 4 killer. A review comes up in the next days on Warp2Search. For more information and how to get it head over to GSM-International by using the above link.
Dealers-inquire welcome.

Just saw this @ Rage3d Forums posted by CandyMan.

Well... I was just surfing around and came upon an article stating that Grandmars (which are a motherboard manufacturer in the Far East) came out with a Radeon 8500 Pro clocked at 290/600 using 3.3ns BGA memory.

T-Break has received the Creative Nomad Jukebox v3.0 and will be working hard to bring the review soon. In the meantime, they've setup a gallery with some of the things it's capable of:

ReactorCritical have posted two interesting hardware stories!

Club3D introduces GeForce4 Titanium 4600 board: The Club3D GeForce4 Ti4600 (CGN-2568 TVD) is built meeting NVidia's reference design and are clocked accordingly at 300/650 MHz for core and 128 MB of DDR SDRAM memory. The interesting fact about Club3D board is quite eccentric GPU cooling system as well as memory cooling radiators.

The first ever low-profile Radeon 8500: For ages low-profile videocards used to be quite slow and the assortment of such videoadapters mainly consisted of low-end solutions, e.g. GeForce2 MX or Matrox G450. However, Gigabyte Technology decided that the users of small and nice computers should also have the latest technology for their service and launched its GV-AP64DL, GV-AP64DL is based on the Radeon 8500 clocked at 230 MHz.

Just got word from DarkCrow.co.kr that SUMA are launching a new GeForce4 card and it's the SUMA GeForce4 Ti4600 SE 128MB! Here's some of the specs from Darkcrow.

It has 300/650 MHz core/memory clock, and Dual DVI output as you can see a photo. (Of course, for D-sub user it is included DVI to D-sub converter.)

SUMA GeForce4 Ti 4600 SE supports VIVO, so includes S-Video and Composite cables.

NvNews.com have posted the rumoured Nvidia NV30 specs ? after they said they would never post rumoured news again on their main pages! LOL they must have got their TI cards from Nvidia then.

Nvidia NV30 specs

AGP 4x and 8x
Copper Core Gpu Processor 0.13 m default clock 450 MHz
73M transistors
8 Pipelines
Quad Vertex Shader
Dual Pixel Shader
Dual Z-Buffer
Advanced Anisotropic ("12nvx mode")
T&L "co-processor" (can anybody say 3dfx/Sage?)
Glide capable (this makes you wonder...)
256-bit memory interface
750 MHz DDR

Just saw this @X-bitlabs.com

We have recently received a word from our reliable source that AMD is going to launch one more processor based on the old 0.18micron Palomino core before the new 0.13micron Thoroughbred based CPUs come out. Today this info got confirmed.

One of our readers (special thanks to Shaun L) sent us a picture of Athlon XP 2200+ based on the Palomino core: