July 17th is still the date when ATI's RV250 is set to be officially introduced to the world. At that time, ATI plans to introduce at least 2 versions of the RV250 based card - Radeon 9000 and Radeon 9000 Pro.

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As the release is drawing nearer also the rumours thicken about ATI's DirectX 9 capable GPU the R300 - which according The Inquirer will be dubbed Radeon 9700. According to the latest reports the R300 will have 107 million transistors on die which is said to result in the need of some sort of external power supply...

OCworkbench.com have what looks like the first benchmarks for 4x AGP vs. 8x AGP. Here's what they're saying:

We ran the Eng. board based on SIS648 chipset using a P4 2.4G at DDR333 CAS 2,2-2-5 mode. Here are our results of 3dMark2001SE Build 330. Drivers used: 3.02a.02.

MSI releases a new mainbord, the MSI KT3 Ultra2 series. These mainbords have now a on-chip USB2.0-controller insted of the NEC USB2.0-controller on the MSI KT3 Ultra-ARU. The MSI KT3 Ultra2 has also na integrated RAID-controller.

According to DRAMeXchange, 256Mbit DDR spot prices reached US$5.80-6.60 on July 4, rising a record 15% in one day, while 128Mbit DDR rose over 9% to US$2.80-3.20. These prices have begun to usher in profit for many of Taiwan?s DRAM manufacturers. DRAM suppliers said that rising demand has pushed DDR prices up. Intel cut processor prices in early June, and DDR-supporting chipsets have been rolled out continuously. In addition, the system products that international OEMs are launching this month are mostly DDR-based. Source: DRAMeXchange & Digitimes

Chinese website PCPop has some images of one of ATI's latest graphics card - the R300 which is probably coming in four flavours according to the latest 7.74 drivers found by us. They seem to have had about 12 hours to play around with the card but are limited in reporting due to ATI NDA. Read More...

I was just surfing around and I stopped by E-buyer and had a quick look in the video card section and guess what? I saw the new Matrox Parhelia 512GPU 128Mb DDR 3xRGB 2xDVI TV-Out OEM and they have 5 in stock @ £257.60 = £302.68 inc VAT!

Click here to Order

Continuing to impress the 7,200 RPM market with its WD Caviar family, Western Digital Corp. introduced the industry?s largest capacity hard drive on June 25th. WD Caviar 60 GB-per-platter 7,200 RPM hard drives will be offered in capacities ranging from 120 to 200 GB and will be available this July. To ensure quiet operation in noise-sensitive desktop/work station environments, Western Digital offers hard drives equipped with optional fluid dynamic bearing (FDB) motors. Read more...

The most recent Intel roadmaps show that the firm is continuing to scale its Pentium 4 chip, with a 2.80GHz processor now slated for this quarter, quarter three. This processor was shown in previous Intel roadmaps as a Q4 introduction. Intel ascribes the shift to a "healthy" 130 nanometer process and good engineering. That means it's now highly likely that Intel will be able to introduce a 3GHz Pentium 4 for the fourth quarter, as the chip dates shuffle forward.
The 2.80GHz Pentium 4 will kick off at $637, with the 2.66GHz/2.6GHz processor costing $562, and the 2.53GHz/2.5GHz processors dropping to $433, when bought in quantities of 1,000. Source: The Inquirer

Looks Like the ATI Radeon 9700(?) is very close cause ATI have posted a cool Flash animation with the slogan Experience The World Without Limits!

Just got word from Paul that he's just posted his MSI GeForce 4 Ti 4600 review. I got to say the MSI card looks like one of the best Geforce 4 you can buy.

MSI definitely knew what they were doing when they released the G4Ti4600-VTD. With an extremely crowded market, it is tough to find the card that you're looking for. The G4Ti4600-VTD comes with a good line up of games, exceptional software, good performance, and solid overclockability to keep the gamer worried less about frame-rates and more about fragging. MSI did not only market the G4Ti4600-VTD at the hardcore gamer, it also had the media enthusiast in mind with its release. The card comes packed with all the connections and software one would need to start manipulating video.

Rumour pot The Inquirer says it has gathered information that the upcoming next-gen ATI GPU will be named Radeon 9700 and that a 0.13 micron version will be called Radeon 10000. Read more...

Just saw this @ Xtechnet.net

Ever thought about having a DUAL monitored laptop? Xentex: Dual Monitor AMD-Powered Laptop!

Infineon Technologies today introduced a new 128 Mbit Double Data Rate (DDR) Graphics RAM component for 3D Graphics applications in portable and desktop computers. Designed to operate at clock speeds up to 450 MHz, Infineon?s newest Graphics RAM can handle data bandwidths up to 3.6 Gigabytes per second, making it an ideal device to support advanced graphics acceleration processors used in both professional graphics and computer gaming applications. Read more...

Seems that Rageunderground.com have an ATI R300 to give away!

You've definitely heard of ATI's upcoming R300. The card that will most likely be called the "Radeon 9500" is going to be a monster. Rumors have it running about 20% faster than the current world's fastest! These things are so secret we can't even post a picture of one.

Designed for the Intel Pentium 4 Socket 478 processors, and built with the SiS 648 chipset, the SR7-8X comes equipped with the next-generation AGP 8X slot for vastly increased video memory bandwidth. The SR7-8X also comes loaded with the specs and features power users expect from an ABIT motherboard, like USB 2.0 for greater connectivity to today's high-speed digital devices. It also boasts three onboard DDR DIMMS supporting up to 2GB of DDR333 memory or 3GB of DDR200/266 memory. Read more...

ExtremeTech also has an article in which they inform us that nForce2 is set to be introduced officially on July 15th. Funny, ATI's RV250 is due just two days later :D

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ExtremeTech in their latest article suggests that NV30 could be delayed until 2003 - at least according to Hans Mosesmann, a Prudential Securities Wall Street analyst .

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Myhard.com have got their hands on what seems to be an authentic AMD Clawhammer- Opteron CPU RoadMap!

Just got word from Aron that he's got his day one post up from this years PC Expo 2002 being held in New York. Here's a byte from his article:

When I got into the floor, there are two things that striked me as the general theme to this years Expo. Wireless and portable computing (Both I will cover in depth tomorrow) were huge. When I went to the keynote from a Microsoft Group VP, Jeff Raikes, I was impressed (yeah really). The topic that he covered was the new tablet PC!