Xbitlabs Anton Shilov has posted details of upcoming nForce2 mainboards from Soltek, the nForce2 400 and nForce2 Ultra 400! Here's a snip:

The company will launch six new mainboards powered by NVIDIA?s new Socket A chipsets shortly and I expect more mainboard makers to adopt new core-logic products from the number one graphics company as well.

A few weeks ago we reported that Xbitlabs had spotted information about upcoming AMD Thorton processors. Today Xbitlabs reveals more details.

Nearly a month ago we reported that AMD plans to roll-out another core for its Athlon XP processors, the Thorton with 256KB of L2 cache (See March 24, 2003 news-story). At that time nothing was known about the newcomer, but we supposed that this is just the same Barton, but with 256KB of L2 instead of 512KB. Well, today we found that ABIT?s NF7-S BIOS already supports AMD Thorton processors and even detects the right model-number for the parts.

Microsoft Corp. today unveiled four new special edition hardware products: Wireless Optical Desktop Special Edition, Wireless Optical Mouse Special Edition, Optical Mouse Special Edition and MultiMedia Keyboard Special Edition. Dressed in icicle white and matte black, these mice and keyboards defy the old computing fashion style guidelines and deliver more individualized desktop options. Wireless Optical Desktop Special Edition delivers six feet worth of wireless freedom with a gleaming white and chrome-accented mouse, keyboard and shared receiver. The sleek keyboard features a multimedia center and Hot Keys, which enable users to launch music playlists, surf the Internet or control streaming video -- all at the touch of a button. The ambidextrous mouse uses precise Microsoft® Optical Technology and offers a wider scroll wheel. These stylish white devices operate on both PC and Macintosh platforms.

Professional users require stable and reliable high-performance platforms that meet the needs of their demanding applications. With the introduction of the Nvidia nForce 3 professional platform processors, the company revolutionizes professional motherboard designs, delivering a single-chip motherboard solution designed specifically for the 64-bit AMD Opteron processor.

Matrox brings decades of experience in designing, manufacturing and supporting high-quality graphics solutions to deliver the most comprehensive productivity tools on the market with the new Millennium P-Series graphics boards -consisting of the Millennium P650 and the Millennium P750 boards. Complementing the professional Matrox Parhelia Series and mainstream Millennium G-Series product lines, the Millennium P-Series offers unparalleled image quality, excellent reliability and the most complete multi-display support in the industry, including versatile dual-DVI output. Multiply your productivity with Matrox's newest addition to the family.

On top of its efforts dedicated to the new 400MHz FSB (front-side bus) Athlon XP processors, VIA Technologies on April 22 introduced its first K8 chipset, the K8T400M, hoping to defend its dominant position in the high-end Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)-platform market. Read More

Tech-report's Scott Wasson has posted an editorial that looks at what the Athlon 64 needs to do to succeed! Here's a byte.

Now that we've seen AMD's next-generation Hammer chip (now known as AMD64) up close, with real benchmarks, we have a much clearer sense of how the new AMD chips stack up against the competition from Intel. Judging by the benchmarks, Hammer has loads of potential, and it's easy to see why AMD elected to go ahead and release a server version of the chip. The architecture, with an integrated memory controller on each CPU and high-speed HyperTransport links between system devices, is brilliant for a server platform.

Professional users require stable and reliable high-performance platforms that meet the needs of their demanding applications. With the introduction of the NVIDIA nForce?3 Professional platform processors, NVIDIA revolutionizes professional motherboard designs, delivering a single-chip motherboard solution designed specifically for the 64-bit AMD Opteron? processor.

Tom's Hardware have managed to get the hands on the latest toy's from AMD an Opteron 64-bit Processor and pitted the Opteron against Intel's Xeon Processor! Here's a snip.

The mood in our labs was thick with excitement - there was barely a week to perform detailed tests on a total of four platforms. AMD had sent in a server with Dual Opteron processors for testing with little time to spare before launch. And it quickly became clear who its rival would be: an Intel Dual Xeon, the 3 GHz version. This article describes the results from our duelling test systems.

AMD today introduced the AMD Opteron processor, the world?s first 64-bit processor compatible with the industry-standard x86 architecture and the highest performing 2-way and 4-way processor for servers. IBM joined AMD at a New York City launch event to announce its plans to offer a server product for high-performance computing based on the AMD Opteron processor. At the same event, Microsoft reiterated its commitment to developing a 64-bit operating system for the processor, with a beta version available in mid-2003. The AMD Opteron processor for servers and workstations, which extends the x86 instruction set architecture (ISA) to 64-bit computing for the first time, is also the first processor in a new class of computing called AMD64. AMD64 directly follows the evolutionary path of the industry-standard x86 ISA, allowing development of a unified 64-bit computing infrastructure fully compatible with the pervasive x86 architecture. The AMD Opteron processor helps eliminate barriers to 64-bit computing by simplifying the transition between current and future generations of software.

Juts spotted this at Digit-life.com:

Despite the launch of new server Opteron CPU series with new 64-bit x86-64 architecture is scheduled for tomorrow by AMD, the Web already offers comprehensive information about them, so we couldn?t fail to make use of it. Perhaps, tomorrow will bring some more specs or architectural details, but such a major event needs additions anyway.

Opteron chips introduce several key features: 64-bit core, 64Kb associative duplex instruction cache + 64Kb associative duplex data cache (L1); 1Mb 16-channel L2 cache; integrated DDR controller supporting DDR200 and DDR266 SDRAM; HyperTransport module supporting up to 3 buses with 19.2Gbps total throughput.

Just got word Firingsquad's Brandon Bell has posted his RADEON 9500 PRO vs. 9600 PRO Shoot-out! Here's a snip.

As we discussed in our RADEON 9600 PRO review, the RADEON 9600 family was meant to address ATI?s need for a DirectX 9 part that offered RADEON 9500 PRO class performance, but at a lower production cost. In order to accomplish this objective directly, ATI has reduced the number of pixel pipelines from eight in RADEON 9500 PRO, to four in RADEON 9600 PRO, and shifted to a newer manufacturing process.

Elite Bastards.com have a press release from BFG announcing that the Asylum GeForce FX 5600 and Asylum GeForce FX 5200 are now shipping but the most interesting bit is this:

Read More

Currently, there are two reasons to unlock the multiplier on your processor. The first, and most common, is to lower the multiplier so that the FSB can be raised to the max, yielding a better overall system overclock.

But what about those of us who still have the KT133A chipset? The reason I wanted to unlock the multiplier on my 1700+ JIUHB Tbred B is so I could raise it and achieve as good of an overclock possible with my setup, since my FSB cannot go past 144. In comes the XP Unlocking Kit, an all-in-one solution provided by HighSpeed PC, which has all the tools necessary to unlock the multiplier.

Here's an interesting article posted by John Smith over at The Inquirer.net called NV40 will give Nvidia performance lead by year end! It's well worth the read.

This is where we see pricing and technology from ATI and Nvidia for their family of products close to the end of this year and the beginning of next year.

ATI

Up to $400 - R9900 family on R350 with DDRII memory

This just in from Ilya Gavrichenkov at Xbitlabs.com, who managed to get hands on an engineering sample of the AMD Athlon 64 2800+ processor. They couldn?t help testing it and this article discusses the major features and benchmarks results for this processor.

Sony's next-generation Dual RW drives, the internal DRU-510A and the external DRX-510UL, are the first DVD+R/DVD+RW drives in the industry capable of recording to compatible 4X DVD+RW discs at up to 4X speeds, which enables users to burn a full 4X DVD+RW certified disc in about 15 minutes. The drives also support up to 4X DVD+R and DVD-R recording, as well as 2X DVD-R, 24X CD-R and 16X CD-RW recording, making them among the fastest and most proficient on the market. The internal DRU-510A Dual RW drive will be available in early May for an estimated retail price of under $350, and the external DRX-510UL model will be available in June for less than $430. Sony DVD/CD rewritable drives are sold through resellers and retailers nationwide, mail order catalogs, and select online shopping sites, including SonyStyle.com.

Just spotted this at Digit-life.com.

Time flies by, IT industry is rapidly developing, especially 3D accelerators. Their power and capabilities have markedly improved over the past 5 years. 5 years ago, in 1998 we got the unexampled 3dfx Voodoo 2. It was a separate video card supporting 3D modes only. It had to be installed together with a 2D card...

Intel Corporation yesterday introduced three new processors for mobile PCs, the Mobile Intel Pentium 4 processor - M at 2.50 GHz and the mobile Intel Celeron processor at 2.20 and 1.26 GHz. The Mobile Intel Pentium 4 processor - M delivers high performance for desktop replacement portable PCs. Notebooks based on this processor allow users to take advantage of processor-intensive applications such as business multi-tasking, collaborative workgroups, video encoding, digital media and gaming. The mobile Intel Celeron processor brings Intel technology, quality and reliability to the mobile value PC consumer market segment. In 1,000-unit quantities, the Mobile Intel Pentium 4 processor - M at 2.50 GHz is priced at $562. In the same quantities, the mobile Intel Celeron processor at 2.20 GHz and 1.26 GHz are priced at $149 and $107, respectively.

This just in from Dave Baumann at Beyond3d.com: Yesterday we published our ATI Radeon 9600 PRO Review, however today we managed to get an overclocker application to work with the board as we had heard of some rather insteresting overclocking potential. The actual overclock, and the results were quite surprising.