ATI released their July 2008 update of the Catalyst driver suite for radeon graphics cards. We have a thread open on these drivers right here. Please share your experiences.

Performance Improvements

The following performance gains are noticed with this release of Catalyst

Intel today lowered it's prices on several processors. Actually, one of the most popular processors dropped the most, that is great news as the Core 2 Duo E8500 dropped from 266 USD towards a fantastic 183 USD which is roughly 30 percent lower than before.

The slightly slower specced Core 2 Duo E8400 dropped 11% towards 163 USD. Furthermore the Core 2 Duo E7200 and Core 2 Quad both dropped 15 & 14% respectively with 113 USD for the E7200 and 193 USD for the Q6600. and that makes the Q6600 absolutely stunning to purchase !

Next to desktop processors Intel also lower some of the server counterparts. The Xeon X3220 and X3210 dropped 12% to 198 USD. The Xeon E3110 dropped towards 167 USD. These prices are obviously market prices purchased per 1000.

If you ask me, go for either the E8500 (prices here) or the Q6600 (prices here) folks, extremely good value !

Postal III is a third-person shooter developed by Running With Scissors. It is the third game in the Postal video game franchise, and is scheduled for release in North America in 2009 for PC (Linux), Mac OS X and Xbox 360. A PlayStation 3 port was announced in later stages of development, which will probably be released shortly after the initial release. Postal III will continue and expand upon the sandbox-style design of its predecessor, Postal 2, as well as include motion captured performances by a wide array of celebrities, including film stars and Playboy Playmates.

Microsoft is going to host four sessions dedicated to Direct3D 11 application programming interface (API), according to agenda of XNA conference. The world

It was known for a while already that AMD's ATI is developing a new product under codename R700. Guru3D has a nice preview of what AMD is going to launch real soon, the Dual-GPU based Radeon 48x0 X2 series of products.

In very short wording, you take a large PCB (printed circuit board), slap two 4870 processors and a bridge-chip on there and call it a Radeon 4870 X2. It's surely not the most elegant method of getting a graphics card in the high-end segment, it is however as this preview will show you, a very effective one.

You can find this article right here:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-4870-x2-preview/

Hey everyone, I just wanted to drop a note that tomorrow (Monday) we'll publish our AMD R700 review, Radeon HD 4870 X2. So check back tomorrow.

ISPReview.co.uk has published a copy of some marketing material that BT Retail has been sending out to people who use Tiscali Broadband or one of its subsidaries such as Pipex and Nildram.

Competition among broadband providers to retain its existing customers or attract customers away from competitors is increasing as the number of people who don't have broadband starts to diminish. The BT letter is perhaps different to most in that it centres around raising doubt about the Tiscali service in relation to the planned sell-off of the provider. The sell-off while widely publicised may still surprise some, particular Nildram and Pipex customers not aware that Tiscali is currently the big name behind their connections.

According to the various quotes that people have obtained from BT already, BT staff are apparently suggesting that the fact that certain people had a Tiscali connection has come from marketing lists purchased in from external sources. Certainly BT Retail would be in a lot of trouble if it has used things like broadband tag information to target rivals customers. The reach of the firms that cull customer information from various sources is very far reaching, and it is all to easy to end up with your details being sold in bulk.

It's been shown that a number of Tiscali customers being offered deals on their broadband service if willing to sign up for a new 12 month contract. So some Tiscali customers may be feeled hemmed in with marketing approaches from several quarters.

AMD will unfold its plan to take on Intel's Atom in November, newly promoted CEO Dirk Meyer said last night.

AMD's is currently working on a chip codenamed 'Bobcat', a single-core, 64-bit processor designed for low-cost laptops and Small, Cheap Computers.

Past leaks have indicated that Bobcat will debut with a 1GHz clock speed, 128KB of L1 cache, 256KB of L2 cache and an 800MHz HyperTransport link out to the rest of the system. Its on-board memory controller will handle 400MHz DDR 2 chips.

The whole thing is set to consume no more than 8W and sit inside an 812-pin, 27mm

The current top-of-the-range offering from Intel, the 3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9770, is based on the earlier Penryn-era Yorkfield architecture with 12MB of Level 2 cache and is $500 more expensive in the same bulk quantities. The reports also have Intel's 2.93GHz version of the chip priced at $562, with a volume 2.66GHz version costing $284. All models will be based in X58 motherboards, which bring new dual and triple channel DDR3 support and can accomodoate either dual PCIe 2.0 X16 or Quad PCIe 2.0 X8.

Nehalem will be released in late 2008 for high-end chips and early 2009 for mainstream chips. The microarchitecture is being developed by Intel and is the planned successor to the Core microarchitecture. The processor is expected to debut the microarchitecture. Key features 1 through 8 (or more) cores, Integrated memory controllers supporting DDR3 SDRAM and between 1 and 4 memory channels.

NVIDIA silently introduced details for its two highest-end GeForce 9M series notebook graphics chips following leaks by PC makers. The 9800M line is now NVIDIA's flagship and is much closer to desktop-class graphics than the earlier 9600M; the top-end 9800M GTX has 112 effects processors that compares closely to the 128 of the desktop 9800, suiting it to desktop replacement portables and very compact desktops. It runs at 500MHz at its core with a 1.9GHz effective memory speed.
A slightly scaled down GeForce 9800M GT runs at the same speeds but has just 96 effects processors, while a third 9800M GTS drops the count to 64 processors.

Two 9700M chips provide faster performance for upper mid-range notebooks, according to NVIDIA. The 9700M GTS again runs at the same clock speeds as the 9800M chips but has just 48 processors, while a starter 9700M GT clocks the memory down to nearly 1.7GHz and drops to 32 processors.

A computer hack that makes it possible to defraud London's transport payment system can be made public, according to a court ruling in the Netherlands.

Researchers at the Radboud University in Nijmegen planned to publish details in October on how to hack a chip used in millions of electronic passes for entering buildings and public transport systems, including London's.

The chip is used in the city's Oyster cards that are used to pay for journeys by pressing them against a card reader at the beginning and, sometimes the end of journeys.

But the chip's manufacturer, NXP based in the Netherlands, argued that it would make it easy for criminals to break into security systems and commit fraud on public transport systems.

Prior warning

NXP, founded by electronics company Philips, fears substantial damage and security risks for its clients worldwide, the court in Arnhem in the east of the Netherlands said.

But the court ruled that the university's right to publish was part of the freedom of speech and that the publication of scientific research on the chip's faults could help to take appropriate countermeasures.

"Damage to NXP is not the result of the publication of the article, but of the production and sale of a chip that appears to have shortcomings," the court said.

The university had first informed the Dutch government and NXP in March that it had developed a method to crack NXP's Mifare Classic chip with widely available commercial components and at low cost, but delayed publication of details.

'Damage to customers'

Christophe Duverne, a senior vice president at NXP, said it would take months or even years for some users of the chip to adapt their systems, and that the publication was therefore different from software hacks for which manufacturers can issue a patch much more quickly.

"What we are doing is defending our customers," Duverne said.

"We don't mind them publishing the effects of what they have discovered to inform society, I think this is absolutely fine, but disclosing things in detail including the algorithm ... is not going to benefit society, it will create damage to society."

A spokesman for the university did not want to discuss consequences for the chip's users.

Transport for London, which runs London's public transport system, had no immediate comment.

Sony

Creative recently introduced its newest headset, designed for use with Apple's iPhone and iPod. The EP-630i uses a pair of in-ear buds, which come with three different silicone covers to ensure users find an ideal fit. Each earbud is powered by a 9mm Neodymium magnet to deliver above average sound quality.

The headset, available in black only, includes an integrated microphone with a built-in button that allows users to answer or end calls in between listening to music on the iPhone. The gold-plated 3.5mm 4-pole plug makes this possible, and the Y-configuration cord is nearly 4 feet long, with an oxygen-free copper cable to maximize sound quality.

The headset will be available in Singapore starting in September of 2008, priced at the equivalent of $59. A US release date is expected soon.