Yesterday we reported that NVIDIA would very likely drop it's prices for the GeForce GTX 260 and 280 to bee able to compete with AMD's offering better. As it seems, that price drop is already in effect.

Newegg shows an offering on a GeForce GTX 280 graphics card for $459.99 after a $40 mail-in-rebate and cards from other brands like Asus and Palit are also available for around $499. It seems NVIDIA is cutting the price extremely hard. A couple of days ago you had to shelve out $649 for a GTX 280 but now you can get it for almost $200 less.

Furthermore, the GeForce GTX 260 is now available for $299.99 and ZipZoomfly even has one with a $40 mail-in-rebate so the card costs only $259.

We'll keep an eye on the new price developments closely. The fun thing here is, if you pick up such a card at that price, you'll just have to say thanks to AMD for it.

Related articles:

• GeForce GTX 260 review
• BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC edition review
• GeForce GTX 280 SLI Dual | Triple review test
• GeForce GTX 280 review

Solid-state disks may be eating into the territory of traditional hard drives, particularly in laptops, but that doesn't mean spinning platters are on their last legs

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky introduces a new video trailer showing a side by side look at how real the surroundings and people look in the game.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, is the stand-alone prequel for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, a first-person shooter computer game by Ukrainian developer GSC Game World. During E3, it was reported that the game will consist of a 50/50 mix of old remade/altered levels and totally new areas to explore. It will be released August 29, 2008. Also the game engine is being updated to v1.5 and will include DirectX 10 support. The AI is to receive an overhaul to accommodate the new "faction wars" feature; which will give players the opportunity to lead one of the eight factions to become rich and dominant.

The current tagline appears to be, as of writing, "What awaits you, S.T.A.L.K.E.R, in the Zone that changed?" On Thursday, March 27, 2008, GSC Game World announced the release date is currently set for August 29, 2008.
 

It seems that a Chinese website called vga.zol.conm.cn posted a photo of what appears to be the GeForce 9800 GT. The card obviously originates from XFX and uses the same layout as the 8800 GT.

This would be the first 9800 series product with a single slot design. Other than that there not much to show or tell. I'm just really curious to see it can beat the Radeon 4850 in performance. It won't be very long before we know I guess.

Matuus, our in-house Guru3D NVHardpage programmer stumbled into the same issue I had as well. The NVIDIA PhysX driver once install will activate itself on the GPU, and can not be disabled.

This little NV PhysX Tweaker tool will allow you to actually choose to enable or disable the PhysX driver over the GPU and if preferred, the CPU. Very simple, yet very handy.

Download - click here

Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 CrossfireX performance test

Guru3D posted a Radeon 4850 and 4870 Crossfire review. Since Radeon series 4800 cards offer so much value, it might even be interesting to pair them in CrossfireX mode.

Much like NVIDIA's SLI offerings, AMD's ATI solution can be paired and matched as well. So pretty much today we'll place several cards together in CrossfireX mode, first the cards paired (two) and then we'll for the sake of it see if we can pair three cards CrossfireX mixed, meaning 2x 4870 and one 4850. When you compare the results to NVIDIA's latest high-end single card offerings, the results are a little shocking.

You can read the article at this URL:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-4850-and--4870-crossfirex-performance/

Arctic Cooling has announced the new Accelero TWIN TURBO which is a Superior Cooling Solution for High Performance Graphics Cards. It is compatible with ATI Radeon HD 4870, 4850 and nVIDIA GeForce 9600GT, 8800GT series. It's a new dual-fan VGA cooler Accelero TWIN TURBO, adding a multi-compatible high performance merchandise into their reputable VGA cooler product line.

With 26

Arctic Cooling Accelero TWIN TURBO announced

According to rumors on the web NVIDIA will cut the price of its GeForce GTX 280 and 260 graphics cards by $90 and $30, respectively according to fudzilla.

Nvidia will cut $90 of the Geforce GTX 280 price-tag, but this is Nvidia's price to partners and we are not sure just how much will this affect the suggested etail price. We are sure that end user prices will also drop but probably a bit less than $90.

The Geforce GTX 260 will be $30 cheaper to partners and Nvidia will only offer limited price protection which means that some partners / distributors and stores might end up with some overpriced cards at their warehouses.

OCZ announced the expansion of its Intel Extreme Memory modules lineup, the latest memory solution that implements a high-performance specification optimized and predefined for the Intel X38 and X48 chipsets. The new modules are rated at DDR3-1333 and DDR3-1600 and feature the all-new Intel branded black XTC heatspreader. With a long history of providing the most innovative products to the enthusiast community, OCZ is excited to take advantage of Intel

OCZ Intel Extreme Memory DDR3 kits

Santa Clara based NVIDIA confirmed that second quarter of fiscal year 2009 will not be as good as initially estimated and desired.

The company is saying that its Q2 revenue will be under $1 billion and hover around $875 million to $950 million due to worldwide end-market weakness, the delays of several chipsets and the competition from AMD which forced it to lower the prices of some of its GPUs.

Since problems seem to come at least in pairs Nvidia has also announced its plan to "take a one-time charge from $150 million to $200 million against cost of revenue for the second quarter to cover anticipated warranty, repair, return, replacement and other costs and expenses, arising from a weak die/packaging material set in certain versions of its previous generation GPU and MCP products used in notebook systems." CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has stated that the company has learned from these higher than expected failure rates and that it will work more closely with OEMs to address such issues. The results for Q2 of the financial year 2009 will be revealed on August 12.

I just spotted this on on Digit-life, pretty interesting see, while personal computers built into monitors are not rare, they are, as a rule, expensive. Without a doubt Apple iMac is the most popular among such solutions, but PC market also offers similar machines, e.g. Dell XPS One.

Nevertheless, ASUS is going to boldly enter this market - to revolutionize it, naturally. For 500 USD its new Eee Monitor will offer the same level of integration and performance that should be enough for home users. While complete specifications are not known yet, the novelty is said to feature Intel Atom N270 CPU and integrated graphics. Users will be able to select between 40 GB SSD and 80 GB HDD.Other features are to include 6 USB ports, Ethernet adapter, modem, IEEE 1394 interface, usual audio connectivity and Denon speakers. All this will be integrated into a 19-inch LCD monitor with no external VGA or DVI.

Even something as simple as an approximate release dates of the Eee Monitor is not yet known.

It's true enough that China's supercomputer list reflects a nation that's still in the early stages of building out its computing infrastructure. Only 12 of the top Chinese systems rank among the 500 fastest machines on the planet, according to the most recent Top500 supercomputer list. Meanwhile, the US claims 257 of the top machines, the UK 53, Germany 46 and France 34.

In addition, the Chinese list is filled with systems from mainstream industries such as oil and gas, entertainment and telecommunications. By contrast, the top Western machines tend to reside inside of government-funded laboratories and universities. (Part of this discrepancy may result from the fact that many foreign government bodies like to boast about their computing giants, while the PRC appears to keep many government systems hidden. In addition, Western companies tend not to bother with benchmarking their business clusters, while the Chinese seem eager to do so.)

Regardless of how you examine the trends affecting the lists of supercomputing machines, The9's story stands out as something rather remarkable. This one company aims more than 10 per cent of China's top computers at the singular task of sending out video games to the millions of local players.

The upgrade would give the RV770 chip, which sits at the heart of the AMD card, a 150GB per second transfer rate that would be just enough to edge out the NVIDIA-made GeForce card and eliminate one of the few weaknesses of the current Radeon platform.

Diamond is already said to have delivered a rough version of the technology with its Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition card, which underclocks AMD's official version slightly but is otherwise identical. The official release, however, would give PC builders a drop-in option either for their own stand-alone cards or for manufactuers designing complete systems. Release dates haven't been made official but are expected soon from card designers such as ASUS and Sapphire.

My question here would be .. considering the RV770 is all about price vs. performance ... how much would this cost ?

Related articles:

• Radeon HD 4870 review
• Radeon HD 4850 review
• GeForce GTX 280 review
• GeForce GTX 260 review