It's Christmas day and that traditionally means we startup a little contest here at Guru3D.com

Yes it's time for the traditional logo hunt ! To keep things cool we teamed up with MSI and G.Skill as we'll be handing some of the latest and greatest hardware we know you guys love so much ! The competition is worldwide, meaning that anybody from whatever part of the world can join.

Click here to check out the competition.

In this festive moment, it is time to recollect all the good we've had this year and look in anticipation of that upcoming holiday joy.

On behalf of all the Guru3D.com staff-members, let us wish you a Merry Christmas and in advance a Happy New Year 2012! Thanks for being with us and thanks your support! Please, accept our sincere wishes of sound health, prosperity and a lot of gaming and hardware fun !

If you have a chance to do so, check back on Christmas morning 1st Christmas day, when we'll startup a Christmas competition in which some nice prizes are to be won. On the 2nd Christmas day we'll start of with the Rig of the Year votes, just to keep you all busy of course.

So keep the news in close vicinity, here's where we'll announce the competition.

BIOS updates for mainboards made by Elitegroup Computer Systems and Jetway reveal that Advanced Micro Devices may be preparing a new line of multi-core microprocessors called Phenom II X8. Based on alleged specifications of the products, the new central processing units (CPUs) will be aimed at cost-sensitive segment of the market as x-bitlabs reports:

Based on CPU support list of Jetway HA18 mainboard based on AMD 9-series chipset and AM3+ socket, AMD is preparing a series of new microprocessors based on Zambezi design (Bulldozer micro-architecture, 4, 6 or 8 cores) of different revisions with rather low clock-speeds and with 95W thermal design power. Jetway lists the new processors as "engineering samples", but a well-known Japanese observer/blogger Northwood.blog60.fc2.com points to an alleged ECS A890GXM-A2 CPU support list that calls the chips as AMD Phenom II X8.

The list of AMD Phenom II X8 microprocessors includes four models:

• AMD Phenom II X8 2420: 2.40GHz, 95W, ZD242046W8K43
• AMD Phenom II X8 3020: 3.00GHz, 125W, ZD302051W8K44
• AMD Phenom II X8 2520: 2.50GHz, 95W, ZD252046W6443
• AMD Phenom II X8 2820: 2.80GHz, 95W, ZD282046W8K43

Although AMD FX family does not play in the ultra high-performance segment of the market where microprocessors cost $400 or more, the Sunnyvale, California-based company clearly positions the chips as premium products. Therefore, the company is not interested in selling products with relatively low performance under the FX brand.

It is known that AMD does have a lot of Zambezi processors that have all cores functional, but which cannot work on high clock-speeds and therefore provide premium "FX-class" performance, but AMD is definitely interested in selling those chips. In a bid not to harm the appeal of the FX brand, the chip designer may sell low-frequency Zambezi processors with disabled Turbo Core dynamic clock-speed acceleration technology and/or cut-down L2/L3 cache under Phenom II X8 brand. AMD already sells some processors based on Llano APU design with disabled graphics engine under Athlon II and Sempron monikers, thus, a refresh of the Phenom II line should not be a complete surprise.

With low frequencies and without Turbo Core, the new eight-core Phenom II X8 will likely be considerably slower than the existing six-core Phenom II X8 processors based on Thuban design.

A recent series of leaked Intel slides have come to detail the performance of the Xeon E5  in comparison with Westmere-EP.

The new Xeon E5 chips are also known under the code name of Sandy Bridge-EP and feature a series of changes when compared with the desktop version of these CPUs.

These include support for up to eight processing cores, which can run a maximum of sixteen threads thanks to Intel

AMD's Radeon HD 7990 dual-GPU card is expected to arrive in late Q1 2012. This model will feature a total of 4096 stream processors and a whopping 6GB of GDDR5 memory. The HD 7990 will arrive by the end of the first quarter of 2012, according to a slide published by Donanim Haber, and will most probably be built using two Tahiti XT graphics cores which will be linked together via CrossFireX.

If AMD will indeed go for the Tahiti XT, this could mean that the card will include 62 Compute Units for a total of 4096 stream processors, 256 texture units and 64 ROP units.

Each one of the two GPUs will also feature a 384-bit wide memory bus that will be connected to 3GB of GDDR5 video buffer, delivering a whopping 6GB of VRAM on a single graphics card.

The clocks that the memory chips or the two GPUs will run at are unknown, but most probably AMD will have to go lower than the 925MHz/1.375GHz (5.5GHz effective) frequencies used for the HD 7970 in order to decrease the power consumption and the heat output of this dual-GPU monster.

Looks like OCZ had some spare SSDs in their office... (click on the thumbnail).

An OCZ tree would not be complete without SSD ornaments! Wishing everyone a safe and happy holidays

In this guide we'll show you how to overclock the Radeon HD 7970. We'll also look at the performance benefits in many games and look at the TDP, noise and heat level effects during this 1125 MHz overclock.

The Radeon HD 7970 keeps getting more and more impressive ...

You can read the article right here.

The Zalman CNPS10X Optima is hitting the stores as we speak, with optimally designed aluminum fins and high performance heatpipe in addition to Zalman

Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), the world

We grab eight different processors from AMD and Intel, and have a peek if modern age processor make a performance difference with the Radeon HD 7970.

Will a 1000 USD processor offer much more performance compared to a 250 USD processor ? Let's find out shall we.

You can check out the article here.

ASRock has released the Atom based AD2500B-ITX, the AD2700B-ITX and the AD2700-ITX.

The AD2700B-ITX, for one, has a large passive heatsink covering the CPU, a small one over the NM10 chipset and two SO-DIMM slots. Two SATA 3.0 Gbps ports, for HDDs and SSDs, are present as well, along with a single PCI slot and two headers for front USB 2.0 ports.

As for the back panel, the I/O options are a pair of PS/2, a serial port, a parallel port, D-sub, two USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet and two USB 3.0 connectors, plus 5.1-channel audio.

The AD2700-ITX is more interesting through the single PS/2 port, four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, 7.1 audio with optical S/PDIF out, D-sub, DVI and HDMI.

The GPU is listed as

With the Radeon HD 7970 now official, enthusiast

This one comes traight from TPU, they sourced a presentation, allegedly by Intel, detailing its Sandy Bridge-EP platform, and giving out early performance figures. After successful and trouble-free launches of its Sandy Bridge architecture across all PC form-factors, including the recently-launched Core i7 "Sandy Bridge-E" HEDT (high-end desktop), Intel is taking the architecture to its ultimate market, enterprise, where processors derived from it will make up new lines of Intel Xeon processor families. Intel has two branches of enterprise variations the architecture, Sandy Bridge-EN, designed for high-density, low-power servers, and Sandy Bridge-EP, designed for high-performance servers and workstations. Sandy Bridge-EP is multi-socket capable.

Sandy Bridge-EP uses essentially the same piece of silicon as Sandy Bridge-E, but enabled with several of its features otherwise off limits to the Core processor family. These include twoQuickPath Interconnect (QPI) links, which facilitate high-bandwidth inter-socket communication in multi-socket systems, up to eight cores, sixteen threads enabled by HyperThreading, and up to 20 MB of L3 cache memory. Like its Core family cousins, Xeon Sandy Bridge-EP packs a quad-channel DDR3 integrated memory controller, and PC3-12800 (DDR3-1600 MHz) is its optimal memory standard, but unlike it, supporting up to 768 GB of memory (by two sockets, eight DDR3 channels in all, LRDIMMs). Other key features are listed in the first slide below.

Japanese company Elecom unveiled its latest M-TG01DL series designer wireless mice. Available in color options of black, silver, and cherry-red, these right hand-oriented wireless mice use dark-field microscopic optical sensors that let you use it even on transparent glass surfaces with nothing underneath them (such as glass tables).

The sensor itself has a resolution of 1200 dpi, which is just fine for most non-gaming tasks.

The mice have five buttons apart from the scroll-wheel. The main unit communicates with a USB micro-receiver over 2.4 GHz radio band, and is powered by a single AAA-size battery which can provide up to 106 days of continuous uptime before needing a replacement. The mouse measures 51.0 x 77.0 x 32 mm (WxDxH), weighing 55 grams (without its battery). The M-TG01DL series will be available in the Japanese market in mid-January, its pricing is not known.

DigiTimes heard Intel notified its partners that it will reduce the pricing of its Sandy Bridge processors. Some Core i3 and i5 chips will see drops of 10-15 percent.

Since Intel is set to announce its next-generation Ivy Bridge-based processor in April of 2012, the company is hoping the price reduction could stimulate the market demand with several notebook vendors such as Lenovo, Asustek Computer and Acer have already dropped their Core i5-2430 equipped notebook model to below NT$20,000 (US$659) and Core i3-equipped models to below NT$13,000.

The sources also expect the vendors to drop the prices of their first-generation Core i5-based ultrabooks to US$799-899 in January of 2012 to clear up inventory and to avoid these machines from biting off demand from their next-generation ultrabook models.