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 !

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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.

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Xbitlabs reported that unlike DirectX 9, the DirectX 10 will not have a more than four year lifespan as Microsoft Corp. plans to introduce features of DirectX 11 application programming interface at the forthcoming XNA gamefest conference that takes place next week in Seattle, Washington. Moreover, ATI, graphics product group of AMD, and Nvidia Corp. also plan to discuss certain Direct3D 11 features at upcoming conferences.

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

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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/

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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.

 

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Brothers in Arms developer Gearbox Software develops a science fiction RPG/FPS hybrid -- reportedly a mix of Mad Max and Diablo -- with support for up to four cooperative players online. Coming soon to the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360


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AMD Power Monitor V 1.2.3 - AMD Power Monitor description

Monitor the current frequency, voltage, utilization, and power savings of each core of each processor in a system
AMD Power Monitor is used to monitor the current frequency, voltage, utilization, and power savings of each core of each processor in a system.

AMD Power Monitor has a system tray icon that may be used to view or select power schemes on the system.

The system tray icon will show the average utilization of every core on the system

Requirements:


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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.

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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

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Pretty interesting ... Intel will go back to the old days of pricing its flagship chips at $999 apiece when ordered in bulk, thousand-piece quantities, says a Friday report that cites mainboard manufacturers as its sources. The move is believed to have been made in order to speed up the adoption of quad-core CPUs, and pertains specifically to the chipmaker's upcoming 3.2GHz Extreme-series desktop Nehalem processors nicknamed Bloomfield.

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.

 

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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.

 

Model	Core	Core Freq	Shaders	Shader Freq	GFlops/s	Memory interface	Memory clock	Memory Bandwidth
Nvidia Geforce 9700M GT	G96	625MHz	32	1550MHZ	148.8 Gigaflops	128-bit	800MHz	51.2GB/s
Nvidia Geforce 9700M GTS	G94	530MHz	48	1325MHz	190.8 Gigaflops	256-bit	800MHz	51.2GB/s
Nvidia Geforce 9800M GTS	G94	600MHz	64	1500MHz	288 Gigaflops	256-bit	800MHz	51.2GB/s
Nvidia Geforce 9800M GT	G94	500MHz	96	1250MHz	360 Gigaflops	256-bit	800MHz	51.2GB/s
Nvidia Geforce 9800M GTX	G92	500MHz	112	1250MHz	420 Gigaflops	256-bit	800MHz	25.6GB/s

 

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While Intel merrily report rising Q2 profits and revenue, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) sang a far different tune.  The smaller major player in the microprocessor industry reported earnings which disappointed even investors expecting less than a stellar performance. 

Preceding the earnings report was news from AMD that it would be taking a charge of more than $900M USD for losses based on the bill for its acquisition of ATI, its flash endeavors, and its struggling ATI TV and consumer electronics subunits.  This news set predictions of losses rather high. 

Whereas Intel reported profits beating expectations, AMD reported losses beating expectations.  AMD bled $1.19B USD in Q2 2008, up from $600M USD a year ago and $358M USD last quarter.  The adjusted losses, which take one time events into account, totaled 60 cents a share, worse than analyst predictions of 52 cents a share.

Depending on the metric you view, AMD revenue was either up or down.  AMD announced Q2 2008 revenue of $1.349B USD, up 3 percent from Q2 2007, but down 7 percent from Q1 2008 (curiously AMD's press release chooses to assert this negative comparison before the positive one).  Analysts on Wall Street had been hoping that it would show revenues of $1.45B USD, but yet again AMD left them with disappointment.

Gross margin, an important indicator of profitability, again, was up compared to last year, but down compared to Q1 2008.  The margin was 37 percent, excluding the impact from the sales of portions of its 200mm infrastructure, compared to 41 percent in Q1 2008 and 34 percent in Q2 2007.

As far as good news from AMD, about the only clearly good news it could offer were in terms of technology, which was also a slightly mixed bag.  AMD strongly pushed out Opteron server technology, which was viewed as a success.

In terms of technology, AMD's greatest Q2 2008 victory came from acquisition in terms of the 4000 series of graphics cards -- the 4850 and 4870 blew away similarly priced offerings from NVIDIA.  The impending release of the 4870 X2 in August/September, which early reports show to compare favorably with NVIDIA's similarly priced high-end GTX 280, could erode into one of NVIDIA

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After bringing the world's biggest and most profitable software corporation, Microsoft, to its knees with a record $2.6B USD total in antitrust fines, the European Union began a serious investigation of chip maker Intel and whether it committed antitrust violations.

Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, fluctuates between having around 80 to 90 percent of the global microprocessor market, something some would term a monopoly, but which the business world terms more accurately as a "dominant position".  After a lengthy investigation -- featuring such assignment as raids of Intel offices in Europe -- the EU decided it had enough evidence to file formal charges.  The EU charged Intel with abusing its dominant position by using price slashing and illegal rebates to drive smaller chipmakers out of business and trying to create a monopoly.

Obviously, Intel disagreed.  Now the European Commission (EC), the EU's business monitoring unit, has battered Intel with a fresh round of charges.  It claims it has evidence that Intel bribed a leading European retailer not to stock products containing chips made by rival AMD.  It also charges Intel with paying the retailer to delay the release of a product containing AMD chips.  AMD had previously made such claims, but was unable to prove them, thus far.  It also accused Intel of giving illegal incentives to switch to its chips.

The EC has given Intel eight weeks to respond formally to the charges.  Intel officials say that they are "disappointed" by the charges.  The EC paints Intel as a bully in the report, stating that it "used its considerable muscle to provide substantial rebates to a leading European PC retailer - conditional on it selling only Intel-based PCs."

A statement from Intel rebuffed this view and accused the EU of conspiring with rival AMD, arguing, "The issuance of a second Statement of Objections suggests that the Commission supports AMD's position that Intel should be prevented from competing fairly and offering price discounts which have resulted in lower prices for consumers.  The allegations stem from the same set of complaints that our competitor, AMD, has been making to regulators and courts around the world for more than 10 years."

The chip giant will have to make another formal response against the three new charges in Brussels.  Under its laws, if the European Union finds Intel to be guilty, it can fine it up to 10 percent of its international yearly revenue.  This could amount in as much as $4B USD, as Intel's yearly income is around $40B USD.  The E.U. Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes, who approved the fines against Microsoft, believes that Intel may be a "bigger threat to competition" than Microsoft, so such a fine is not unimaginable.

Intel is making record profits while it

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Legend has it that at the first screenings of The Great Train Robbery, the movie that is considered to be the first narrative film, audiences ducked and ran for cover when the on-screen bandits turned their guns toward the camera and began shooting--which is understandable. After all, The Great Train Robbery came out in 1903, a time when people had limited exposure to both moving pictures and quiet dignity (as well as bluetooth technology--which is the best technology).

However, now that it's 2008--a time when you can have your uterus outfitted with a tiny plasma screen so your unborn child can just watch Dora and maybe stop kicking you for five seconds--people don't have such dramatic physical reactions to film. Most of us understand that movie bullets aren't going to suddenly fly out of the screen and into our bodies as we sit there, prone, in the theater.

Still, the Motion Picture Association Of America doesn't want to take any chances, which is why they told the director of Watchmen, Zack Snyder, that he couldn't have a guy pointing a gun at the audience in the trailer. Snyder replaced the gun with a walkie-talkie. This way, if anyone from 1903 watches the trailer, instead of ducking and/or running for their life, they'll just curl up into a ball, rock back and forth, and mumble, "What world is this? What is happening to me? Where am I?"

From MTV Movies Blog:

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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.

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Sony

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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.

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After eVGA and XFX announced, BFG now will also offer a limited number of GeForce GTX 260 and 280 owners a cash rebate. The offer is again only available to US and Canada customers who have bought and registered their BFG GeForce GTX 200 series cards between June 16 and July 16 with the sum 'rewarded' being of up to $120.

What's also nice is that in addition to the rebate BFG offers qualified customers $50 off their next graphics card, if it's the same GT200-powered model they already have (so if they go SLI that's another 50 bucks in yuor pocket).

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AMD has seen its share of ups and downs over the years, but the company has had it especially hard ever since its acquisition of ATI Technologies in 2006. Since then, the company has experienced numerous quarters of losses, announced job cuts, and has watched as top executives abandoned the chip giant.

Most recently, AMD announced that it would take another $880 million USD charge due to the poor performance of ATI's Consumer electronics division.

Today, AMD CEO Hector Ruiz stepped down from his position with the company. Ruiz joined the company in January 2000 and became CEO in April 2002. Ruiz will be replaced by the current Number 2 in charge, Dirk Meyer. Ruiz will stay on as the executive chairman of AMD's Board of Directors.

The future looks uncertain as the man who has become the face of AMD moves on to greener pastures. Meyer will have to find a way to get AMD back on a track to profitability and get its first 45nm processors out the door to combat Intel.

Ruiz's departure comes at a time when AMD is trying to fight off a surging Intel. Intel just recently announced a 25 percent increase in quarterly profits at the same time AMD was reporting losses. Intel also this week launched its Centrino 2 platform which aims to take much of the air out of AMD's Puma platform.

AMD, however, has obtained better success on the graphics front with its new Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 graphics cards which are the current "bang for the buck" kings. AMD garnered so much praise from reviewers and consumers alike that NVIDIA responded with price cuts to its recently introduced GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280 graphics cards.

AMD may also have a little bit of help on its side in the form of an official FTC investigation into Intel's business behavior. But the fact remains, whatever the outcome of the FTC investigation, AMD still has to deliver a competitive product to stay alive in this cutthroat industry.

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Administrators still cannot access San Francisco's main IT system, thanks to a now jailed employee who changed all the passwords and won't give them to authorities.

An IT employee who is charged with gumming up the works at the City and County of San Francisco's main data center by changing access passwords for administrators could have been stopped short of crippling access to the system if IT management had had the right security software in place.

Terry Childs, 43, of Pittsburg, Calif., pleaded not guity in court July 17 at his arraignment on four felony counts of computer tampering. Childs remains in custody in lieu of $5 million bail. Childs, who makes $127,000 per year and has worked for the city for five years, has a bail hearing set for July 23.

Childs, a computer network administrator for the Department of Technology, is charged with tampering with the system's FiberWAN [Fibre Channel-connected wide area network], which contains San Francisco's sensitive Human Resources, payroll and other personal data. He created an administrative password that provided him superior access to the network.

Childs, who was arrested July 13, refuses to divulge to authorities the new secret password he concocted

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