Take this report with a healthy dose of skepticism. German site Hardware Infos is reporting what it claims are the specs for NVIDIA's upcoming high-end GT212 sourced from sources "close to NVIDIA". According to the site GT212 will ship with 384 stream processors, up from 240 in today's GTX 280. The site also says GT212 will feature 96 TMUs (versus 80 in GTX 280). Hardware Infos also claims the GPU's shader cluster has been reworked, with the GPU now sporting 12 shader clusters (instead of 10) with 32 stream processors per shader cluster (GT200 features 24 SPs per cluster)

To keep costs down, the GPU will be built on TSMC's 40-nm manufacturing process. The new process will reduce die size down to just 300 square millimeters, making it nearly half the size of GT200 despite the increase in shader count. To further reduce costs the GPU will skip the 512-bit memory interface, with NVIDIA opting for a simpler 256-bit memory interface utilizing GDDR5 memory instead of GDDR3. If true, this would be similar to the memory subsystem found on ATI's Radeon 4870.

According to the site GT212 will be released in Q2'09 with support for DirectX 10.0. NVIDIA's DX11 GPU is expected to debut sometime during Q4 of next year.

Straight from the horses mouth:

Mom always said that inner beauty is more important than looks. And, with the exception of matinee idols, your first girlfriend and your car, she's probably right. If you're talking about graphics cards, she is absolutely, 100% correct. Because nothing kills the moment like an underpowered card.

That's why you'll be excited to check out XFX's new lineup of Radeon™ HD-powered 4000 series graphics cards. With state-of-the-art technology that truly pays it forward, these ATI GPUs offer exceptional memory bandwidth, outstanding board power and compute power, as well as a number of industry firsts, such as the first graphics card featuring GDDR5 memory.

Choose from our XFX Radeon™ HD 4870, 4850, 4830, 4650 or 4350 cards. All packed with state-of-the-art technology that creates an unparalleled gaming experience.

If you want performance that is truly bad-ass, mom was right. It's what's inside that counts. Check out our new line of Radeon™ HD-powered graphics cards today.

XFX is offering a diverse range of Radeon 4000 cards, with a mixture of bone stock as well as factory OC'ed XXX cards. The Radeon 4870 GPUs in particular appear to be based on ATI's reference board design while their 4850 512MB card sports a custom cooler but stock ATI reference speeds (the same applies for XFX's Radeon 4830).

For the past several months rumors have been swirling that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is fatally ill. Jobs has visibly lost a considerable amount of weight yet he has continued to deny that anything was wrong with his health -- until now. In a public statement issued on apple.com Jobs admits that a hormone imbalance appears to be the cause of his weight loss: "As many of you know, I have been losing weight throughout 2008. The reason has been a mystery to me and my doctors. A few weeks ago, I decided that getting to the root cause of this and reversing it needed to become my #1 priority. Fortunately, after further testing, my doctors think they have found the cause—a hormone imbalance that has been "robbing" me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy. Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis."

Jobs went on to state that he plans to continue his role as CEO while he recovers.

Netbooks seem to be all the rage these days. After ASUS kicked the netbook era off with their highly successful Eee line of PCs, a host of system vendors entered the fray, including industry heavyweights Dell and HP. With the segment growing, naturally more manufacturers are targeting the netbook. NVIDIA's going after the high-end netbook experience, envisioning a future with their GeForce MCPs are used to offload graphics duties from the CPU to the GPU, while Intel is the dominant CPU, with VIA hoping their Nano line of processors will secure more design wins in 2009.

Now Freescale Semiconductor is hopping into the fray. At CES this week the company will showcase their ARM-based system-on-a-chip i.MX51 processor. The CPU's specs are rather modest, with Freescale boasting a core clock ranging from 600MHz to 1GHz with a DDR/DDR2 memory controller supporting memory speeds as high as 200MHz. In terms of performance, the CPU is said to offer a Dhrystone MIPS score of 2100 with fully hardware-accelerated support for 720p video playback. "We see a huge opportunity in the netbook market as consumers demand more cost-effective and higher performing solutions," said Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of Freescale’s Networking and Multimedia Group. "Our solution for netbooks will enable OEMs to develop compelling products that feature cell phone-like battery life at extremely aggressive price points. We believe the combination of the i.MX515 processor and related enablement solutions will dramatically accelerate the evolution of this exciting new space." Unlike Atom, Freescale's CPU is targeted toward the ultra low-cost netbook space, with the system being used solely as a device to get on the Internet. Freescale mentions an 8.9" screen size and $199 price as common reference points, with battery life up to 8 hours.

Both News.com and eWeek have more on the new Freescale CPU, which is expected to enter mass production in Q2'09.

Leaked ForceWare 185 drivers provided by German site Hardware Infos hint at several upcoming GeForce GT2xx GPUs. According to ATI-Forum.de, GT212, GT215, GT216, and GT218 GPUs are all mentioned in the driver device list. All of these GPUs are expected to be built around TSMC's 40-nm manufacturing process, with recent rumors suggesting GT212 will replace today's 55-nm GT200b GPUs, while GT216 is expected to displace G96 and GT218 will replace G98 for the entry-level segment.

The unknown here is GT215. This is the first time GT215 has surfaced anywhere. GT214 is expected to be NVIDIA's G94 replacement, but no one outside of NVIDIA knows how GT215 relates to GT214. While previous rumors have suggested NVIDIA's first 40-nm GPUs could arrive during late Q2 or Q3'09, their appearance in a leaked ForceWare driver could suggest an even earlier arrival.

An upcoming book penned by the lead engineer in charge of Cell's development -- The Race for a New Game Machine -- details the behind the scenes work that went into developing the Cell CPU developed jointly between Sony, IBM, and Toshiba. According to the book's authors, their early dev work on Cell played a key role in the development of the Xbox 360's Xenon CPU. From the Wall Street Journal:

IBM provided the bulk of the manpower, with the design team headquartered at its Austin, Texas, offices. Sony and Toshiba sent teams of engineers to Austin to live and work with their partners in an effort to have the Cell ready for the Playstation 3's target launch, Christmas 2005. But a funny thing happened along the way: A new "partner" entered the picture. In late 2002, Microsoft approached IBM about making the chip for Microsoft's rival game console, the (as yet unnamed) Xbox 360. In 2003, IBM's Adam Bennett showed Microsoft specs for the still-in-development Cell core. Microsoft was interested and contracted with IBM for their own chip, to be built around the core that IBM was still building with Sony.

All three of the original partners had agreed that IBM would eventually sell the Cell to other clients. But it does not seem to have occurred to Sony that IBM would sell key parts of the Cell before it was complete and to Sony's primary videogame-console competitor. The result was that Sony's R&D money was spent creating a component for Microsoft to use against it.

Mr. Shippy and Ms. Phipps detail the resulting absurdity: IBM employees hiding their work from Sony and Toshiba engineers in the cubicles next to them; the Xbox chip being tested a few floors above the Cell design teams. Mr. Shippy says that he felt "contaminated" as he sat down with the Microsoft engineers, helping them to sketch out their architectural requirements with lessons learned from his earlier work on Playstation.

The book seems to be a fascinating tale.Amazon reader has an excerpt from the book's prologue, which provides a detailed account of the first time the lead engineer was told he'd be working with Microsoft: "Wouldn't we be competing against ourselves? Two-timing? Sleeping with the enemy?"
(Spotted on Engadget)

According to a report on Chinese website HKEPC, VIA plans to unleash their next-generation Nano 3000 series CPUs in 2H'09. The 3000 series CPUs will sport bus speeds as high as 1333MHz, with 1MB L2 cache, 64-bit instruction set, and SSE4. The site says the new CPUs will also feature architecture enhancements designed to improve integer and floating-point performance, with performance improving by 1-2X. A dual-core version will follow by the end of 2009.

Currently VIA's Nano has seen limited success in comparison to Intel Atom. VIA's biggest design win is HP's mini-note 2133 netbook.

As a result of the latest price cuts, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 260 and ATI's Radeon HD 4870 can both be found for prices starting as low as $200 at online retailer Newegg. Both of these GPUs pack a tremendous punch, and at that price you're getting an excellent value for the dollar. In our opinion these are the best bang-for-the-buck graphics upgrades on the market right now.

Gamers seem to agree. Thanks to the latest cuts graphics vendors have seen increased sales, allowing them to reduce their inventories.

In order to prevent netbooks from cannibalizing sales of notebook PCs, Intel restricts the platform to certain display sizes, memory amount, etc. The world's largest PC manufacturer hopes to change that though, as DigiTimes reports that HP is asking Intel to ease restrictions on the Atom platfom. In particular, HP is hoping to release an 11.6" mini-note PC in Q2'09 and a larger 13.3" model in June.

With economies worldwide in recession and consumers spending less, game publishers may be forced to reconsider their $60 price point for next-gen console games, or at least scale back the length of time games remain at $60. Fortune's Chris Morris cites two releases, Call of Duty: World at War, and Guitar Hero: World Tour, as two examples of recently released games who have already seen their price reduced $10:

Activision-Blizzard made the most notable move right before Christmas, lowering the price of "Call of Duty: World at War" from $59 to $49. While price cuts aren't unheard of during the holidays, the latest "Call of Duty" was a strong seller for the company and the action perked the ears of analysts.

"While the move may be part of an annual promotion, we believe a $10 discount on one of the industry’s top holiday releases highlights the risk of lower software pricing moving into the new year," wrote Colin Sebastian, senior vice president of equity research for Lazard Capital Markets, in a note to investors.

(Spotted on Shacknews/a>)

iSuppli recently conducted a parts breakdown of Sony's 2nd-generation 65-nm Playstation 3 console and found that the new units are 35% cheaper for Sony to produce when compared against the original 90-nm console ($690.23 originally versus $448.73 today). Besides sporting smaller chips, the new console is significantly less complex to manufacture, with the 65-nm version composed of 2,820 individual parts versus 4,048 originally. The new console also sports a cheaper power supply.

With further cost reductions iSuppli expects Sony to break even in 2009.

While it was initially scheduled to arrive with Phenom II, AMD's next-generation RD890 chipset was pushed back to the second half of 2009 in AMD roadmaps back in Sept.

Now Nordic Hardware is reporting that the chipset will arrive in late Q2'09 with improved OC'ing, a faster CPU-North Bridge link, and a new SB800 South Bridge offering more USB and SATA ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and more.

While AMD has demonstrated Phenom II CPUs OC'ing to clocks in excess of 4.0GHz, Fudzilla is reporting that the CPU will remain at 3.0GHz until at least Q3'09. The chip is launching next month at CES and is expected to be priced below $300.

ATI enthusiasts, your case has arrived. Lian Li has partnered with AMD to deliver the ultimate CrossFire case. Its all-aluminum chassis is very lightweight while its removable motherboard tray makes it a delight to work with. But all isn't perfect. Read our full impressions in today's review!

>> Click Here to read the article

Now through January 2nd, Valve is offering every game available on Steam on sale, with all titles seeing their price reduced by at least 10%, and some titles reduced by up to 75%. Here are a couple of noteworthy titles:

Call of Duty: World at War: $44.99
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare: $37.49
Fallout 3: $39.99
Far Cry 2: $37.49
Left 4 Dead: $37.49
Spore: $37.49
STALKER: Clear Sky: $17.49
Team Fortress 2: $9.99
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning: $37.49

While the first Windows 7 beta was expected to be released in January, leaked copies of Windows 7 beta 1 have popped up on torrent sites. The OS is expected to be released sometime next year.

The first reviews of beta 1 have popped up as well with WinSuperSite and ZD posting their first impressions of the OS. Paul Thurrott continues to show his concern for the new taskbar in Windows 7 while the ZDNet article has mostly positive impressions of the beta. Thurrott concludes by saying: "At this point in time, Windows 7 is an enigma. Many are excited about testing this next version of Windows, and I'm sure millions of people will do just that when Microsoft makes the Beta available publicly in January. But in use, Windows 7 is fairly unexceptional in the sense that, yes, it has some nice improvements over Windows Vista, but, no, none of them are particularly major changes."

With their transition to 55-nm now complete, NVIDIA is expected to introduce their first 40-nm GPUs next year. According to DigiTimes, NVIDIA is prepping a high-end GT212 GPU to replace GT200b, as well as 40-nm GT214 and GT216 GPUs to replace G94 and G96 in Q3'09.

IRVINE, Calif. -- December 23, 2008 -- Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®, its award-winning subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game, is now played by more than 11.5 million subscribers worldwide. This new high was reached following the November 13 release of the game’s second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King™.

Within its first 24 hours of availability, Wrath of the Lich King sold more than 2.8 million copies, making it the fastest-selling PC game of all time. In addition to winning a number of editor’s choice awards from major gaming publications, the expansion has now gone on to sell more than 4 million copies in its first month, setting a new record for monthly PC-game sales. Both sales records were previously held by World of Warcraft’s first expansion, The Burning Crusade®.*

“We’re pleased to welcome the new and returning players who have helped World of Warcraft reach these new milestones, and we appreciate the enthusiasm and support that the game’s global community has continued to show,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment®. “We look forward to providing all of them with an excellent entertainment experience for a long time to come.”

“Not only is Wrath of the Lich King still doing well, the base World of Warcraft game and the World of Warcraft Battle Chest® are performing better than last year,” said Bob McKenzie, senior vice president of merchandising at GameStop. “That type of traction is very impressive for a game that is going into its fifth holiday season and speaks to the enthusiastic player base Blizzard Entertainment products have.”

To keep pace with the continued growth of World of Warcraft as well as development on other Blizzard Entertainment games, the company is currently hiring for numerous open positions. More information on available career opportunities can be found at www.blizzard.com/jobs. More information about the latest World of Warcraft expansion is available at the official Wrath of the Lich King website: www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath.

Intel's X25-M line of solid state hard drives are tremendous performers but one area they lack is capacity: drives are currently limited to just 80GB. Today however the company announced that they've begun shipping their first 160GB X25-M drives in 2.5" form factor, with 1.8" drives shipping next month.

Price wasn't announced, but with the 80GB X25-M currently going for $500, don't expect the 160GB drive to come cheap. Performance and life expectancy of the 160GB drive is the same as the 80GB model.

Expreview believes AMD's upcoming RV740 GPU could be a competitor to today's RV770LE in performance. Packing 640 stream processors -- just like the 770LE -- and 900MHz GDDR5 (the same memory used on the Radeon 4870); depending on its core clock speed, the 40-nm RV740 could be quite the bargain when it launches in Q2'09.

Expreview also has shots of the first 55-nm GeForce GTX 260 card, which hit Japanese retailers over the weekend.

Looking for a high performance cooler for your Core i7, Core 2, or Phenom CPU? If so, you'll want to check out CoolIT's Domino cooler. Featuring liquid cooling this cooler delivered tremendous performance at an affordable price. See why it earned our Editor's Choice Award in this review!

>> Click Here to read the article

The RIAA's controversial strategy of suing users who pirate music appears to be mostly over -- the association will continue to go after the biggest pirates -- instead the RIAA plans to work with ISPs to "reduce the service" of the worst offenders. Exactly what that means is still murky, but apparently the RIAA will inform ISPs of offending IPs, the ISP will then warn their customer that they appear to be file sharing, giving them an opportunity to stop. If the user doesn't comply, more warnings will be sent before the user's service is eventually suspended, and then discontinued altogether.

The new strategy has its critics though. From News.com:

"This is very troubling," said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that advocates for Internet rights. "Creating lists of people who can't get Internet access based on allegations of breaking a law that hasn't been evaluated in a court of law. It's good that that the (RIAA) wants to stop suing individuals but they should haven't done it in the first place. I'd be especially concerned if the music labels can get you kicked off one ISP and then arrange to get you kicked off others, or the creation of blacklists. That's certainly what our fears have been about private legal enforcement regimen."

After landing EA and 2K Games last week, this week NVIDIA scored another game publisher for PhysX; THQ. "The NVIDIA PhysX technology delivers astonishing physics effects and will help us develop the most competitive and innovative products in the marketplace," said Roy Tessler, THQ’s senior vice president, production and worldwide studios. "With support for both the CPU and the GPU, PhysX technology allows us the creative freedom to design compelling environments and deliver truly immersive gaming experiences."

PhysX-accelerated Company of Heroes anyone? This leaves Activision-Blizzard as the only major publisher yet to sign on for PhysX. Getting Blizzard onboard may be a tough sell for NVIDIA though, as the company has already announced a formal relationship with AMD.

Development of 3D Realms shooter Duke Nukem Forever appears to be on track for its "when it's done" release date. The company included multiple DNF teaser screenshots inside the Xbox Live Arcade release of Duke Nukem 3D earlier this year, and a teaser trailer this time last year. Yesterday the company released a new holiday '08 wallpaper:

High resolution wallpapers can be found on the official 3D Realms website.

Not interested in NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce GTX 295? Perhaps Sapphire's announcement of the Radeon HD 4870 X2 Atomic is more your speed? The card is the world's first single-slot 4870 X2 board, with cooling provided for the graphics card and CPU:

Bringing the highest levels of graphics and gaming performance ever seen in the PC, SAPPHIRE Technology - the leading innovator of ATI-based graphics solutions - is now introducing the amazing single slot, liquid cooled ATOMIC Edition of its HD 4870 X2.

Fastest graphics ever!
Featuring a closed loop liquid cooled system, the SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC brings workstation class cooling to the PC, enabling faster clock speeds and quieter operation - and delivering the fastest graphics performance ever seen in a single slot solution. Both GPU’s in the SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC are clocked at 800MHz and each has 1GB of DDR5 memory clocked at 1000MHz, making a total of 2GB of memory on board. The streamlined single slot cooler assembly on the graphics card evenly cools both GPU’s and their associated memories - enabling this dual graphics system to run with a high level of stability even when delivering the highest levels of performance - currently the fastest PC graphics available.

The SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC is a limited edition product packaged in an aluminium case with a host of accessories aimed at the gaming enthusiast, including HDMI adapter, HDMI cable, CCL UV lamp and SAPPHIRE USB memory sticks, as well as driver and utilities software.

Closed loop liquid cooler
Liquid coolant in the SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC is circulated through the graphics card cooler and a chassis mounted radiator by a pump assembly which fixes onto the standard system CPU mountings (both AMD and Intel mounts supplied). The graphics cooler, CPU cooler and radiator are connected in a closed loop by high quality flexible yet tough Teflon tubing and attached to each module with interference fit barbed joints that are sealed for life. This arrangement is easy to install, and efficiently cools the system CPU even in enthusiast systems where it is common to raise CPU speeds. The pump and sealed joints have been independently tested to 50,000 hours MTBF.

Air flow through the radiator is provided by a low noise 120mm 7-blade fan which delivers up to 60 cfm at full speed and is illuminated by blue LEDs. The fan and radiator can be mounted on the rear panel or in the top of the PC enclosure. The fan can be connected directly to the system power supply, to a motherboard connector, or to a fan speed controller which allows user controlled fan speeds and even lower noise when the PC is used for less demanding applications. Note that this system has only one fan and one pump cooling both CPU and dual graphics, considerably reducing overall system noise.

Complete DUAL system graphics
The SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC comprises two complete HD 4870 graphics systems on a single PCI-Express card connected by an on-board PCI Express Gen 2 bridge chip. Each GPU has 800 stream processors and is equipped with 1MB of GDDR5 memory, making a total of 1600 stream processors and 2GB of memory on-board. Two Dual Link DVI outputs are provided as well as TV-Out. 3D applications such as games use both on-board GPU’s together in CrossFire mode to deliver a single accelerated output on the Primary display. The single board layout of the SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC with its single slot cooler brings the fastest solution yet available to performance users with only a single PCI-Express slot available.

Movie support
The SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC incorporates the latest ATI Avivo™ HD Technology for enhanced Video display and features a second generation built in UVD (Unified Video decoder) for the hardware accelerated decoding of Blu-ray™ and HD DVD content for both VC-1 and H.264 codecs, as well as mpeg files, reducing CPU loading to a minimum. The SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 is HDCP ready and is compatible with the latest High Definition displays. Like other HD 4800 series products it also supports HDMI over the DVI interface with the correct HDMI Adapter.

All SAPPHIRE's current graphics cards are Microsoft Windows Vista™ certified and supported by the ATI Catalyst™ suite of software, ensuring customers have easy and ongoing access to software updates for performance, stability and added features.

Find out more about SAPPHIRE ATOMIC at www.sapphireatomic.com

If you're a WoW addict that's been trying to break the habit today's move by Blizzard probably won't help you:

If you or a friend haven't yet experienced the new content Wrath of the Lich King has to offer, including the chance to face off with the dread Lich King Arthas himself, you can sign up now to play a 10-day free trial version of this latest expansion to World of Warcraft.

During your 10-day free trial, you'll explore the frozen wastes of Northrend, wield the necromantic powers of the new death knight Hero class, take control of massive siege vehicles in the new open-world PvP zone of Wintergrasp, and much more.

To participate, you’ll need full versions of World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade, as well as a character of at least level 55 (to create a death knight) or level 68 (to explore Northrend). More information on the 10-day free trial is available in our FAQ. Your journey awaits!

As any notebook gamer can tell you, getting regular graphics driver updates from the manufacturer can be a real problem. With some manufacturers you're lucky if you get quarterly driver updates. This is terrible for gamers, as new driver updates fix compatibility issues with games, as well as offering performance enhancements.

NVIDIA hopes to change that though. The company is now offering mobile graphics drivers directly on nvidia.com with support for most notebooks. The first drivers are compatible with GeForce 8M and 9M mobile GPUs, with support for PhysX and CUDA.

Links:
Windows XP
Windows XP x64
Windows Vista 32-bit
Windows Vista 64-bit

Packing two 55-nm GT200b GPUs and nearly 1.8GB of memory, NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 295 is designed to unseat the Radeon 4870 X2 as the world’s fastest graphics card. But does the card succeed in its mission? Join us as we take an early look at a preproduction card!

>> Click Here to read the article

The 1.3 patch for Crysis Wars has just been released. The new patch includes a holiday map pack, which offers two new maps: the power struggle map Frost, and a new team instant action map Savanna.

Links:
Atomic Gamer
Filefront
Fileplanet
Gamer's Hell
MyCrysis
Worthdownloading

In addition to the new patch, EA and Crytek have also announced another holiday bonus -- 10 days of free online gaming. "Starting today, gamers can take advantage of this great offer by registering online at www.mycrysis.com and by downloading Crysis Wars. After registration, players will receive a unique key generated on the site that will be saved to their profile, allowing them to play on all online multiplayer servers from Friday, December 19th at 9:00 AM PT to December 28th at 11:59 PM PT."

Set in the Pacific and Russian theaters of WW2, Call of Duty: World at War is built on the CoD 4 engine. But is it as good as Modern Warfare and previous titles in the CoD series? Find out in our review!

>> Click Here to read the article