TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

Patriot has announced the release of its PS-100 solid-state drive series. The new lineup is the latest in the company's "cache-based" SSDs, and targets budget-minded consumers seeking the performance and reliability of solid-state technology without having to spend big.

The PS-100 series drives conform to the 2.5" form factor, feature 64MB of cache, have a MTBF of 2.5 million hours, and consume about 5.3W of power during operation and .5W when in standby, which should prove useful in portable systems. The drives deliver sequential read speeds of up to 210MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 150MB/s. Unfortunately, there are no details about the NAND chips or controller.

The PS-100 series will consist of four drives, including 32GB, 64GB, 128GB and 256GB models. According to Patriot's director of marketing, Eric Ackerson, the drives will be aggressively priced and should arrive just in time for the holidays, but no specifics were given in the press release.

According to Fudzilla, some new information has emerged about Intel's 2011 Atom platform, which will be a successor to the imminent Pine Trail platform. Codenamed Cedar Trail, the 2011 refresh should bring the first Atom processors built with a 32nm fabrication. Behind the scenes, Fudzilla says those 32nm chips are codenamed Cedarview.

Details are scant, but it is expected that shrunken Atom CPUs will feature an integrated graphics core, much like Intel's other 32nm parts. Cedarview is said to support DirectX 10-level 3D, HD video decoding, and should bring dual digital outputs that recognize DisplayPort and HDMI as well as older standards.

Additionally, Cedarview should house a single-channel memory controller with support for 1066MHz DDR3 RAM. There are also other tidbits that really go without saying, like the potential for decreased temperatures and power consumption.

Looking ahead even further, Cedar Trail will be replaced by early 2013 when Intel introduces its 22nm chips.

There just seem to be no stopping OCZ Technology when it comes to solid-state drive development. The company recently expanded their already impressive lineup with the 3.5-inch Colossus series, and touted a new and improved generation of drives based on controllers from startup SandForce. Now they are looking to introduce the first external SSD to hook up via the super speedy USB 3.0 interconnect.


No details regarding performance or storage capacity are available for the device yet, but the renders above show a micro-USB connector, as well as 8 NAND memory modules. Additionally we know that the SandForce controllers on upcoming drives from OCZ support up to 260MB/s sequential read and write speeds. The company is said to be crowdsourcing a name for the device before its launch, which is expected to take place at CES 2010 in Las Vegas in early January. Feel free to leave your suggestion in the comments.

The expected took place this week after ATI launched their latest dual-GPU graphics card. In our review we praised the card for its performance and relative efficiency, however we were quick to conclude that its immediate success would primarily depend on availability. Other cards in the Radeon 5000 series have been equally well received, however shortage issues have kept them out of enthusiasts' hands for the most part.

An initial report from Fudzilla indicates that a 'decent' amount of Radeon HD 5970 card inventory was pushed to retailers this week, but due to pre-orders and general high interest in the product, the available cards disappeared in a matter of hours.

There are scattered reports about retailers carrying some inventory, but those are quick to go. In other words, if you want to have a Radeon HD 5970 in your hands soon you will have to hunt for it. Taking a quick look at Newegg's stock, you can see 5 different flavors of the HD 5970, all of them unavailable for ordering – despite price tags north of $600.

Dell quietly rolled out the Studio 17 Touch today, making it the company's first multitouch laptop. The system kicks off at $800 and sports a 17.3" (1600x900) LED display, a 2.1GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core T4300, 4GB of DDR3 1066MHz RAM, an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570, a 320GB 7200RPM HDD, a dual-layer DVD burner, 802.11g connectivity, a six-cell battery, and Windows 7 Home Premium x64.


If desired, the Studio 17 Touch can also be configured with a full 1080p display, an Intel Core i7 720QM or 820QM CPU, 8GB of DDR3 1333MHz RAM, a 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650, dual 500GB HDDs, a Blu-ray burner, 802.11n, a Soundblaster X-Fi audio card, a nine-cell battery, and Windows 7 Ultimate x64. Naturally, those additions come at a premium, and maxing out the specifications brings the price up to about $2,900.

Systems come with a minimum one-year warranty, and orders placed now will ship in early December -- just in time for the holidays.

According to leaked information cited by Fudzilla, Intel plans to introduce its first Arrandale-based mobile Celeron processor in the second quarter of next year. It is reported that the new Celeron P4500 will be built on a 32nm process, feature a dual-core design with a clock frequency of 1.86GHz, and 2MB of L2 cache. If the rumors hold true, Turbo Boost and Hyperthreading will be disabled to keep the cost down.

There are few other details, though Fudzilla speculates that one last 45nm Celeron (the T3300) will precede the Celeron P4500. The Penryn-based T3300 will contain two cores that operate at 2.0GHz, 1MB of cache, and an 800MHz FSB. This chip should launch on January 17 for $86, which could be an indication of a general price range for the 32nm P4500.

Lenovo today became the latest in a growing list of laptop vendors slotting an ultrathin product between their low-cost netbook and conventional notebook lines. Pitched as an extension of their popular X-Series, the new ThinkPad X100e is built on AMD's Athlon Neo platform and should retail for under $500.


According to leaked information obtained by NetbookNews, the 3-pound X100e will have an 11.6-inch, 1366 x 768 resolution display along with up to 4GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive. The unit will be available with a choice of a 3-cell or a 6-cell battery pack, with the latter rated for over 5 hours of use thanks to the system's ultra low voltage MV40 processor (1.6GHz, 15W TDP) and RS780 chipset. Other specs include 3 USB 2.0 ports, VGA out, a 4 in 1 card reader, built in 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and optional Bluetooth and UMTS.

Unfortunately, an exact release date isn't yet known, but previous rumors suggest it will launch at CES in January.

MSI has launched its new flagship touchscreen all-in-one PC, the Wind Top AE2220. Aimed at families, the system features a 21.5" 1920x1080 multitouch display, the choice between an Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 (2.2GHz) or a Pentium dual-core T4300 (2.1GHz) CPU, 4GB of DDR2 800MHz RAM, an Nvidia ION chipset, and a 500GB HDD.

The Wind Top AE2220 also offers the choice between a dual-layer DVD drive and a Blu-ray drive. Other specifications include 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, a 1.3 megapixel webcam, VGA, HDMI, eSATA, Ethernet, SPDIF, and six USB ports, as well as a six-in-one card reader, two Mini PCIe slots, an IR receiver with MCE remote control, support for a VESA wall mount, and an optional TV Tuner.


MSI's new all-in-one complies with the latest Energy Star 5.0 standards, and consumes up to 35% less than conventional PCs. The Wind Top AE2220 is available in a variety of configurations, and pricing starts at $750.

Keeping up with its monthly release schedule, AMD has shipped a new set of Catalyst drivers for Radeon graphics card owners running Windows 7, Vista, and XP in 32-bit and 64-bit variants. Among the new features in version 9.11 are support for GPU accelerated H.264 videos using Adobe's latest Flash Player 10.1 Beta release, as well as improved support for their video converter tool.

Radeon HD 5800, HD 5700, and HD 4000 series owners should be able to take advantage of the hardware acceleration features in Flash. The new Catalyst drivers also enable support for the company's much anticipated Radeon HD 5970 graphics card, which was launched earlier today. No performance gains were listed in this month's release, although bugs have been squashed for Age of Conan, Anno 1404, Battlefield 2142, Crysis Warhead, Supreme Commander, Tom Clancy's HAWX, Wolfenstein, and World in Conflict.

As usual, you can read the full release notes here (PDF), and grab your copy of Catalyst 9.11 below:

Download: Windows XP | XP/2003 64-bit | Windows Vista | Vista 64-bit | Windows 7 32-bit | Windows 7 64-bit

AMD officially lifted the curtain today on its much-anticipated Radeon HD 5970, a dual-GPU solution which as of today has become the world's fastest graphics card on the market. Packed with some pretty impressive specs, the new card outclasses the competition in every benchmark thrown at it with ease, and puts AMD at the head of the high-end graphics segment for the first time in a long while.


Not one to just sit on the sidelines and let its rival get all the glory, Nvidia is hoping to build some anticipation for its upcoming DirectX 11 lineup by showing a picture of what appears to be the first working sample of a 40nm, GF100 desktop card based on the Fermi architecture. Posted on the company's Facebook account, the picture shows a black GeForce-branded card installed on an ASUS Rampage II Extreme LGA 1366 motherboard, running Uningine's Heaven DirectX 11 benchmark on a Dell 24-inch monitor.

Details are scarce, as even the corner showing framerates has been cut off, but from what little we can see the card covers two slots and packs an 8-pin plus 6-pin PCI Express connector, meaning it can suck up to 300W and will likely provide healthy overclocking headroom. Expectations are running quite high for Nvidia's answer to the Radeon HD 5800 series, although clock and overall performance numbers remain unknown.

OCZ expanded their lineup of high-capacity SSDs today, officially launching the 3.5" Colossus line. Starting at 128GB, the Colossus also offers sizes of 256GB, 512GB and a massive 1TB of space. The drives feature a maximum read and write speed of 260MB/s, a sustained write speed of 220MB/s, and a max IOPS (4k file size, random write) of 14,000.

The drive makes use of MLC flash, which is undoubtedly in the interest of cost. This compares to the company's Vertex SSD series, which includes drives that use the more expensive (but more reliable) SLC flash. OCZ pitches it as a solution for desktops and workstations that require a performance boost.

For the most part, SSDs have only come in 2.5" or 1.8" varieties. That has made a lot of sense for a while, as the biggest early market for SSDs is laptops, where those sizes are standard. As more people want to use SSDs for desktop use as well, it makes sense for manufacturers to take advantage of the more common 3.5” bays inside desktop chassis.


Whether or not that the 3.5" size has contributed to the Colossus capacity and performance specs isn't mentioned. One other interesting note is OCZ's mention of wear-leveling. OCZ made it a point to indicate the actual available space on the drive will be less than what is on the label, due to upwards of 5% of the drive capacity being reserved for wear-leveling purposes.

If these drives sound awesome, it's because they are -- and OCZ knows it. While the 3.5" form factor might make it easier on desktop users, the price probably won't. The 1TB Colossus was supposed to ship last month for $2,500, and 250GB drive is listed on Amazon for $1,122.99.

Nvidia has launched a new low-cost ($100 or less) DX10.1 video card, the GeForce GT240. Built on a 40nm process and featuring a 550MHz GPU, 1GHz GDDR3 or 1.7GHz GDDR5 and up to 1GB of memory, it has all the basic workings of a robust card. It's also DirectX 10.1 compliant, has 96 CUDA cores, 8 ROP units and a max TDP of 70W.

Though the card does have a nice selling price, there are some obvious drawbacks. It won't stand up to a lot of other sub-$100 video cards from previous generations, and will definitely fall short of mid-level cards from this generation. No doubt, Nvidia's goal with the GT240 was to get an entry-level DX10.1 card out the door, hoping to fill any gaps in their 2xx series lineup that AMD might target.


Nvidia may be putting this card directly up against the HD 4650, a notable entry from AMD that typically falls well below the $100 mark. Is Nvidia feeling pressure from AMD, or was this just a casual response to get more hardware in the low-cost arena? We will have a full review on the GeForce GT240 soon.

CyberPower has announced that its Gamer Xtreme desktop series now offer USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s connectivity as standard features. Customers can configure and order a Gamer Xtreme system with the next-generation interfaces today, with prices from about $750.

There are about eight stock Gamer Xtreme systems, all of which seem to be built around Intel's P55 chipset and Core i5/i7 processors. To select a system, head to CybePower's website, hover over "Intel Desktop" at the top, and then hover over "Core i5-i7 P55 PCs". After you select a machine, simply choose a motherboard with the next-gen parts (either the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 or GA-P55A-UD4P).


Systems are highly customizable, and with the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 I was able to configure a respectable PC for under $930. The build included an Intel Core i5 750, 4GB of DDR3 1333MHz RAM, a Radeon HD 5750, and a 500GB HDD -- not a bad deal if don't have the time to slap your own PC together.

Asus has introduced a new CULV-based ultraportable system with a dedicated graphics chip. The company's UL30Vt has a 13.3" 1366x768 display, the choice of an Intel Celeron SU2300/743 or Core 2 Duo SU7300, Intel's GS45 Express Chipset (which contains a X4500MHD graphics chip), a 512MB Nvidia G210M, up to 4GB of DDR3 1066MHz RAM, a selection of 5400RPM HDDs ranging from 250GB to 500GB, and Windows 7.


Additional features include a four-in-one card reader, a 0.3 mega-pixel web cam, 802.11 Wi-Fi, optional Bluetooth v2.1+EDR, VGA and HDMI-out, three USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet, as well as headphone and microphone jacks. Battery options include a four and eight-cell units, and when equipped with the former, Asus' UL30Vt weighs approximately 1.50kg (about 3.30lbs). Dimensions in centimeters are 32.2(W) x 23.3(D) x 1.48-2.46(H).

There is no confirmed release date or cost, but Engadget speculates that some configurations will share a similar street price with the UL30, which runs $750.

An FCC filing has revealed that a new laptop from Lenovo will contain a 2GHz Intel chip believed to be the quad-core Core i7 920XM. The notebook will also ship with a Wacom Digitizer, which probably means it will be of the ThinkPad W series -- and fittingly, the new laptop's model is "W701". Other features include a 17" 1920x1200 Samsung display and a 320GB Fujitsu HDD. Assuming all of this correct, you can expect a hefty launch price, as the current ThinkPad W700 starts at $2,149.


In somewhat related news, yesterday details emerged from another FCC filing of an upcoming buttonless, Pine Trail-packing Lenovo netbook. The system reportedly features a 10.1" 1024x600 display, a 1.66GHz Pineview processor, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, a 250GB 5400RPM Seagate storage drive, a chiclet-style keyboard, and a touchpad sans buttons. The trackpad is speculated to be Synaptics' ClickPad, but nothing is official of course.

When purchasing a laptop, it's important to consider how reliable the hardware is going to be, as they are more difficult and expensive to repair than a desktop PC. If the hardware turns belly up, most people have to jump through warranty hoops or are faced with high repair costs. One warranty company sought to find out just who produces the most reliable laptops, and after sampling a pool of 30,000 units, the outfit came to some interesting conclusions.

The company found that Asus and Toshiba have the least percentage of defects in their hardware as compared to the rest of the industry, both having less than a 10% rate of failure after 2 years. The worst, surprisingly, was HP, who had upwards of a 16% failure rate. Sony and Apple were ranked 3rd and 4th, with Dell landing right in the middle. Projected failures were also considered, with HP having a projected failure rate of more than 1 in 4 laptops.

They also broke down the study by the types of the laptops involved. It seems netbooks get the worst of it, having the highest failure rates of all. Mid-grade laptops fell in the middle, and "premium" laptops had the lowest failure rates. It seems you get what you pay for in the world of notebooks.

User failures were taken out of the equation for calculating failure rates, but overall represented a third of total failures. All things considered, including user-induced failures, laptops don't have very long shelf lives: Nearly 1 in 3 are doomed to suffer some form of failure within three years.

AMD may not be leading the desktop CPU market, but Top500 has accredited the company with powering the world's "supreme supercomputer." Oak Ridge National Laboratory's supercomputer, dubbed "Jaguar," has been upgraded with new six-core AMD Opteron processors and now holds the top spot among the top five supercomputers worldwide.

The Jaguar system was previously outfitted with quad-core AMD Opteron processors -- and many others like it use AMD's chips. Four of the top five supercomputers are powered by AMD CPUs, including the former top dog, IBM's Roadrunner, which now sits at number two. In all, Jaguar contains 224,162 compute cores (up from 129,600), 300TB of memory, and 10PB of hard drive space.


The system boasts a theoretical peak performance of 2.3 PFLOPS, and a speed of 1.759 PFLOPS on the Linpack benchmark -- which topped the Roadrunner's 1.04 PFLOPS. Head over to Top500's website to see how Jaguar stacks up to many other supercomputers.

Intel's 32nm Clarkdale processors are just around the corner, with an expected launch date in early 2010. Major motherboard manufacturers are hustling to release Clarkdale related products, and pictures of a new motherboard from Asus have leaked.

The Asus P7H57D-V EVO houses an LGA 1156 CPU socket, an H57 chipset, and various display outputs, including VGA, DVI and HDMI. Intel's Clarkdale CPUs have a built-in graphics chip that sits on the same die as the processor's dual-channel DDR3 memory controller (a separate piece of silicon from the CPU cores).


Judging from the pictures, Asus' P7H57D-V EVO has four DDR3 DIMM slots, two PCIe x16 slots (and presumably SLI and/or CrossFireX support), three PCIe x1 slots, two PCI slots, six SATA 3.0Gb/s ports, and two SATA 6.0Gb/s ports. Among the connectors on the rear I/O panel are a PS/2 combo port, an assortment of USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports, an optical S/PDIF port, eSATA, IEEE 1394a, Gigabit Ethernet, and various sound jacks.

Legit Reviews offers a thorough rundown of Asus' P7H57D-V EVO if you're interested in the finer details.

Nvidia has unveiled new Fermi-based Tesla products, the Tesla 20 series GPUs, which are aimed at the high-performance computing market. Designed for parallel computing, the company said its Tesla 20 series graphics chips reduce the cost of computing by delivering the same performance of a traditional CPU-based cluster at one-tenth the expense and one-twentieth the power consumption.

Nvidia's Tesla 20 series chips are reportedly equipped with features that speed up many applications, such as ray tracing, 3D cloud computing, video encoding, database search, data analytics, computer-aided engineering, and virus scanning. The new GPUs will also combine various parallel computing features that have never been incorporated on a single device before.

Among the features is support for the next-generation IEEE 754-2008 double precision floating point standard, ECC, multi-level cache hierarchy with L1 and L2 caches, and support for the C++ programming language. The Tesla 20 series also supports as much as one terabyte of memory, concurrent kernel execution, fast context switching, 10x faster atomic instructions, 64-bit virtual address space, system calls, and recursive functions.


Nvidia's new graphics lineup will consist of the Tesla C2050 and C2070, as well as the S2050 and S2070. The first two will be workstation-friendly single GPU PCIe 2.0 cards with up to 3GB and 6GB of GDDR5 memory and performance in the range of 520GFlops to 630GFlops. The latter two will be aimed at datacenters, boasting four GPUs, up to 12GB and 24GB of GDDR5 memory, and a performance of 2.1TFlops to 2.5TFlops.

In order of mention, the Tesla 20 series GPUs will cost $2,499, $3,999, $12,995, and $18,995 -- all will arrive in the second quarter of 2010.

Kingston has introduced a new HyperX memory kit for Intel's LGA1366 Core i7 platform. The kit consists of six 2GB modules that run at 1600MHz and 1.65 with a timing of 9-9-9-27. The modules support Extreme Memory Profiles (XMP), which should make things easy on you when it comes time to tweak some settings. Having been designed for use with Intel's Core i7 9xx processors, Kingston's new RAM offering is mostly aimed at system builders and "heavy-users".

Kingston says enthusiasts who deploy 12GB of Kingston HyperX triple-channel memory will find performance increases in such tasks as video encoding, processing large photo files, graphical rendering, and demanding PC games, as well as overall system performance when using a 64-bit OS -- though, I gather that most wouldn't notice a dramatic real-world difference with typical use.

Kingston's new 12GB HyperX RAM kit will launch with an MSRP of £262.33 (about $440), and will ship with a lifetime warranty as well as free 24/7 technical support.

Having conquered the motherboard market years ago, Taiwan-based manufacturer Asus no longer sees PC peripherals as its only way to go for business growth. You may recall it was Asus who boosted netbooks to massive popularity with the introduction of the Eee PC. Now they are looking for more.

Earlier in the year Asus stated they were laying out a plan to become the third largest notebook maker in the global market by 2011. Most recently Asus' chairman, Jonney Shih was quoted in saying they are also considering an acquisition to jumpstart their current position. According to a report from the Commercial Times (via Digitimes), Shih disclosed that they are already in talks with Toshiba for a potential takeover or merger with their PC division.

Toshiba is currently the fifth largest notebook manufacturer worldwide, with HP, Acer, Dell and Lenovo taking the remaining top four spots. You may recall Lenovo was a little known company outside of China until they acquired IBM's PC division in 2005.

Asus plans to launch a new 17" 3D notebook in the first quarter of next year, according to DigiTimes. Asus' G72GX will feature an Intel Core i7 processor, an Nvidia GeForce GTM 160M graphics chip, 4GB of RAM, and dual 320GB hard drives. The company is also planning to release a 15.6" 3D notebook, the G51J3D, at some point this month. Apart from the smaller display, the G51J3D's core specifications will be on par with its larger counterpart.

Sources suggested that Asus' laptops would be priced a bit higher than competing units, like Acer's $780 Aspire 5738DG 3D notebooks. The sources said this is mostly because Asus employs more advanced active shutter glasses for the 3D effect on its notebooks. Both HP and Dell are expected to introduce similar products in the near future, and many others will certainly follow suit as the popularity of 3D technology kicks off.

For the first time in years, AMD expects its microprocessor business to turn a profit in 2010. In a meeting with analysts and investors, the company said it is working hard to reduce debt -- which is currently around $3.2 billion. While still down, AMD posted a smaller-than-expected loss in the third quarter, which may be a sign of better things to come.

CEO Dirk Meyer is convinced the company will return to producing a handsome cash flow, saying that he could "already hear the cash registers starting to ring." AMD's strategy will be consumer-oriented, with a focus on mid-range desktops and notebooks -- and rightfully so. Out of the 300 million PCs the company expects to be sold next year, some 180 million will go to consumers.

While the company is generally positioned as an underdog, it has beat Nvidia to market with DirectX 11-ready desktop graphics cards, and it won't stop there. According to AMD's Rick Bergman, the company is pushing to release DirectX 11-enabled discrete mobile graphics chips in the first quarter of 2010. If true, AMD will beat Nvidia to market for the second time -- though, it is a limited edge with few DirectX 11-capable applications available.

AMD has also gone on the record, promising to launch a Fusion product in 2011, which is the company's venture to combine GPU and CPU cores on a single die. With AMD's two new x86 architectures (not to mention its Phenom II refresh, new desktop platforms, or its various upcoming notebook processors and platforms), its tight supply of Radeon HD 5000 cards, its Eyefinity project, and its Vision marketing campaign, things must be chaotic in Sunnyvale.

Matrox has announced the world's first single-slot PCIe x16 graphics card with support for up to eight monitors. With 2GB of dedicated memory, the Matrox M9188 can drive up to eight DisplayPort monitors at 2560x1600 or DVI Single-Link at 1920x1200 per display from a single computer. The card is compatible with 32 and 64-bit iterations of Windows XP, Vista, 7, Server 2003 and 2008, as well as Linux.

If eight monitors aren't enough, you can stuff another M9188 into the same system (provided there is a second PCIe x16 slot) and attach up to 16 displays. The card offers various desktop management features, such as independent or stretched desktop modes. Matrox designed the M9188 with energy, transportation, process control, financial trading, and other mission-critical environments in mind.


The company plans to start shipping the M9188 at some point during this quarter, and it's priced at $1,995 -- a fraction of what eight large-screen PC monitors would cost, mind you.

G.Skill claims to have introduced the world's fastest DRAM modules, rated at DDR3 2200MHz with a latency of 7-10-10-28. Running at 1.65V, G.Skill designed the 4GB (2x2GB) kit for Intel's Lynnfield processors, and is targeting enthusiasts and gamers. The modules are furnished with the company's new PI series heatspreader, and will ship with G.Skill's Turbulence memory fan. The 2200 CL7 PI RAM series will be available through G.Skill's partners at an "affordable" price.


In other G.Skill news, the company has reportedly updated its SSD offering with the new Falcon II line based on the Indilinx ECO controller, 34nm NAND chips and with 64MB of cache. The Falcon II will ship soon in 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB capacities. The 64GB iteration will have maximum read and write speeds of 220MB/s and 110MB/s, while the 128GB and 256GB units will boast rates of 220MB/s and 150MB/s.


All of the drives are packaged in a 2.5" form factor, use SATA II, have support for Windows 7 TRIM, and will be backed by a two-year warranty. G.Skill has yet to disclose any prices.

Intel plans to release three new 32nm dual-core processors for ultrathin notebooks in the first half of next year, according to anonymous sources cited by DigiTimes. The initial batch of Arrandale processors will reportedly consist of the 1.06GHz Intel Core i5 520UM, the 1.06GHz Core i7 620UM and the 1.2GHz Core i7 640UM, with bulk-buying prices of $241, $278, and $305 respectively.

Similar to the upcoming Clarkdale chips on the desktop, Arrandale is based on the 32nm Westmere shrink of the Nehalem microarchitecture and has integrated graphics as well as PCI Express and DMI links. The new chips should join Intel's Pine Trail netbook platform sometime in the first half of next year. For the most part, this seems to be consistent with the leaked roadmap information we posted a few months ago.

Platform pricing is expected to remain at around $500 for netbooks, while ultrathin notebooks featuring the new Arrandale processors should hit the $600 to $800 range.

Though AMD has taken a beating from Intel in the past few years, the Sunnyvale-based chipmaker has trekked onward. While people speculate about AMD "losing" in the CPU market, the company is still pouring a lot of resources into research and development -- and we're about to see the fruits of their labor. At a financial analyst day event, AMD unveiled a roadmap that details two new processor architectures, dubbed "Bobcat" and "Bulldozer".

Both architectures are x86-based, but represent significant changes in how AMD is designing processors. Bobcat is AMD's new mobile platform and Bulldozer is focused on servers, each branch away from traditional designs to cater to their specific markets. Bobcat, for instance, will feature extremely low power requirements, with thermal envelopes under a single watt.

Without revealing too much information, the company specified that performance was not sacrificed as it often must be on most ultra-low power processors, claiming it is within 90% of modern mobile processor range. Clock speeds, pipeline depth, specific instruction support and other details were left out -- aside from mentioning that they will fully support SSE1, 2 and 3.

Continue reading after the jump.

Just as many anticipated, social media startup Boxee has announced a deal with an undisclosed "hardware partner" to sell a standalone device equipped with its media center software. The so-called Boxee box will be presented in mockup form this December 7th and will reportedly be only the first of several devices we'll see running Boxee in 2010.

The move will put them in competition with a slew of devices from Apple, Roku, and other video providers. For those not familiar with Boxee, it's a free cross-platform media center program that combines Internet media with personal content, and includes features such as playlists, audio visualizations, slideshows, social networking and an expanding array of third-party plug-ins.

Currently under development, alpha releases are available for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux as well as the Apple TV. The first beta version will also arrive on December 7 at an event at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, bringing an all new user interface, queue, navigation and search features.

Developed by Apple and first introduced in 2008, Mini DisplayPort (mDP) has appeared in recent iterations of the MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac Mini, Mac Pro, as well as the 24" Apple Cinema Display. As of yesterday, the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) has adopted mDP as an official standard.

Mini DisplayPort is more suitable for compact devices, and can be used as an alternative to the standard DisplayPort, DVI or VGA connectors. It supports the full range of power, signaling, and protocol capabilities defined in the standard DisplayPort v1.1a.

VESA is finalizing DisplayPort 1.2, which includes mDP and doubles available bandwidth to 21.6Gb/s. The additional bandwidth allows for new capabilities, such as support for multiple displays via a single output connector, higher resolutions, refresh rates and color depths, as well as high performance 3D displays.

Intel plans to release a $120 40GB SSD, which the company hopes will be adopted as a boot drive in servers, or potentially used in low-end laptops and netbooks. Intel is also working a new line of enterprise-class SSDs including models that are 50GB, 100GB, and 200GB in capacity. The new series of SSDs would be a substantial boost from the company's currently available enterprise drives -- the X25-E -- which only ships in 32GB and 64GB capacities.

Behind the scenes, Intel's 40GB X25-V is known as the Glen Brook drive. In order to meet its $120 price-point, the drive will use MLC NAND flash memory. It's currently shipping to system makers in sample volumes and should be widely available in January.

Meanwhile, Intel's less cost-prohibited enterprise SSD series will use SLC NAND flash chips, and should bring a 40% price cut (or about $6.50 per gigabyte), over the X25-E series. For instance, the upcoming 50GB enterprise drive is planned to have an MSRP of $350. Samples of the new lineup should ship in April and are expected to be available in July, 2010.