This piece of news is pretty big. If you purchase an Intel X58 based motherboard for your Intel Core i7 you will be able to use both AMD/ATI’s Crossfire and Nvidia’s SLI capabilities with the appropriate video cards. Intel chipsets tend to be the best of the bunch and with this solution, you aren’t forced to make that decision of red team or green team; now you can choose the blue team and get both!

There are many hoops for motherboard manufacturers to jump through and since they are part of the Intel “X” chipsets, they will be expensive motherboards, but this is the step in the right direction.

I wonder how long it will be until we see this capability trickle down to the more mainstream chipset offerings.

So after seeing how competitive the Radeon HD 4870 was, I bet it was getting awfully difficult for NVIDIA to price their new video cards at $649.99 USD and $399.99 USD respectively. NVIDIA’s only course of action was a hefty price cut. NVIDIA cut the Geforce GTX 280’s price down to $499.99 USD and the 260’s price to around $329.99 USD.

In other news, Intel is apparently planning to cut prices on its processors as well. The details of the cuts are non-existent, but it’s something to keep in mind if you’re shopping for a new PC in the near future.

Nvidia’s Geforce 9800 GTX+ for $229 is no match for the overall buffness of the ATI Radeon HD 4850. Not really surprising since Nvidia didn’t even believe the speed bump warranted a full numerical upgrade.

Interestingly, AnandTech pointed out how the Geforce 8800 GTS 512MB and the Geforce 8800 GT are at a disadvantage when it comes to pricing. They will need to either lower price or axe one of the cards from retail shelves.

Since Nvidia has no real answer to the AMD Radeon HD 4850, I guess we have new mid-range king.

The Geforce 8800 GT is a fine card at approximately $199 USD, but that’s months ago and we’re now looking ahead to the new “hotness”. The new AMD Radeon HD 4850 looks to be the next great card for that mid-range price point. The Tech Report has a great first look with AMD’s new card and I am impressed. It outpaces the newly priced Geforce 9800 GTX.

It’s a single slot and as much as I enjoy single slot cards, the high temperatures worry me a bit. Regardless, it looks like it’s our new mid-range king. Nvidia is trying to fight back with a overclocked and refined Geforce 9800 GTX+, but until we have numbers from that card and a competitive price: they’ve got nothing.

It’s huge. 1.4 billion transistors type of huge. There’s a lot of computing power in this video card and coming in at $650 USD, it better be the fastest video card in the world. Unfortunately, this is where it falls short; it isn’t the fastest video card in the world. It’s the fastest single GPU video card, but the Geforce 9800 GX2 which is available for cheaper still manages to outperform it. It’s a dual-GPU card and it probably will cause a few headaches with driver profiles, but the bottom line remains the same: it is still faster.

The performance increase is a little disappointing, however I’m disappointed by the pricing most of all. The GTX 280 will set you back the most at the mentioned $650 USD. The GTX 260 is cheaper at $400 USD, but it’s still outperformed by two Geforce 8800 GT video cards in SLI which can be picked for less than $400 USD.

Two reviews from two great sites for those that are interested in reading more and seeing benchmarks:
AnandTech
Tech Report

How is it that this old engine still manages to creep up onto frontpages? It’s nearly ten years old, but it’s still a cherished piece of benchmarking software — stressing web browsers and mobile devices.

Games Radar snipped a piece of PC Gamer’s interview with John Carmack and his upcoming project, Quake Live. Not a lot of new details, though. It’s more like reassurrance. At least they provided some screenshots. That’s Quake III for sure.

As an actual benchmark, NVIDIA decided to showcase their new “smaller than a dime” NVIDIA Tegra 600 GPU running Quake III as well. Check it out. That’s impressive. Imagine an iPhone 2 or any other handheld with that chip?

I remember VIA as the “other” chipset vendor. You know, the cheaper alternative with picky PCI clockrate issues. That was a long time ago. Nowadays, they’re in the business of low cost and low power chipsets and processors. Starting Thursday VIA will be partnering up with NVIDIA in order to take on Intel and its Atom platform . All the best to the soon-to-be newly weds!

Speaking of Atom, the MSI Wind finally launched. It comes in two configurations:

$399 - Linux and 512 MB DDR2
$499 - Windows XP Home 1 GB DDR2 (2 GB maximum)

Both come with the usual array of features which you can discover for yourself on MSI’s website.

I’ve been keeping my eye out for a laptop like this - especially ones configured with Intel Atom processors. Between this and the ASUS Eee PC 1000, I’ve got plenty to think about. Which is the better one? I don’t know yet.

Ludicrous. A 140W CPU? Obviously this is catered towards the enthusiast, but one hundred forty watts for a CPU?! That’s just insane. ASUS doesn’t seem to think so since they have plans to accomodate such monstrosities.

There’s focus smaller and less power hungry processors though with news of an Intel Atom dual-core processor running at 1.6 GHz and consuming a measily 8 watts of power. That’s impressive. So impressive that NVIDIA wants to get into the small CPU space and make their own processors.

It looks like AMD and NVIDIA are gearing up for a GPU war next month. That is if rumors are to be believed.

Here’s the rumored break down for AMD:

• Radeon HD 4850 - Hard Launch on June 18th or June 16th for about $229
• Radeon HD 4870 - Soft launch on June 25th for about $349
• Radeon HD 4870 X2 - Q3 2008 for about $529 - $549

NVIDIA’s breakdown which includes the GT200 based cards (formerly known as GeForce 9900 series):

• GeForce GTX 200 - Week of June 16th
• GeForce GTX 260 - Week of June 16th
• GeForce GTX 280 - Sneak peak at Computex (June 3 - 7)

As for performance? We only have preliminaries for the AMD cards.

It was supposed to come soon, but how soon? Well apparently, July is the month where the GeForce 8800 GT’s successor will debut. The GeForce 9800 GT will apparently be another die shrink of the venerable G92 core which was already a die shrink of the G80 — yeah, it’s not a brand new processor. In addition, it appears that the GeForce 10 name will be put aside. Recent rumors suggest that the GeForce 9900 series will instead be used to represent the upcoming GT200.

Ugh. I’m beginning to lose track of all these video card name changes.