AMD today released its latest unofficial drivers, Catalyst 12.1 Preview. Surprisingly, this release comes ahead of the month's scheduled WHQL-signed release, Catalyst 11.12 WHQL. According to sources, 12.1 Preview is the first driver that provides early (read: rough-on-the-edges) support for AMD's next generation Radeon HD 7900 series graphics cards, scheduled for launch on the 9th of January, 2012. That apart, Catalyst 12.1 brings the following changes to the table:

• AMD HD3D technology support enhancement
  o Enables support for AMD HD3D technology in conjunction with AMD CrossFireX configurations
  o Delivers a new Stereo 3D mode over HDMI 1.4a connections - 1080p at 30Hz is now enabled on supported displays.
• AMD Catalyst Control Center / Vision Engine Control Center enhancements - Application Profiles
  o AMD Catalyst 12.1 Preview driver enables users to create per application profiles to individually control 3D and CrossFireX settings for Direct3D applications
  o Please be sure to select the "Restore Factory Defaults" option under the Catalyst
• Control Center Preferences menu before using the new application profiles feature - this ensures there are no compatibility issues between previous drivers and the new AMD Catalyst 12.1 Preview driver with regards to application profiles
• AMD Catalyst Control Center / Vision Engine Control Center enhancements - Video UI improvements
  o AMD Catalyst 12.1 Preview driver includes user interface enhancements to simply adjustment of video color and video quality controls
• Performance highlights of the AMD Catalyst 12.1 Preview driver (in addition to the AMD Catalyst 11.11c performance driver)
  o Improves performance (10%) in Elder Scrolls: Skyrim when Multi-Sample Anti-Aliasing is enabled on the AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series for single GPU and AMD CrossFireX configurations

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 12.1 Preview

Over the week, AMD launched three of the first notebook GPUs in the Radeon HD 7000 series in a bid to stay competitive in the notebook GPU market, even if it means re-branding already launched GPUs like NVIDIA did, with its recent GeForce 600M series launch. The newly [re]launched mGPUs include Radeon HD 7400M, HD 7500M, and HD 7600M. The three are based on current-generation Caicos and Turks GPUs.

The HD 7400M is based on the "Caicos" silicon, featuring 160 stream processors, 8 TMUs, 4 ROPs, and a 64-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. The HD 7500M and HD 7600M are based on the "Turks" silicon, the HD 7500M features 480 stream processors, 24 TMUs, 8 ROPs, and 64-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface (more economical with lower number of memory chips, while offering the same performance as 128-bit DDR3); while the HD 7600M features all the features of the HD 7500M, including the full 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface.

The latest beta drivers and the first in the 290 series have been released by NVIDIA today, supporting all graphics cards since the venerable 6-series. Their main new feature are official support for enabling ambient occlusion settings in the control panel separately for specific games and enabling NVIDIA Surround on the new X79 SLI-certified motherboards. Ambient occlusion (AO) is settable for uber-popular games The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. So, what does AO do? We'll let Andrew Burns of NVIDIA explain:

If you're unfamiliar with Ambient Occlusion, it is most easily described as a way to make in-game shadowing more realistic, and therefore better.

What he doesn't say of course, is how it kills your frame rate, especially on lower end hardware. Anyway, there's all the usual goodies in this release: 3D Vision game profiles for games such as MW3, Diablo 3 & LEGO Harry Potter: Years 5-7 (yes really). There's a HD audio update and nine fixes too, including one for random flickering of the Windows boot logo as it's loading or fading away and a fix for the mouse cursor flickering and shaking in games such as Crysis 2 & Deus Ex when SLI is enabled when using 3DTV Play. The NVIDIA product release page is here and they have a snazzy-looking driver selector here. The release notes follow.

Do you want a really small PC that fits in the palm of your hand? Well, if you do, then VIA Technology have got you covered with their new ARTiGO A1150. As you can see from the pictures, it has a high 'cuteness' factor, due to its diminutive size of just 5.7" x 3.9" x 2". For processing, it sports a 64-bit VIA 1.0 GHz dual core Eden X2 CPU and a VX900H media system processor supporting the latest HD video codecs including H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2/4 at up to 1080p. Interfaces include HDMI and VGA ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, five USB ports including one USB device port, three audio jacks with optional wireless IEEE 802.11 b/g/n and SD card reader modules.

Target uses include the usual home/office environments, use as a super space-saving desktop PC, a home server, media streaming and surveillance applications. Of course, the real question is what kind of performance can one expect out if it, given that it's targeted at the desktop PC market, so one hopes that it can run Windows 7 at a decent performance level. Oddly, the VIA press release doesn't say anything about the RAM, so it's not clear how much can be fitted, which type and what speed grades are supported.

Well, this 11.11 release doesn't list any performance improvements unfortunately. It contains just one new unexciting feature and a few fixes, but still has quite a long list of known issues. The new feature is Adobe Flash Player 11 hardware accelerated graphics support, including the A-series and E-series APUs. Fixes include things like Rage texture corruption, bezel compensation working correctly in Far Cry 2 and a screen tearing fix for displays in clone mode. Therefore, if your setup is working fine, there's no rush to update to this driver in case it breaks something. Note the following CAP 1 profile updates added to this release:

- Battlefield 3: Tweaks to the CrossFire profile
- Global Ops: Commando Libya: Improves CrossFire performance
- Driver San Francisco: Disables CrossFire

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.11 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

DOWNLOAD: Release Notes

CyberpowerPC, a leading manufacturer of custom gaming desktop PCs, gaming notebooks, and performance workstations, today announced a new series of enthusiast gaming PCs based on Intel's 2nd Generation Core i7-3000 Series CPUs (code named Sandy Bridge-E) and X79 chipset motherboards.

CyberpowerPC gaming systems receiving the new CPU makeover includes the Gamer Xtreme 3D series, the FANG EVO Black Mamba and Cobra as well as its award winning Gamer Xtreme XE and XI systems. The series will include the flagship Intel Core i7 3960X (3.33Ghz and Turbo Boost up to 3.9Ghz), and the Core i7 3930K CPU (3.2Ghz and Turbo Boost to 3.8Ghz) to deliver unmatched performance, the ability to customize your rig, and features that put you in control of the action.

Intel today released its Core i7-3000 series processor family, codenamed "Sandy Bridge-E". These new processors, along with the new Intel X79 chipset, make up for an entirely new platform. The processors are an upscale of the Sandy Bridge architecture found on chips in the LGA1155 package. The Sandy Bridge-E silicon measures 20.8 x 20.9 mm, with a humungous transistor count of 2.27 billion. In its Core i7-3000 configuration, the silicon has up to 6 cores, up to 15 MB of L3 cache, four DDR3 memory channels, and 40 PCI-Express 3.0 lanes ("some" devices "may" support Gen 3.0, Intel's words).

Sandy Bridge-E has the same instruction set as Sandy Bridge, which includes SSE up to version 4.2, AVX, AES, and features Turbo Boost 2.0, HyperThreading. It's the memory controller that's complete upscale. It features four independent 64-bit paths to DDR3 DIMMs, making it a quad-channel DDR3 IMC. DDR3-1600 MHz is natively supported. There are three models, the Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition leads the pack with a clock speed of 3.30 GHz, 3.90 GHz top Turbo Boost speed, and 15 MB of L3 cache. It has 6 cores and 12 threads with HTT enabled. This chip has all its multipliers unlocked and is geared for overclocking. It is priced at US $990 in 1000 unit tray quantities, though retailers might draw a decent margin for the boxed parts.

Acer is spreading holiday cheer this season with new all-in-one (AIO) desktops that combine the audio/visual excitement of HD with the fun and entertainment of a touch-screen display. The new models include the Acer AZ5 Series with an ample 23-inch HD monitor and the AZ3 Series, which features a more compact 21-inch HD screen to fit within tight areas. These new AIOs conserve space and make an appealing entertainment hub for the entire family to enjoy.

"A sophisticated appearance and practical design make our all-in-one form factor very popular with consumers," said Irene Chan, senior business manager of consumer desktops for Acer America. "Our newest all-in-one models feature an intuitive touch screen display for playing digital music, scrolling through images, browsing online recipes and viewing social networking sites. In addition, full HD performance heightens the visual excitement of movies and games."