In 2012, Intel will update its processor lineup up to performance 2 tiers with new models based on the spanking new 22 nm "Ivy Bridge" silicon, which will increase performance over the current generation, and bring some new features to the table. In late November, a list of desktop Core i5/i7 models could be compiled, which were later confirmed on roadmap slides. CPU World compiled retail channel pricing of several of those Core i5/i7 "Ivy Bridge" chips. The prices look to be more or less consistent with current "Sandy Bridge" Core processors, which those chips are bound to replace. The Core i7-3770K, for example, which will replace the Core i7-2600K, will be similarly priced to it.

VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced Android support for VIA x86 embedded platforms, starting with support for the VIA EITX-3002 Em-ITX board. Running Android on an x86 platform offers increased flexibility, great multimedia support and cost saving advantages for embedded applications such as in-vehicle entertainment and interactive kiosks.

Key advantages for Android on x86 include leverage of Android development resources and existing apps, rich I/O flexibility, greater CPU performance as well as higher display resolutions of up to 1920 x 1080. In addition VIA has released SMART ETK, an Embedded Tool Kit which allows monitoring and control of peripheral devices through the Android OS, allowing for greater environmental control of kiosk and other installed environments.

Today Windows updater may have brought "Bulldozer" users a little surprise. A hotfix that increases the AMD flagship processors performance. As this "hotfix" is bleeding edge news any benchmarks have yet to be seen but this confirms Windows 7 was in fact hampering "Bulldozer" from performing at 100% in all prior benches. What percentage it was previously performing at has yet to be determined. Here is a small snippet from the Hotfix release notes.

This article introduces an update that optimizes the performance of AMD Bulldozer CPUs that are used by Windows 7-based or Windows Server 2008 R2-based computers. Currently, the performance of AMD Bulldozer CPUs is slower than expected. This behavior occurs because the threading logic in Windows 7 and in Windows Server 2008 R2 is not optimized to use the Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) scheduling feature. This feature was introduced in the Bulldozer family of AMD CPUs.

You can download the Hotfix here.

Zalman took its first dip into water cooling after a while, with the CNPS20LQ, a self-contained (closed loop) CPU cooler. Designed and made originally by Asetek, a well-established brand name in OEM water cooling solutions, the CNPS20LQ uses a single-fan (dual-fan capable) radiator design. Its radiator measures 120 (W) x 158 (L) x 25 (H) mm. The radiator houses a small reservoir. The block houses a pump, which draws power from standard 4-pin CPU power header, and supports PWM control. The two are connected by flexible tubing. The block features a copper base with pre-applied thermal interface material. The CNPS20LQ supports all current socket types, including Intel LGA2011, LGA1155/1156, LGA1366, LGA775; AMD AM3+, FM1, and AM3/AM2+/AM2. It is priced at €69.90.

AMD's new Bulldozer "FX" series of processors may be very lacklustre performers in reviewer's benchmarks and have garnered considerable scorn in enthusiast circles, but they're a very good performer for AMD's bottom line. Incredibly, they are selling out as soon as shops get them in stock - and they are not even priced very competitively against Intel's offerings, so perhaps the "It's an 8 core CPU!!" marketing is working well on the uninformed "enthusiast" after all? Mind you, what enthusiast, however uninformed, wouldn't know exactly how these products perform? Every tech website and computer magazine has covered these chips by now. The mind boggles.

It looks like there's a subtle but relentless push to get ARM CPUs into desktop PCs. Morgan Stanley recently surveyed 30 PC makers (names not revealed) and discovered that 40% of them are interested in trying out ARM-based PCs within the next two years. As we reported previously that the Wintel alliance appears to be crumbling, this finding appears to add weight to that assertion. Of course, there's a huge mountain to climb before ARM processors can compete head to head with high performance x86, as explained in our article, not least because Microsoft won't begin supporting ARM until Windows 8 is released late next year and the fact that the vast majority of existing software won't run on ARM. A real catch-22 if ever there was one. Just as crucially, the many high performance enhancements and interface standards that currently go into making a modern x86 chip fly will also have to go into an ARM - and developing that isn't going to be cheap, although it may not take that long, since these are tried and trusted technologies that need to be applied. Still, the interest is there and Morgan Stanley expect that 10% (39 million) PCs, excluding tablets, will have an ARM processor at their heart. If true, it will make for interesting times.

Previous preliminary reports have suggested that the forthcoming Ivy Bridge CPUs will have single threaded performance on par with the existing Sandy Bridge CPUs and will mainly deliver improvements to power consumption and integrated graphics - nothing for PC enthusiasts to get excited about. However, in leaked documents sent to partners, Intel have now revealed official performance figures for IB and they look rather good. They've produced a raft of benchmarks, which reveal improvements such as 56% in ArcSoft Media Expresso, 25% in Excel 2010 and a 199% gain in the 3D Mark Vantage GPU benchmark. Unfortunately, they haven't released any benchmarks based on high performance 3D games, but it's probably safe to say that they will be similarly improved. Now, on to the benchmarks, which compare their new 3.4 GHz i7-3770 (4 cores + HT) with the current 3.4 GHz i7-2600, also with 4 cores + HT:

It looks like the Bulldozer disaster might have been too much of a setback for AMD to recover from. After 30 years of competing with Intel in the x86 processor market, AMD is about to give up, even with the 2009 1.25bn antitrust settlement they extracted from them. Mike Silverman, AMD company spokesman said, "We're at an inflection point. We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mind-set, because it won't be about that anymore." He was vague on the exact strategy that AMD intends to pursue from now on, though. However, the company is widely expected to make a concerted effort to break into the smartphones and tablets market. The big problem with this strategy unfortunately, is that this arena is currently dominated by many other competitors. On top of that, their arch enemy Intel is also trying to muscle in on this space, hence AMD could find themselves back at square one, or likely even further back. AMD's graphics cards are doing well at the moment though and are quite competitive, so it looks like their expensive purchase of ATI back in 2006, might yet save the company from extinction. If they become primarily a graphics card company, they will inevitably end up a lot smaller than they are now though and that's a lot of lost jobs and personal hardship, along with a monopoly x86 market remaining and all of its negative effects on the market.

Intel's Ivy Bridge line of processors are not due for release until spring 2012, but it looks like Chinese website Coolaler has scored a sneak peak at the performance level of Intel's 22 nm Ivy Bridge platform by testing an engineering sample of a quad core CPU. The screenshot shows CPU-Z & Task Manager (no HyperThreading) readouts, while the AIDA64 Cache & Memory benchmark has been run. The CPU used is a 2 GHz sample as shown by the photo, which CPU-Z reports as running at its 2.4 GHz turbo boost speed (20% overclock) on a Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD7-B3 motherboard. Rough and ready verdict: about the same speed as the current Sandy Bridge, but with a significantly enhanced northbridge and graphics core. The AIDA64 scores are actually slightly lower than the current SB scores, but this is likely because the CPU is running unsupported and unoptimized due to a mobo BIOS that's not made for it and a benchmark that cannot measure its true performance. Note the memory speeds, which were run fast at 2134 MHz 6-9-6-24 CR2, further indicating lack of optimization, since these timings suggest somewhat better performance than what was measured.

Yes, you heard that right, when completed, the Raspberry Pi foundation will be selling a credit card sized computer running Linux that can plug into your television and play H.264 1080p30 videos. Raspberry Pi is the somewhat cheekily-named UK registered charity which has been set up to design and build a very low cost computer that is targeted for use in computer science lessons in schools, to "put the fun back into learning computing." Why, was it ever not fun?! However, such a simple and cheap general purpose gadget has the potential for many other uses than the classroom, as the world is full of inventive tech-minded people that can tinker with something like this and build innovative projects with them, perhaps by using several of these together.

The product will come in two configurations, a $25 Model A with 128 MB SDRAM & $35 Model B with 256 MB SDRAM and both will come with the same 700 MHz Broadcom BCM2835 media processor featuring an ARM11 (ARM1176JZF-S) core, Broadcom GPU core, DSP core and support for Package-on-Package (PoP) RAM. We expect that in this day and age, most people will go for the 256 MB model, which is still a very small amount of RAM. For those that want to get the most out if this device, the website - www.raspberrypi.org - has a forum and a wiki with tons of technical details on the device, including benchmarks and links to many other news stories & blogs about the product. There's even a shop, although at the moment, it's only selling keyboard stickers of the foundation's logo.

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.

NVIDIA today announced that system builders worldwide are now shipping the fastest PC gaming platforms ever built, thanks in part to NVIDIA SLI technology and the just-released Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition processors and X79 chipset-based motherboards.

The combination of NVIDIA SLI technology -- which allows for multiple GPUs to run on a single PC -- and new X79-based motherboards allow gamers to customize their PC experience with up to four NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPUs, including the GeForce GTX 580 and GTX 570, the world's fastest DX11 GPUs. Licensed by the world's leading motherboard manufacturers -- including Intel, ASUS, ASRock, EVGA, Foxconn, Gigabyte and MSI, SLI technology is crucial for playing this year's hottest graphics-intensive games, such as the recently released Battlefield 3 and upcoming Batman: Arkham City with detail, resolution and immersion settings cranked up.

In an effort to make it easier for programmers to take advantage of parallel computing, NVIDIA, Cray Inc., the Portland Group (PGI), and CAPS enterprise announced today a new parallel-programming standard, known as OpenACC.

Initially developed by PGI, Cray, and NVIDIA, with support from CAPS, OpenACC is a new open parallel programming standard designed to enable the millions of scientific and technical programmers to easily take advantage of the transformative power of heterogeneous CPU/GPU computing systems.

OpenACC allows parallel programmers to provide simple hints, known as "directives," to the compiler, identifying which areas of code to accelerate, without requiring programmers to modify or adapt the underlying code itself. By exposing parallelism to the compiler, directives allow the compiler to do the detailed work of mapping the computation onto the accelerator.

Just a handful of days ahead of Sandy Bridge-E's launch, a Chinese tech website, www.inpai.com.cn (Google translation) has done what Chinese tech websites do best and that's leak benchmarks and slides, Intel's NDA be damned. They pit the current i7-2600K quad core CPU against the upcoming i7-3960X hexa core CPU and compare them in several ways. The take home message appears to be that gaming performance on BF3 & Crysis 2 is identical, while the i7-3960X uses considerably more power, as one might expect from an extra two cores. The only advantage appears to come from the x264 & Cinebench tests. If these benchmarks prove accurate, then gamers might as well stick with the current generation Sandy Bridge CPUs, especially as they will drop in price, before being end of life'd. While this is all rather disappointing, it's best to take leaked benchmarks like this with a (big) grain of salt and wait for the usual gang of reputable websites to publish their reviews on launch day, November 14th. Softpedia reckons that these results are the real deal, however. There's more benchmarks and pictures after the jump.

VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced the VIA VE-900 Mini-ITX Mainboard, immediately available worldwide at incredibly competitive pricing. The VIA VE-900 Mini-ITX provides the ideal platform for DIY enthusiasts to custom build stylish home desktop and media center PCs.

Featuring a high-performance 1.4GHz VIA Nano X2 dual core processor and the VIA VX900 unified all-in-one media system processor, the VIA VE-900 Mini-ITX Mainboard delivers a highly optimized platform that boasts stunning HD video performance of the most demanding video formats at resolutions of up to 1080p. The VIA VE-900 Mini-ITX also supports high fidelity surround sound through the VIA VT1708S HD audio codec which delivers amazing stereo 24-bit resolution and up to 192kHz sample rates and adds HDMI support in a compact, power-efficient package.

Coolink today presented its first CPU cooler to support the upcoming Intel LGA2011 platform for Core i7-3000 series Sandy Bridge-E processors. Based on the award winning Corator DS, the new Corator DS - LGA2011 is equipped with the proven SWiF2 - 120P PWM high-performance fan as well as the latest edition of the SecuFirm 2 mounting system for LGA2011, featuring optimized mounting pressure for excellent cooling performance.

"The upcoming release of Intel's Core i7-3000 series Sandy Bridge-E processors will raise the computing performance for enthusiast and professional users alike, so they can look forward to an interesting platform. However, these high performance processors need an adequate cooling solution to unleash their full potential and the Corator DS is predestined for this task", explains Timothy Chu, Coolink CEO. "With the Corator DS - LGA2011, which is based on the successful and award-winning Corator DS, we are proud to offer an attractive Core i7-3000 cooling solution for customers who are looking for great performance at reasonable costs."

The successor of the popular Midgard Mid-Tower is getting ready to step up to the plate. Xigmatek has once again managed to fill the Midgard II with a long list of unique features for the demanding PC enthusiast. Just to name a few: USB 3.0, a rubberised surface by the name of "Leather Touch", a hot-swap bay in the top, room for up to eight fans and a 280 mm radiator - all for an unbelievably low price!

When Xigmatek presented the original Midgard in 2009 as their first chassis, it managed to capture the hearts of PC users all over the world. The reviewers praised it, the users loved it. This secret behind its continuing success is quite simple: at the time, the Midgard was at the top of its game in terms of technical aspects by offering eSATA, hard drive trays and screw-less installation methods along with the possibility to route water cooling out the back of the chassis.

Noctua today introduced the new NF-F12 120mm Focused Flow fan. Teaming up eleven stator guide vanes with a specially conceived seven blade impeller, the NF-F12's Focused Flow system creates outstanding static pressure and focuses the airflow for superior performance on heatsinks and radiators. At the same time, a wide range of advanced aerodynamic design measures, second generation SSO-Bearings and Noctua's new, custom designed PWM IC for fully automatic control guarantee astounding quietness of operation.

"Our award-winning NF-P12 has become a standard choice for pressure demanding applications such as CPU coolers and radiators, but we've been striving to achieve even better performance in this domain, and this is how the NF-F12 was born", explains Mag. Roland Mossig, Noctua CEO. "Due to the stator guide vanes focussing the airflow, it can push the air through dense fin stacks more effectively. This type of design has mostly been used for noisy high speed fans so far, so our engineers have put a lot of thought into keeping the noise in check."

The original 8-bit Commodore 64 computer was very popular in the early 1980s, but the original company eventually closed down in the 1990s, having launched their 16-bit Amiga range in the meantime as the C64s successor. For a while now, replica C64 models, packed with the latest PC technology, have been made by Commodore USA, a different company that has purchased the original Commodore brand.

Since last summer, they have been selling a replica for $999 powered by an Intel CPU. This PC, called the C64x Ultimate (model number: C64x-UL) included a dual core Atom D525, NVIDIA Ion 2 graphics, 4 GB RAM and a 1 TB hard drive. A barebones version is available for $349 without a motherboard, just the keyboard and case, allowing the customer to add their own hardware into the retro box. However, Commodore USA has now upgraded their offering with a considerably more powerful CPU. This version is the C64x Extreme (model number: C64x-EX) which includes a 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7-2720QM CPU, mini-ITX motherboard and PSU, 8 GB DDR3 RAM, DVD writer (slot loading) 2 TB 7200 RPM HDD, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The back panel has the following ports: legacy PS/2, USB 2.0 x5 (one eSATA combo) USB 3.0 x2, Ethernet and three audio jacks. Video connectivity is looked after by HDMI, DVI-D and VGA outputs.

Hot on the heels of our previous story of Apple Macs falling prey to a DDoS trojan, we now have another Mac trojan come on the market, as explained by Sophos. Yes, the Apple platform must indeed be becoming more popular to get this one. It's an unfortunate fact of life that the popularity of any computing platform, including smartphones, can be judged by the number of criminals who will attack it. This little nasty, called OSX/Miner-D or 'DevilRobber', hijacks Mac OS X to perform various tricks, which include minting Bitcoins (the virtual and now virtually worthless currency) stealing usernames and passwords (of course) taking screenshots and stealing the victim's Bitcoin wallet while it's at it, if there is one. And for good measure:

it runs a script that copies information to a file called dump.txt regarding truecrypt data, Vidalia (TOR plugin for Firefox), your Safari browsing history, and .bash_history.

So, now the criminals also know about all the sites one has visited, eroding user privacy even more. It looks like this malware has covered all the bases, but wait, there's more.

Intel started the trend of improving integrated graphics with their second generation LGA1155 socket Core i3, i5 & i7 line of processors. Depending on the model, these processors sport integrated HD2000 or HD3000 graphics right on the processor die, which nowadays give acceptable performance for low-end gaming and can play Full HD 1080p video perfectly. This trend is increasing with the upcoming Ivy Bridge processors, which will be able to support a massive 4096 x 4096 pixel display, as we reported here. AMD now also have equivalent products with their Llano-based A-series processors. So, where does this leave discrete graphics cards? Well, the low end market is certainly seeing reduced sales, as there really isn't enough of a performance difference nowadays to always warrant an upgrade from an IGP. As integrated graphics improve further, one can see how this will hurt sales of higher end graphics cards too. The problem is that the bulk of the profit comes not from the top-end powerhouse graphics cards, but from the low to mid-end cards which allow these companies to remain in business, so cannibalizing sales of these products to integrated graphics could make high-end graphics cards a much more niche product and crucially, much more expensive with to boot.

The driver updates for Rage and the upcoming Battlefield 3 are coming thick and fast now, with every full and preview releases - great news for fans of these games. Note that the BF3 improvements are specified for the beta release, but should also apply to the release version and more will of course follow. Other improvements include Eyefinity 5x1 display implementation on Radeon 6000 & 5000 cards, along with CrossfireX interface enhancements. See the full rundown after the jump!

Air cooling specialist and pioneer of tower-type heatsinks, Thermalright, released a new revision of its Archon CPU cooler. Archon is a large tower-type heatsink that uses long aluminum fins. The heatsink measures 170 (H) x 155 (L) x 53 (W) mm. Such is the length of the fins that with this new revision, Thermalright decided to use a larger 150 mm fan, the Thermalright TY-150.

The TY-150 spins 500 to 1100 RPM, can be controlled using PWM, and has a noise output range of 19 to 23 dBA. The heatsink uses six 6 mm thick nickel plated copper heat pipes to convey heat evenly to the fin stack, in two rows of U-shaped pipes. The fins themselves are angled at spots to improve heat dissipation. The heat pipes converge at a mirrored copper base, but don't make direct contact with the CPU. The new Archon Rev. A is priced at €52.90.

Intel have finally confirmed that they will be including water cooling as an enthusiast solution for their upcoming Core i7-3000 series Sandy Bridge-E processors due for release on November 14 - a first for Intel and something for AMD to match. They have gone with Asetek due to their high quality products and good reputation, which will be branded with the distinctive Intel blue logos. The 12cm radiator fan will actually be illuminated in Intel Blue, giving a classy look to the kit. On top of that, they will actually sell the kit separately, so no one need feel left out. The E-series chips are already significantly faster than the current Sandy Bridge offerings, but water cooling will be able to stretch that lead even further and should make for some exciting overclocking achievements. Perhaps 6GHz or more 24/7 reliable operation is within reach? No prices as yet.

Well, this is good news for PC enthusiasts. PC overclocking has become a competitive sport in recent years with various brands hosting the competitions and others also chipping in with sponsorship money. This year's event was the fourth annual MSI Master Overclocking Arena competition held in Taipei, Taiwan, with sponsorship money coming from the likes of Intel and Kingston among others. Basic competition info: sixteen teams worldwide; benchmarks used were Super PI 32M, 3DMark 11 and surprisingly, the ancient 3DMark 2001SE but it's not clear why such an old benchmark is being used; the components used are given to contestants based on a lottery system, the team picking a number corresponding to either a CPU or a complete rig. This prevents contestants from having an unfair advantage by bringing in their own heavily modified kit to press home an advantage. Imagine how much more potent a modded motherboard with beefed up voltage regulators could be? Turned out that the favourites, previous winners Romania, won the competition. The prize money was only $3000, which is paltry compared to mainstream sports, but remember that this overclocking "sport" is still very new and is very niche in nature, so isn't so unreasonable when viewed in that light. Head on over to VR-Zone for more competition details and photos.