For those waiting for the $200 FXI Cottoncandy Android-driven PC on stick with no concrete availability in sight, its competitor already took shape. Discovered on trading and B2B portal AliExpress (from Alibaba), the MK802 is an Android 4.0 PC on a stick, which is priced at US $74 a pop ($70 a piece in >5 quantities). Measuring 88 x 35 x 12 mm, and weighing less than 200 g, the device is powered by a 1.50 GHz AllWinner single-core ARM SoC.

Compared to the Cottoncandy, there are a few things you'd have to do without. To begin with, the MK802 doesn't have an HDMI standard connector sticking out, which lets you plug it directly to TVs, instead it has a mini-HDMI port, so you'd need an HDMI cable. The device packs 4 GB of storage, which can be expanded by a microSD. Connectivity includes one full-size USB 2.0 ports, a mini-USB, with USB host support; and 802.11 b/g WLAN, which makes it an ideal internet-TV device.

Following the release of its new extreme DDR3 lineup, TridentX, G.SKILL is thrilled to host an extreme overclocking contest at HWBOT, the widely recognized authority in the field of overclocking. The G.SKILL CUP OC competition will start May 1st and run until May 30th and consists of three different stages with 14 G.SKILL Memory kits offered to the winners. For more detail, please refer to the event page.

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.

Here's the latest Radeon Catalyst driver suite for all you Radeon graphics card fans! It has one major new feature:

Enables AMD HD 3D technology support on DisplayPort panels, such as the Samsung 750 and 950 series 3D displays

which sounds very cool and is begging to be reviewed and benchmarked, plus quite a few fixes:

Over the last week, the enthusiast community witnessed high drama as some world-renowned overclockers were disqualified from the MSI Lords of Overclocking online competition for engaging in malpractice. Futuremark noticed that some validation entries from top scoring candidates originated from the same setup, confirmed from consistency in Futuremark product key and PCI devices. Top three position-holders at the LoOC competition admitted to using scores generated by a third person, AndreYang. Hiwa, eXtremetweaker.de, KJ and Skinnee were named as disqualified candidates.

What happened next could come as a surprise to some. Major overclocking communities banned these individuals, some permanently, with enthusiast charts aggregator HWBOT handing out a 1 year ban to each of them (although HWBOT wasn't involved in that competition), and XtremeSystems.org issuing lifetime bans. Even as some question the motives behind Andre sharing scores with four people at the same time, the candidates deny that Andre had any intention to profit from it, other than just helping.

As many as nine major chip vendors were fined a total of 331 million Euros (US $404.2 million) for participating in illegal price-fixing activities, by the European Union authorities. These include Samsung, Hynix, Nanya, Elpida, Infineon, NEC, Toshiba, Hitachi, and Mitsubishi. A 10th company in this price-fixing cartel was Micron Technology, which escaped the fine for exposing the malpractice to the EU authorities. Of these Samsung was given the single biggest fine of 146 million Euros, followed by Infineon at 57 million Euros. The fines were reduced by 10% because all companies extended cooperation in the investigations.

The price-fixing cartel mostly involved bad trade of DRAM chips, and was active between 1998 and 2002, operating with a network of contacts which secretly exchanged pricing information. They colluded to fix prices of DRAM chips sold to major PC and server manufacturers. Investigations in the scam began in 2002 when Micron blew the whistle on the cartel. "By acknowledging their participation in a cartel the companies have allowed the Commission to bring this long-running investigation to a close and to free up resources to investigate other suspected cartels," said EU's Competition Commissioner, Joaquin Almunia. "As the procedure is applied to new cases it is expected to speed up investigations significantly," he added.

Futuremark Corporation today announced a new competition for PC overclockers everywhere. The contest will see game, DIY, and overclocking enthusiasts from Europe, Asia and the Americas competing for the "Lord of Overclocking" title for their region. With Futuremark anticipating over 200,000 entries the online contest will be the largest overclocking competition ever staged.
Competition Home Page

The contest will run from May 18th to June 14th with prizes on offer for the top weekly and overall winners in each region. Furthermore one overall top winner will also be invited to attend the MSI Master Overclocking Arena 2009 event in Beijing, China in September 2009.

Paul Otellini, Intel Corporation president and CEO today issued the following statement regarding the European Commission decision on Intel's business practices:

"Intel takes strong exception to this decision. We believe the decision is wrong and ignores the reality of a highly competitive microprocessor marketplace - characterized by constant innovation, improved product performance and lower prices. There has been absolutely zero harm to consumers. Intel will appeal."

XFX starts a competition for eveyone that's keen on hardware and in the meantime can draw well. Using basic assets which will be supplied from XFX, you need to draw the coolest wallpaper in one of 4 sizes - 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024 and 1600x1200. The only requirement to participate in this competition is to be North America resident. Every day and every week until the final on March 20th, XFX will choose a winner that will receive various bonuses. Daily winners will receive a legal copy of Ubisoft's FarCry 2, weekly winners will earn a XFX Pocker Set and the final winner will win a whole Intel Core 2 Quad computer system by iBuyPower. The competition starts today, for more information click here.

IKONIK initiated the 'Kick Start' competition, which started on October 1st and is ending on January 31st 2009. This means these are the final few days to enter the competition, so don't miss your chance to win super performance IKONIK top-of-the-range products. Such as IKONIK's high-end Ra X10 SIM case or upper-mainstream Zaria A20 case; also known as the 'Kick Start'. Entries can also win the Vulcan 850 Watt and Gaia 500 Watt power supply.

With many exciting products and so many chances to win, you are almost guaranteed a prize just by entering. So take a chance and join the competition by registering yourself on the website before January 31st, 2009. This competition is open to anyone.

IBM has been accused of monopoly and anti-competition practices with the mainframe market. A complaint of the same has been filed with the European Commission on Tuesday. T3, a small American supplier of mainframes who, in the past, dealt in IBM products, alleges the company the company to have abused its market-position and monopoly power in the industry.

IBM is accused of engaging in several anti-competitive offenses, that include the prevention of the sales of competing mainframe hardware products by making its operating system exclusive to its mainframe hardware. IBM is further accused of withholding patent licenses and certain intellectual property to the detriment of mainframe customers, according to a statement by T3. In the same statement, T3 says that it dealt with IBM mainframes in the past, but it took to selling its own products developed by Amdahl (now part of Fujitsu). An IBM spokesperson responded saying that the company is yet to see a complaint, and that it was inappropriate to comment on specifics relating thereto.

IKONIK is organizing the 'Kick Start' competition, starting on October 13th until January 31st, 2008. This competition is open to anyone and there are many cool prizes to win. Such as a trip to Taiwan!

IKONIK is making it possible for you to visit Taiwan. When you are going to buy an IKONIK product before January 31st, you have the chance to visit Taiwan and IKONIK's headquarters. Join the competition by registering yourself on the website. If you are one of the lucky winners you will be informed personally by e-mail before February 20, 2009.

Amidst this whole 'nGOHQ' saga, and us getting astonished at the way things turned out, here's what we missed:

NVIDIA is in talks with AMD over a possible technology-transfer agreement over PhysX, say industry sources in Hong Kong. In a not-so-recent article by HKEPC, it is said:

TUL Corporation - a leading manufacture of AMD graphics cards today announces Pimp my rig competition that will begin today and ends on the 16th of March where the users from all around the world can join to compete for the slowest computer in the world.

Who manages to make the slowest 3Dmark 2003 score will be pimped with the fastest upgrade on the planet, PowerColor HD3850 PCS AGP featuring ZeroTherm GX810 cooler, support for DirectX 10.1, Shader Model 4.1 and Universal Video Decode.

For more details visit: Competition Page