AMD launched a pair of new E-series low-power APUs, the E2-2000, and the E1-1500. The two dual-core chips are based on the same (albeit refined) "Bobcat" micro-architecture as other E-series parts. The E2-2000 CPU cores are clocked at 1.75 GHz, with its Radeon iGPU clocked at 700 MHz; while the E1-1500 features 1.50 GHz CPU core frequency, and 529 MHz iGPU. TDP of both chips are rated at 18W, both feature 1 MB of L2 cache, 80 VLIW5 stream processors, DirectX 11 support, and UVD3 support. In addition to the higher clock speeds, the single-channel memory controller on the E2-2000 supports faster DDR3-1333 MHz, while the E1-1500 makes do with DDR3-1066 MHz. Various new devices launched at the 2013 International CES are based around the two.

MSI's FM2-A85XA-G65 breaks world records again! Featuring MSI's new DigitALL power design with Military Class III components, the FM2-A85XA-G65 reached an astounding 2844MHz memory frequency and 170.5MHz BCLK with an AMD A10-5800K processor. The combination of MSI FM2-A85XA-G65 and AMD A10-5800K scores over 10000 Marks in 3DMark Vantage P mode. It shows that MSI FM2 series has great overclocking potential and brings better gaming experience to users.

AMD's new A10-5800K Trinity APU is a powerful solution that combines excellent CPU performance with unprecedented integrated GPU performance. MSI's FM2-A85XA-G65 is the excellent companion for AMD's latest series of APUs as it combines great performance features with a keen eye on power consumption. With the push of a button, OC Genie II will boost your APU and GPU performance. Graphics performance is boosted with both AMD CrossFire and Dual Graphics.

Phanteks launches PH-TC12DX, a U-Type dual tower heat-sink with four 6mm heat-pipes allows for optimal airflow and cooling. PH-TC12DX's 6mm heat-pipes are linearly aligned and developed to have the least amount of air and thermal resistance. Incorporating P.A.T.S and C.P.S.C Technologies, PH-TC12DX delivers better heat dissipation and heat transfers. PH-TC12DX includes dual PH-F120HP PWM Premium fans to allow for higher performance and/or silent operation.

The 2012 IT Month was from 1st to 9th December, 2012. MSI Notebook Taiwan started first sale of limited GT70 Dragon edition in IT Month and the innovative product MSI Slidebook S20 had received the "IT Month - Outstanding Information Application and Product Award". The excellent products design and the successful marketing strategy made MSI notebook became one of the most popular brands in IT Month.

The outstanding performance of MSI G-series Gaming notebook which was designed for professional gamers was praised within gamers and professional users and led to the sales of GT70 Dragon edition, not to mention how the excellent MSI G-series gaming notebook gathered numerous crowds to experience and purchasing gaming notebook in IT Month.

Following last week's reveal of next-generation 3DMark game test "Fire Strike," which is designed to make even the fastest consumer graphics setups sweat, Futuremark revealed screenshots of its second game test, titled "Cloud Gate." Going with Futuremark's "one benchmark for all platforms" strategy, Cloud Gate is designed to test DirectX 10 hardware capabilities. It uses DirectX 11 engine that's limited to feature level10_0. The lighter game test will be able to put notebook GPUs and entry-level DirectX 11 desktop GPUs to test.

Cloud Gate will see Futuremark's artists going back to space-opera mode, something we missed in 3DMark 11. Screenshots reveal what appears to be a giant machine hovering over a moon, with its parent gas-giant in the background. Perhaps it's a terraforming machine? An ion-drive spacecraft scooping up fuel? The test appears to make use of several of D3D10's illumination and bloom effects. In related news, Futuremark told us that the new 3DMark won't make it to the markets this year, and instead it will be launched for Windows PC (x86) platform in January, 2013. The Android, iOS and Windows RT versions will launch after a little more beta testing and approvals from their respective app stores.More screenshots follow.

EVGA's high-end air-cooled GeForce GTX 670 FTW graphics card, which launched with the rest of the GTX 670 lineup, is largely based on the GeForce GTX 680 NVIDIA-reference design, including its cooler and PCB, and features clock-speeds of 1006 MHz GPU and 6208 MHz memory. The company recently launched a newer SKU based on the same exact design, the EVGA GTX 670 FTW LE, which goes lighter on the clock speeds. The EVGA GTX 670 FTW LE (model: 02G-P4-2676-KR), features a GPU base clock of 941 MHz, GPU Boost clock of 1019 MHz, and 6008 MHz memory, which is still a notch above NVIDIA-reference speeds. It is priced at US $390.

According to industry sources, AMD pushed launch of its next-generation Radeon HD 8000 "Sea Islands" family of GPUs to the second quarter of 2013 (April-June). The delay comes in the wake of the company going through reorganization within its ranks, in response to poor market performance in Q3-2012. The company originally planned to launch its GPUs before the end of 2012. NVIDIA plans to launch a refreshed lineup of Kepler GPUs in 2013.

A renowned brand of graphics card maker - VTX3D, unfolds a might weapon to HD7870 series with VTX3D HD7870 Black Edition. The VTX3D HD7870 Black extends the benefits of VTX3D HD7870 series, but taking advantage of progressive GPU design, showing extraordinary performance than before.

The new model consists of ground-breaking feature which runs at a clock of 925MHz, and 6.0 Gbps for memory, even allowing higher frame rates in games by using AMD PowerTune with boost which overdrives core frequency to dynamically overclock up to 975MHz. Also, VTX3D HD7870 Black features 92mm ultra large fan and 3 heat pipes design, which can significantly reduce heats and keep the temperature low.

Unity Technologies, provider of the Unity multi-platform engine and development tools, is proud to announce Unity 4.0 is now available for download. Unity 4, announced in June, will consist of a series of updates designed to improve the product through an extensive improvement of existing tech and the rollout of new features. The first in a series of updates for Unity 4, this version includes significant additions such as DirectX 11 support and Mecanim animation tools. In addition users will have access to a Linux deployment preview and the Adobe Flash Player deployment add-on.

"Unity 4 will see the addition of an incredible number of new, highly advanced, features and continuous improvement across the tech to be released in smaller, faster increments than Unity has seen in the past," said David Helgason, CEO, Unity Technologies. "It's an exciting time for Unity and the 4.0 release marks the beginning of a great new era for our technology."

According to a VG 24/7 report, Sony began shipping development kits of its upcoming game console, PlayStation 4, codenamed "Orbis" to developers. The kit is described as being a "normal sized PC," driven by AMD A10 "Trinity" APU, and 8 or 16 GB of memory. We've known from reports dating back to April that Sony plans to use a combination of APU and discrete GPU, similar to today's Dual Graphics setups, where the APU graphics core works in tandem with discrete mid-range GPU. The design goal is to be able to play games 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution, with 60 Hz refresh rate, and with the ability to run stereo 3D at 60 Hz. For storage, the system has a combination of Blu-ray drive and 250 GB HDD. Sony's next-generation game console is expected to be unveiled "just before E3," 2013.

Following last week's announcement of the ARM Cortex-A50 series, SoC designers formed a bee-line to license the ARMv8 IP. Among them is NVIDIA, and not just for its Tegra line of high-performance mobile chips, but also for Tesla, its GPU compute accelerator line. In an interview with InfoWorld, NVIDIA CTO for Tesla, Steve Scott, was quoted saying, "Tegra is going to become GPU computing capable in the not-so-distant future. Sometime this decade we are also going to start bringing integrated CPUs and GPUs together in the Tesla line". NVIDIA perhaps is looking at building Tesla GPU compute servers with the x86 CPU completely replaced with efficient ARMv8 64-bit processors.

COUGAR, the fast-growing PC chassis & PSU manufacturer and branding company in Taiwan, catching the gaming fever aroused by the earlier finished LOL World Championship tournament, released their latest RX Power Supply Series.

Targeting the gaming fan boom after the big global gaming event, the COUGAR RX PSUs are rather humble yet more suitable and affordable to game newbies as compare to the PSUs that are focusing on high-end market of the business. The COUGAR RX Series' classic color mix of black and orange-red gives a masculine and playful character to the product. Its 14-cm fan can leisurely bring out the heat with lower rotating speed, which means: much lower noise, and is definitely a luxury addition to products in this price range. Not to mention that this Ultra-Quiet Fan can automatically adjust its RMP according to its current temperature.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated mobile devices graphics chip shipments for the first half of 2012. Mobile devices include smartphones, tablets, and game consoles.

The market for portable devices (mobile devices that we can carry) continues to soar in spite of economic difficulties and general uncertainty. Although portable devices are not necessarily replacing the PC, they are outselling the PC. All of these devices have a graphics processor (GPU) integrated in the device's system on a chip (SoC) application processor.

Engineers and design professionals will be able to work anywhere on virtually any device and still have access to the computing and graphics performance of a GPU-powered workstation, with today's launch of the cloud-based NVIDIA VGX K2 GPU. Built on the NVIDIA Kepler architecture -- the world's fastest, most efficient GPU architecture -- VGX K2 adds unprecedented workstation capabilities to the NVIDIA VGX platform, which was announced earlier this year.

The NVIDIA VGX platform utilizes the GPU to allow enterprises to efficiently deliver virtualized workstation performance and capabilities -- including rich multimedia and 3D graphics -- to users on smartphones, tablets or PCs. Its VGX K2 board, which includes two workstation-class GPUs, enables enterprises to increase user density without sacrificing performance or application compatibility.

ARM today introduced the first POP IP solution for ARM Mali-T600 series graphics processor units (GPUs). This latest offering of POP IP -- core-hardening acceleration technology that produces the best implementations of ARM processors in the fastest time-to-market -- is optimized for the Mali-T628 and Mali-T678 on TSMC 28 nm HPM process technology. Mali GPUs go into a variety of end devices, including a wide range of smartphones, from high performance to mass market, as well as tablets and smart TVs. It is critical that designers can optimize their Mali GPU for their selected end applications.

Developed in synergistic collaboration by ARM's Media Processing and Physical IP divisions, the optimized POP IP technology has been created to produce the most efficient GPU implementations at 28 nm. The POP IP enabled Mali-T600 series GPU implementation results in superior performance density/watt, and significant silicon savings. Benefits of this POP IP have been proven to deliver up to 27 percent higher frequency, 24 percent lower area, and 19 percent lower power than implementations which do not use POP IP.

AMD today announced an investment in CiiNOW, a provider of cloud gaming technology that enables game publishers, retailers and carriers to tap into the growing video game market expected to reach $81 billion by 2016. AMD, through AMD Ventures, has invested in this innovative software company serving a large and growing market that can create better end-user experiences by taking advantage of AMD technologies. With the investment and strategic collaboration facilitated by AMD Ventures, AMD and CiiNOW will work jointly to enable the best online gaming experience possible through a vibrant worldwide developer ecosystem and differentiated hardware.

The cloud gaming industry, which was once thought of as technologically impossible, is now disrupting the gaming market for both consumers and game publishers as more and more casual and hardcore gamers are making the jump to playing games online. CiiNOW addresses this trend with the first cloud gaming solution powered by AMD Radeon graphics that offers a cost-effective, end-to-end solution that includes the full suite of required hardware and software components. CiiNOW delivers a high-speed, low latency streaming solution with up to eight HD streams per server blade, and up to 272 HD streams per server rack for HD-quality game streaming instantly from the cloud, providing ubiquitous game streaming across all subscribers, devices and access technologies.

Here are some of the first pictures of NVIDIA's upcoming GK106 silicon, which goes into building the GeForce GTX 660 graphics card. The GK106, built on the 28 nm silicon fab process, is poised to be NVIDIA's newest mainstream-performance chip that succeeds the GF116. The pictures reveal the chip package to be almost as big as the GF116 but smaller than the GK104. This can be attributed to fewer memory I/O pins (192-bit maximum bus width).

The rectangular die of the GK106 appears to have roughly the same area as that of the GF116, but with the higher transistor density of the 28 nm process, one can expect a significantly higher transistor count for the chip. If some of the pictures we're seeing are any indication the GK106 will be extremely energy-efficient, as an unknown graphics card based on it draws power from just one 6-pin power connector.

Today the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation announced six new members. The HSA Foundation is pleased to welcome Apical, Arteris Inc., MulticoreWare Inc., Sonics, Symbio and Vivante Corporation to the membership roster. Each company adds expertise to the HSA ecosystem by assisting with research, development, production, manufacture, use, and the sale of HSA IP and heterogeneous computing software and solutions.

These new members have joined at different levels including: supporter, contributor and associate. Working closely with the founder members of AMD, ARM, Imagination Technologies, MediaTek Inc., Samsung Electronics and Texas Instruments (TI), the new members will contribute to the growing adoption of HSA in heterogeneous computing.

AMD announced today that the visionary behind Gustafson's Law, John Gustafson, has joined the company as senior fellow and chief product architect, Graphics Business Unit. In this role, Gustafson will set the technical vision for the AMD graphics business unit, driving the technology roadmap and platform for the AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro product lines as well as new technology planning and execution of business objectives. Gustafson will be based in Sunnyvale and will help evangelize AMD graphics leadership internally and externally.

"Our industry-leading graphics technology predicates that we consistently deliver the most differentiated and superior graphics processor unit (GPU) architectures and products -- without compromise," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics. "With the growing importance of parallel compute in defining the computing experience, John brings the full package of industry experience and knowledge needed to help us expand and execute our AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro graphics technology programs, and will help forge an aggressive long-term roadmap that allows AMD to continue to lead and win with our gaming and virtualization technologies."

In a keynote address opening the prestigious annual Hot Chips symposium, AMD CTO Mark Papermaster delivered a vision for the coming "Surround Computing Era", and unveiled new processor architecture details, enabling technologies and design methodologies that will help drive the next era in computing. Surround computing is an extension of pervasive and ambient computing trends and describes an environment where computing technologies are completely natural and seamless parts of daily life.

"Surround computing imagines a world without keyboards or mice, where natural user interfaces based on voice and facial recognition redefine the PC experience, and where the cloud and clients collaborate to synthesize exabytes of image and natural language data. The ultimate goal is devices that deliver intelligent, relevant, contextual insight and value that improves consumers' everyday life in real time through a variety of futuristic applications. AMD is leading the quest for devices that understand and anticipate users' needs, are driven by natural user interfaces, and that disappear seamlessly into the background," said Papermaster during his opening remarks.

NVIDIA posted a statement following last week's interactive session lead by Linus Torvalds, at a Finnish University, which didn't end too well for NVIDIA. The audience complained to Torvalds about lack of consistency between features available to Windows and Linux, and NVIDIA's stubbornness to help the community come up with alternative solutions to get the advertised features (such as Optimus) to work. NVIDIA's statement focuses on exactly that, consistency of features across platforms, and states that it is one of NVIDIA's priorities.

The statement by NVIDIA doesn't refute any of what a member of the audience complained about. There is still no proper Optimus feature made available by NVIDIA to Linux users, but a reminder that NVIDIA recently made changes to its drivers that makes interface with an alternative system software made by various open-source communities, the Bumblebee Project, easier. Said the statement "While we understand that some people would prefer us to provide detailed documentation on all of our GPU internals, or be more active in Linux kernel community development discussions, we have made a decision to support Linux on our GPUs by leveraging NVIDIA common code, rather than the Linux common infrastructure. While this may not please everyone, it does allow us to provide the most consistent GPU experience to our customers, regardless of platform or operating system."

The statement follows:

NVIDIA today announced that its GPUs will be used by scientists at Germany's Forschungszentrum Jülich, which hosts the Jülich Supercomputing Centre, one of Europe's largest and most powerful supercomputing resources, to accelerate advanced neurological research targeted at unlocking secrets of the human brain.

NVIDIA also announced a new, multiyear collaboration with the center to drive the next generation of GPU-accelerated scientific research in neuroscience and a range of other fields, including astronomy, astrophysics, material science, particle physics, and protein folding. Together the two organizations are launching the "NVIDIA Application Lab," a jointly run and staffed resource for the European scientific community located at the center's facilities in Jülich.

Today CM Storm, Cooler Master's gaming brand, releases a new full tower case which is based on the highly popular CM Strom Trooper: The Stryker. Built to be amongst the most agile full-towers, Stryker becomes the second in its class to include an ultra-strong carrying handle; allowing a gamer to travel with the finest system configurations available with relative ease. CM Storm Stryker includes the features that are most desired by gamers like a windowed side panel, full dust filter coverage, a fan controller, an external SSD drive hot-swap dock and two uniquely designed modular hard drive cages and this in a full, stylish white color.

NVIDIA today announced that NVIDIA Tesla GPUs are now available in Fujitsu's PRIMERGY CX400 S1 servers, offering high-performance GPU-accelerated computing to Fujitsu's large installed base of customers in Japan and Europe.

Fujitsu designed the PRIMERGY CX400 S1 server for high performance in a compact form factor by using half-wide, two-socket server nodes -- doubling the number of cores per unit height. The system houses either four 1U hot-plug PRIMERGY CX250 S1 server nodes with two CPUs per node, or two 2U hot-plug CX270 S1 server nodes with two CPUs and one NVIDIA Tesla GPU per node.

Today at the AMD Fusion Developer Summit (AFDS), global technology leaders came together to announce the formation of the Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation. The HSA Foundation is a non-profit consortium established to define and promote an open, standards-based approach to heterogeneous computing that will provide a common hardware specification and broad support ecosystem to make it easier for software developers to deliver innovative applications that can take greater advantage of today's modern processors.

AMD, ARM, Imagination Technologies, MediaTek Inc., and Texas Instruments (TI) are the initial founding members of the HSA Foundation. The companies will work together to drive a single architecture specification and simplify the programming model to help software developers take greater advantage of the capabilities found in modern central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs), and unlock the performance and power efficiency of the parallel computing engines found in heterogeneous processors.