Turkish website DonanimHaber presented the first picture of Gigabyte's entry-level GeForce 9400 GT accelerator. From the specifications and hardware bundle, it is clear that this one is for your HTPC. It provides sufficient graphics processing power for HD Videos, high resolution imaging and Windows Aero acceleration. The card is made from high quality components brandished under "Ultra Durable 2" by Gigabyte. The card allows SPDIF digital audio pass and a HDMI dongle is provided.

It's been a few weeks since Intel launched its latest chipset with integrated graphics, the Intel G45. Among other things, Intel claimed this chipset accelerated HD video formats such as Blu-ray, where the integrated graphics logic is supposed to off-load the CPU of processing the video. Such as it is, Intel's integrated graphics processors (IGP) have been hugely reliant on the CPU for its functions.

Aaron Brezenski, a product engineer for Intel at its Chandler, Arizona US facility. In his recent blog entry (read here), he writes about the G45 not exactly achieving what it set out for, in other words, it was "still imperfect". He mentions about AMD hosting a demo booth where it was publicly demonstrated that a G45 based notebook made by HP failed to accelerate Blu-ray playback, the processor tipped 100% load throughout the playback which isn't what G45 is intended to bring about.

Pictures of a fresh-bake Radeon HD 4670 have surfaced. There are several iterations of this card (as in display output configurations), the one in the picture has a dual-link DVI port along with two DisplayPort connectors. Sources tell GPU Café that the card manages a 3DMark Vantage Performance score of P32xx (anywhere between P3200 and P3299).Here are its GPU specifications:

Just when you thought Mini-ITX would mean extremely compact system components for great HTPC builds, came in the limitations of integrated graphics and relatively weak processors. VIA for example, have had ITX boards for quite some time. Just that the features most essential for HTPC builds such as graphics capable of high-definition video output, processors capable of decoding them at acceptable rates lacked, and hence those older ITX solutions from VIA remained a niche solution for embedded computing or thin-clients.

Picture this: a Mini-ITX board, AM2+ socket, AMD 780G (one of the fastest integrated graphics embedded), four SATA II ports, video output as HDMI (with digital audio pass, HDCP compliant) DVI-D / D-Sub, 8-channel audio with SPDIF optical and co-axial pass, all rolled into one? Awesome, isn't it? Several sources point out that J&W Technology is planning the release of such a board next week, the MINIX-780G-SP128MB.

That's right, a new 22" widescreen monitor by AOC, the 2230Fm is a PC monitor. It supports DVI-D and D-Sub VGA and HDMI inputs and sports a native resolution of 1680 x 1050 px. Stylish looks aside it adds a nifty feature that makes it a media-center in itself, the feature is called HD3.

Says AOC: "HD3 defines a new category in high definition displays with its built-in media player, allowing consumers, for the first time, to view movies without the use of an external DVD player or PC. With the 2230Fm, simply load a film onto a memory device, plug it into the display and use AOC's proprietary, user-friendly menu and remote control to enjoy a movie PC-free. AOC's first HD3 Display is the 2230Fm, a combination of multi-functional high-definition video capabilities and stylish, 360° design that provides a stunning array of features all developed to cater to the digital needs of today's consumers."

Simply put, the monitor has a 4-in-1 digital media reader and has three USB 2.0 ports. You can connect a USB flash-drive. You do have flash-drives with really high capacities these days capable of carrying Hi-resolution videos, also that in some European countries a new video-download facility has come up where you download movies onto a flash drive in public shacks a-la ATMs. Apart from videos, this device can view images up to 8000 x 8000 px, and play audio files from its integrated stereo speakers. It remains to be seen if the USB 2.0 hub could connect to external hard drives or external optical drives. That would make it a full-on media center. It lacks a TV-tuner though. The embedded media software looks pretty intutive, The 2230Fm supports MPEG-1, 2, and 4 video formats. the supported audio format are too numerous to list, but they include MP3, WMA, WAVE, OGG-Vorbis, FLAC, and M4A. Supported photo formats include JPG, TIFF, PNG, BMP, and GIF images with resolutions up to 8000x8000 pixels.

The monitor has a 2ms response time making it ideal for gaming consoles and gaming PCs, it has a respectable 20,000:1 contrast ratio. It is priced at a US $399 and will be available next month onwards. Talk about convenience.

HIS is trying to set itself apart from the competition by offering a very unique and surely well performing HD 2600 Pro with DDR3 memory. The card comes with a blue PCB, black and golden DVI connectors, a black and blue heatsinkg & fan combination. The 256MB 128-bit DDR3 memory runs at a whooping 1400 MHz while the core is set at 600 MHz.

ASUS today introduced the ASUS EAH2600PRO/HTDI/256M and EN8600GT/HTDI/256M - high performance graphics cards that feature bundled high-quality HDMI adaptors certified by HDMI Licensing, LLC. Home theatre lovers can now enjoy enhanced and convenient home multimedia to the fullest with these newly launched ASUS "HDMI Certified" graphics cards.

These days, Colorful launched a HD (high definition) multimedia graphic card--GF8600GT 256M DDR3 HD, which supports the already famous HDCP and HDMI. It is based on 80nm process, with 6 layers of PCB.

GF8600GT 256M DDR3 HD is a middle-end graphic card of the GeForce8 series. Its core clock is up to 540MHz. It has 4 GDDR3 memory, at the standard of 256MB/128bit. Memory default clock is up to 1400MHz. It features SLI technology. The unified processor is capable of being dynamically allocated to vertex, pixel, geometry, or physics operations for the utmost efficiency in GPU resource allocation, which is as much as twice performance improvement than the old generation graphics card in games.