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:

Intel Nehalem Posts Impressive CPU Scores with 3D Benchmarks

The rather lucky Taiwanese team of Tom's Hardware got their hands on an Intel Bloomfield engineering sample that has a clock-speed of 2.93 GHz, running on a Intel X58 chipset based motherboard made by Foxconn called Renaissance to evaluate a Gainward Radeon HD4850 sample. System details are provided below.

DigiTimes reports that with AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4800-series graphics cards successfully cutting into the US$200-300 mainstream market forcing Nvidia to cut the price of its previous generation GeForce 9800 GTX down to US$199, sources at graphics card makers see AMD's discrete graphics card market share as having a chance to increase to 40% in the third quarter this year from around 30% at the beginning of 2008.

Since Nvidia's GeForce 9800 GTX does not provide advantages in power consumption or performance over the same priced Radeon HD 4850, graphics card makers are more optimistic over AMD's upcoming performance.

I'm sure all of you guys know all the goodies that will be coming with the launch of the next series of high-end cards from AMD. In case you need a recap of the awesomeness headed our way, please check out the source link. Anyways, enough propoganda. For those of you who are interested in buying the latest high-end offerings from AMD, the current rumor says that we should see new cards in August 2008 for a price far below the current rumored prices of the high-end NVIDIA cards. NVIDIA cards have traditionally been more expensive, and the GTX280 is supposedly going to cost nerds somewhere in the ballpark of $500USD. There is no confirmed pricepoint for the new cards from AMD. However, we can be fairly confident that it will be quite a bit less than $500USD. Another interesting rumor to note is that there will be a much larger difference between the HD4870 and the HD4850, as opposed to the comparatively small difference between the HD3870 and the HD3850.

With the launch of the GeForce 9 series getting closer and closer, AMD is hard pressed to find something to keep themselves competitive. While the RV670 and R680 are regaining some much needed market share, they will both pale when the GeForce 9 series is released to the public. Thankfully, AMD is not going down without a fight. About the same time as the GeForce 9 series is released, AMD is releasing a little something called the RV770. At this point, it appears that the RV770 is about 50% faster than the current HD3870, which is certainly respectable. How this compares to the GeForce 9 series is still a mystery. The release of CrossFire X technology ought to really help benchmark numbers, assuming AMD can make buying four AMD GPUs cost about as much as two from NVIDIA.

Towards the end of 2007, GECUBE launched the HD3850 and HD3870 to popular market acclaim. For spring 2008, GECUBE is releasing the HD3600 and HD3400 graphics cards to offer gamers a whole new level of performance and set the market alight once more. Designed for the value and general gaming market, the HD3600 and HD3400 series are equipped with the latest AMD 55nm chip technology and support the PCI-Express 2.0 interface for optimal graphics performance. HD3600 and HD3400 also support the enhanced DirextX10.1/SM4.1 standard to deliver more realistic, high-resolution video.

GECUBE's HD3600 series uses the ATI Radeon RV635 chip built on the 55nm process running and supports the latest PCI-Express 2.0 interface. In addition to versions equipped with 512MB or 1.0GB of high-speed DDR2 memory, GECUBE is also offering a special edition equipped with 256MB or 512MB of high-speed GDDR3 memory and ATI's next-generation CrossFireX technology that allows for up to four graphics card to run in parallel. For gamers, this offers a complete solution to their performance needs and expands their upgrade options.

Thanks to Asian website ITOCP, we can get an idea of how fast the first ATI Radeon 3 series dual GPU graphics card will be. Benching on Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 processor at 2.4GHz and 2GB of RAM, the system managed to score 9573 marks (SM2.0: 4494, SM3.0/HDR: 4476) on Futuremark 3D Mark 2006 set to 2560x1600 resolution. The GPU Core/Memory of this card is rated at 770MHz / 2250MHz (2x512MB). Lower resolution benchmark numbers are not mentioned in the original article.

The beta version of the 8.1 Catalyst driver for Windows Vista has found its way onto the internet, although very few details are available so you'll have to try it yourself to find the improvements. The driver works on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the OS and should be compatible with all Radeon 9550 and newer cards. The driver can be downloaded here.

After taking the market by storm with the launch of the HD2900XT in mid-May, GECUBE launched today this year's heavyweight graphics card - the HD3800 Series. The product that reviewers and gamers have all been waiting for is now finally here. Equipped with the latest RV670 (55nm) graphics chip from AMD, the HD3800 series marks the first time that the PCI-Express 2.0 interface has been used on a graphics card and incorporates the latest ATI CrossFireX technology. With support for DirectX 10.1, it delivers next-generation 3D graphics performance for ultimate realism. You can now enjoy both high resolution and superior image processing technology at the same time!

Graphics card manufacturer Diamond has quite conveniently leaked the specs for AMD/ATI's upcoming HD 3800 series of cards, giving the technical details of both the HD 3850 and the HD 3870. These do conflict a little with the earlier leaked specs, although they're still quite similar. According to the Diamond site, the HD 3850 will feature a core speed of 668MHz and 256MB of 256-bit GDDR3 memory at 828MHz (1656MHz DDR) and the HD 3870 will have a core speed of 775MHz and 512MB GDDR4 memory at 1.2GHz (2.4GHz DDR). Both will be manufactured using a 55nm process, and both will support DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1. Interestingly the cards are also said to feature up to four GPU support using an AMD 790FX based motherboard. The full specs are shown in the screenshots below, as Diamond has now removed the cards from its website.

When gamers heard that the original R600 had a TDP of over 200W, gamers who wanted to play at respectable resolutions and settings went out and bought new power supplies capable of handling such a load, and dealt with the noise that comes with dissipating such a high TDP. Fortunately, these problems are not going to be associated with the RV670, AMD's next high-end graphics card. The RV670XT has a TDP of 132W, and the RV670Pro boasts a modest 104W TDP. Hopefully, these lower heat yields will allow for a quieter cooling solution for these cards. AMD attributes these lower TDPs to a 55nm manufacturing process.

While we have been hearing rumors of the HD2900Pro for some time now, and AMD has just recently released the card to the public, all that press does no good if customers can't even get the card. Fortunately, American online PC part retailer Newegg thought ahead, and made sure to stock plenty of the HD2900. You can now buy three variants of the 2900Pro, from a Sapphire model with 512MB of VRAM for $265USD, to one with an impressive 1 GB of VRAM for a reasonable $330USD.