AMD is basically hoping that its new graphics card, ATI’s Radeon HD 4870 X2, brings it back at the top of its game by claiming it is the fastest graphics card out there in the entire world. And from the results from PC Perspective, it may be - having a higher frames per second (FPS) rate than its competitors.

At the time of the launch of the 4800 series, they were both less expensive and more powerful than the GeForce 9800 GTX and the GTX 260 respectively.

The card will feature two RV770 GPUs - running in tandem in a "CrossFire" configuration, DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 2.0 support, its own Avivo Video Post Processor and Display Platform, 2 DVI and a HDMI outputs, and a 256-bit GDDR3/GDDR5 memory interface.

It is scheduled to be released in September at the price of US$399, or about AU$457.

Source: AMD Press Release, Engadget

Moving into the multicore era, Intel hopes that its forthcoming Nehalem architecture will be a success - and has renamed it as the ‘Core i7′ brand for the first lot of chips using the new architecture. There will also be a new logo, well two - the traditional blue that many will sport, and a "Extreme" edition with a black logo.

The ‘i7′ identity will be attached to them during the first wave of new chips, set to be out by the end of the year, and will be built on the same 45nm die as the Penryn chips - instead built on Nehalem.

Nehalem will see all four cores fit in onto a single piece of silicon, and will have an integrated memory controller with support for DDR, Level 3 cache (up to 8MB on desktop computers and 24MB for servers) to be shared among the four cores, a point-to-point processor interconnect to replace the front side bus and integrated graphics.

It will also support simultaneous multi-threading, meaning it can handle two threads per core. As well, the new architecture is set to be used when the chips shrink to 32nm under what Intel is calling "Westmere" by the end of 2009, with the following year will see the new "Sandy Bridge" architecture replacing Nehalem.

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Finally, something you can make that is geeky with Lego. (Image from Luke Andersen)

In our second edition of Geek Out, we introduce the first, fully functioning PC made out of that popular Danish toy that we used to make a lot of things - Lego.

Luke Andersen, a computer science major from Rensselar Polytechnic Institute, has built a PC that is completely made out of black Lego bricks. Designing his idea first on a simple CAD program, he then gone out and bought 1,238 Lego pieces (in total: $140) to assemble it - it even has a removable panel for god sakes; which is a good thing, because we don’t want him to destroy it.

Running on Windows Server 2003 with Terminal Server; he plans to use it as a backup and development machine. It has ASP.NET server, MySQL Express and VMware Server - which he plans to use to run FreeBSD to make the machine into a web server.

You can view the video that he has posted to show you how he made it after the jump (means click the “Read More” link to find out more). We will also post a couple of links so you can make it yourself.

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A second, official retail store will open at 9am this Saturday (9 August) in Chatswood, NSW. The store will also allow people to register to a range of workshops online, including one-on-one training and teaching sessions for children. Workshops will be available for Final Cut, OS X, iWork and Adobe’s CS3 products.

The new store will be located in Chatswood Chase Shopping Centre, at 345 Victoria Ave, and will have similar features at the Sydney CBD store, including the "Genius Bar". It will also be open seven days a week.

The IEEE 1394 working group, the group behind FireWire’s development in its 400Mbps and 800Mbps configurations, have approved the new S1600 and S3200 standards.

The new standards are built around the already established ecosystem of FireWire, but just increases the speed to 1.6Gbps and 3.2Gbps - and all should be backwards compatible with the older 800 series. There are also plans for a 6.4Gbps spec, but that is not going to happen for a long time.

FireWire is competing with the new USB 3.0 standard, which has a theoretical speed of 4.8Gbps. But, we could see it fall to the back to the crowd once USB 3.0 is introduced, since USB ports are common in motherboards, and FireWire ports are rare in its 800 spec - except on a Mac.

Source: Ars Technica

RUMOUR MILL: The blogs are rumouring that Apple could be releasing a brand red iPhone 3G model for the holidays.

The red coloured iPhone would be part of the (PRODUCT) RED campaign, a charitable organisation that donates money to fight AIDS in Africa. It will also join several Apple’s other (PRODUCT) RED items like iTunes gift cards, the 8GB iPod Nano and the 1GB iPod Shuffle.

As well, it would be an easier way to score an iPhone, while helping a good cause.

Image from MacBlogz.

Hector Ruiz has stepped down from his position as Chief Executive Officer of AMD, the rival of Intel, in favour of President and COO Dirk Meyer after being elected by the board of directors.

While he was instrumental in elevating AMD to become a rival to Intel’s stranglehold on the chip manufacturing market, he also admitted that he was the reason why the company was in financial distress after racking up billions of dollars in losses after an ill-timed acquisition of ATI.

Ruiz, however, will remain on the Board of Directors, serving as executive chairman. Previously, he had been chairman of the board.

The ex-chairman and the son of the founder of South Korean-based company Samsung, Lee Kun-hee has been found guilty of tax evasion by the Seoul Central District Court; however, he will not serve three years at prison after the court handed down a suspended sentence.

He was charged for not paying about 47 billion won (or US$46 million) in taxes, and fined him 110 billion won (US$109 million). Prosecutors wanted him to serve seven years in jail and pay a 350 million won (US$347 million) fine.

However, the judge refused to give him the sentence, saying that the crime was not enough to serve prison time that the prosecutors wanted, and gave him three years of prison time and five years on a suspended sentence.

”The extent of his crime is not serious enough to sentence him to prison,” the presiding judge, Judge Min Byung-hun, said.

This is his second conviction. In 1996, he was found guilty of making payments to the former president Roh Tae-woo, who served as the South Korean President from 1988 to 1993. He was not the only chief that was convicted, many South-Korean family-run conglomerates, also known as chaebols, were also found guilty.

Intel is expected to face new antitrust charges from regulators in Europe after focusing on the marketing and sales practices on the chip giant, according to the Wall Street Journal’s website and citing unidentified people that are claimed to be familiar with the matter.

The new charges allege that Intel offered inducements to retailers in Europe in return of selling Intel and not from its rival Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD. These charges come after several months of being investigated by antitrust regulators around the world, including the US and Japan.

It has faced little objections to its practices, however, in its home in the United States, except for the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation and one investigation done by the New York Attorney General.

Sooo, you want to smash your iPhone open? Well this is exacly what two guys done on youtube. Really all you have to do is get a big hammer and break it. So why don’t you try it yourself? Link.