ATI's X1000 series is now officially introduced, but low and behold the numbers are in line what we disclosed two weeks ago. Could this be an Ouija board outbreak?

Hardware Analysis

Now enter in the X1800-series from ATI and we see a similar pattern taking shape and after spending some time talking with the aforementioned system builders we?re sad to report that tomorrow?s pending reviews on the X1800?s may not deliver the full facts that we?ve uncovered with regards to their availability.

GD Hardware

It?s been several months since Microsoft released their Windows XP Pro x64 edition. At the first we had to suffer through a lack of drivers; now at least most of the popular manufactures provide driver support for the x64 platform. Many application developers also provided us with x64 binaries. Now what?s left? Just Games

I have been working for operating systems companies for nearly eight years ? first in UNIX, then in Linux. During this time, as happens to nearly all of us, I have been frequently asked the question, "What exactly do you do for a living?"

TheTechZone

Few were surprised when Microsoft (along with Intel) announced that they would back HD DVD over Blu-ray. While Microsoft's stance on the next-generation of optical storage media was officially neutral, their close working relationship with Toshiba led us to suspect that HD DVD would get the nod. The interesting question is, why?

Arstechnica

The hardware and gaming markets are going to be turned on their heads in the coming months. Do you understand the issues involved in evaluating the technology progressions we're going to be making, and do you understand the ethos behind the editorial?

Bit-Tech

At the recently concluded Intel Developer Forum (IDF) , Intel made a number of surprising announcements. It was largely speculated that Intel will play catch up with AMD in the 64-bit and dual-core market, but Intel took an entirely different approach. Not only did it refuse to give much importance to dual-core and 64-bit initially, news reports later suggested that Yonah ? Intel?s next generation mobile computing platform ? will neither be dual-core nor 64-bit, at least not in its first iteration.

Even now, after so many years since its appearance, iPod still manages to rule the MP3 Player world and this is even more remarkable if we think about the technologies? short life cycles.

Then Intel came out, yet again, and informed us that AGP was passé and we needed something a lot faster to keep up with future needs. The technology was called PCI Express (PCIe), which was revolutionary because not only did it exclude dedicated bus to the graphics cards, but it was also applicable across the entire motherboard, thereby replacing the archaic PCI technology.

Apple, the self proclaimed creator and pioneer of GUI computing as we know it, has been fairly hell bent on keeping everything in-house and proprietary including hardware locking its OS and the irritatingly un-functional single button mouse.

Microsoft is perhaps the most hated company in the history of business. Anointed with names such as the Redmond Giant, Microshaft, Microsloth, so on and so forth, the nicknames and jokes are perhaps exceeded only by the vengeance with which people hate it.

This is a commentary on Windows Vista and what MS' real intentions are with the new OS: to woo MAC users and Linux users with Vista's new GUI.

Here are the top 5 things I want to see in the next 5 years.

Following the feedback received from the initial article: Battlefield 2: The Video Card Controversy, it appears this issue is far from clear and understood. Battlefield 2 requires new hardware in order to even startup, while in the past games have required new hardware in order to run smoothly at higher detail and resolution levels. Besides the fact that the minimum supported hardware, a Radeon 8500 is slower then the non-supported GeForce 4 Ti. With the upcoming release of Battlefield Modern Combat on the Xbox making this all the more laughable. Battlefield Modern Combat will be the Battlefield 2 Xbox port. The Xbox uses a tweaked version of the GeForce 3 running PS 1.3 and is programmed for in DirectX. This is clearly showing that DICE can make the Battlefield 2 engine run on GeForce 3/4 Ti hardware.

Once Apple had established itself as one of the world?s top brand with hard drive MP3 players, the company had to delve into other markets. Knowing that flash players are still more popular and account for significant sales of all portable audio players sold, Apple decided to introduce its very own flash player, thoughtfully named the iPod Shuffle.

The microprocessor industry has received a nice shake since AMD?s announcement of filing an antitrust complaint against Intel due to its monopoly in the market. Whether all of AMD?s claims in its 48-page complaint are valid is up to the court to decide and Intel to counter argue, but at least some of what AMD states is 110 percent correct.

Yesterday turned out to be the most widely anticipated day in the microprocessor realm. AMD finally filed an antitrust complaint against its archrival Intel, the world?s largest chipmaker. Regardless of the obvious superiority of AMD?s Athlon 64 line of microprocessors, the world?s largest OEMs such as Dell, HP and Sony have either offered limited AMD based systems or they have outright declined to work with AMD at all. Allegedly, this is due to unfair and monopolistic business practices by Intel.

Not everyone is cheering about RSS integration into Windows Longhorn and Internet Explorer 7. With the event of making RSS a native format for Longhorn, many software developers whom make stand-alone feed readers are crying out that Microsoft is once again shutting down a sector of business which in all respects is somewhat true. With the complete integration of the format within the OS, there is no need of stand-alone feed readers. Flexbeta has a nice write up about what MS is trying to accomplish with RSS integration into the OS.

As a PC Gamer you expect to upgrade, you expect that at some point your hardware will not run the latest games acceptably. Battlefield 2 does not even give you that option. It attempts to make all non DirectX 9 compatible video cards obsolete. Which means all GeForce 4 and older video cards will not run Battlefield 2. You cannot even start up the menu. Neither Electronic Arts nor the game's developer DICE have any plans to fix this. Even though the GeForce 4 line of video cards has enough horsepower to render the game it is not compatible with Pixel Shader 1.4. Emulation to Pixel Shader 1.3 would easily make the game playable on these cards but redundant texture checks make this difficult to implement.

All GeForce 4 owners need to read this!

NVIDIA has finally launched the much anticipated G70, or GeForce 7800 GTX, to the masses. While there?s a standard performance boost with this card, there is one thing that has me impressed with the launch: the availability. As we had pointed out earlier in our reports titled, "No More Paper Launches from ATI and NVIDIA" and "NVIDIA G70 Launch and Shipping Dates Confirmed" it?s refreshing to see that NVIDIA didn?t intend to do another paper launch. Due to the heat both NVIDIA and ATI had received with their 6800, X800 and X850 series, NVIDIA has thankfully listened to its customers and learned its lesson.