The Inquirer's mole has been a busy bee and has dug up some new rumours!

Some of Nvidia guys that know how things work have told our friends that NV36, Geforce FX 5900 Ultra already has support for pixel shader 3.0 but there is no any driver publicly available that will support it. µ The same source implied that when Nvidia tested pixel shader 3.0 internally, there was a hardware problem.

In this article Xbitlabs takes a look at two integrated sound subsystems. The first is formed by VIA's VT8235 South Bridge and an AC?97 VIA VT1616 codec, and the second one is based on nForce2 MCP-T with the integrated APU SoundStorm and an AC?97 Realtek ALC650 codec. For better comparison they also include the results for Creative's Audigy2 sound card.

Digit-life have thrown up their Nvidia nForce2 Ultra 400 Mainboard Roundup! Here's a byte.

nForce2 boards for the AMD Athlon XP (Socket A) chipset are not a rarity today, and the new modification of this chipset named nForce2 Ultra 400 doesn't look like a real technological innovation. No secret that the 400 MHz FSB was supported even in the nForce2-S/G. NVIDIA "suddenly found out" that the above mentioned chipset didn't have the 400MHz support only after the launch of the first Athlon XP which worked at that FSB clock.

Just spotted this bit of news over at OCworkbench.com:

Today, we spent some time with a VIA K8 A64 board and noticed something that we would like to share with you.

The popular motherboard maker MSI has made an article on overclocking a Pentium 4 2.4C (800MHz FSB) to an amazing 3.6GHz, in order to show the great overclocking possibilities with their 848P. To do this they used their new 848P Neo motherboard, a Pentium 4 2.4C and the memory they used was GEIL PC4200. In their first experiment they managed to get their 2.4GHz Pentium 4 up to 3.6GHz by cranking the FSB up to 300MHz. Holy mobo circuit...

Games Radar reports that Sony will finally release the new PlayStation 2 model in the UK next month - and it'll be available in silver as well as the traditional black.

The new version of the PS2 - which was first released in Japan back in May - includes a host of new features primarily relating to the machine's DVD playback facilities: Along with standard DVDs, the new PS2 (which is cosmetically unchanged) will also be able to play DVD-R and DVD-RW discs and supports DVD progressive scan playback, which can provide far higher quality images than the current PS2.

It has been a long time coming but we are finally reaching the beginning stages of 64-bit mainstream computing. AMD has been the first to bring a 64-bit processor to the market with any true support in the Opteron. VIA is one of the key chipset companies supporting AMD64 and today TweakTown's Shawn "Toxic" Baker takes a preview look at their new K8T800 chipset with AMD Opteron 242 and 244 processors. 64-bit computing is boarding - don't miss the train!

Myhard sends word that they've snagged some photo's and details on the following products:

ASUS K8V (K8T800/VT8237) Athlon 64 Motherboard ASUS V9950 SE/TD (GeForce FX 5900 SE) ASUS P4V533 (VIA P4M266) Pentium 4 Motherboard

Just spotted this bit of news at [H]ard[OCP.

Trey points out that CyberPowerSystem's page notes an unheard of model of AMD CPU. "AMD? ATHLON? 64 FX 51".

The CPU is matched with a Socket 940 SK8N mainboard from Asus that sports the nForce3 chipset. The memory configuration is noted as "1024 MB (512MBx2) PC3200 400MHz Dual Channel DDR".

It takes a lot to attract attention with a new car in Monterey, where a Ferrari on the street rarely warrants a second glance. But Bugatti was able to do just that with its new super car.

The Veyron 16·4 is powered by a 1001-horsepower W16 quad-turbocharged 8.0-liter engine with all-wheel drive. Bugatti claims this new super car will reach a speed of 252 mph. Acceleration is also impressive?the Veyron can reach 180 mph in just 14 seconds!

Creative hat zwei neue Soundkarten angekündigt, mit der die erfolgreiche Audigy-2-Reihe weiter ausgebaut werden soll. Mit der Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS richtet man sich dabei vor allem an Spieler, die Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro mit ihrem externen I/O-Modul ist dagegen eher für versierte Anwender interessant, die die Karte zu Mehrspuraufnahmen nutzen möchten.

Dave Baumann at Beyond 3D sends word that they have posted a mini review which looks at PS2.0 DX9 functionality!

Reverend introduced a new benchmark to B3D recently, being Tomb Raider: Angel Of Darkness. The importance of this benchmark is that it is the first to full utilise PS2.0 DX9 functionality within a gaming environment.

VR-Zone has done up a roundup on the new VIA KT600 boards in the market from a total of 9 manufacturers! Here's a rip.

The boards that we will be looking today comprise of ABIT KV7, ASUS A7V600, AZZA KT600-ALX, EPoX 8KRA2+, FIC KT600 Pro, Gigabyte 7VT600 1394, MSI KT6 Delta, Soltek SL-KT600 and lastly SOYO KT600 Dragon Ultra. We have checked out which board delivers the best performance and which board will become the favorite among the overclockers.

AMD's upcoming Athlon 64 low-end variants, codenamed 'Paris' and 'Victoria', will not be offered as 64-bit processors but as 32-bit upgrades to the current Athlon XP line.

So claims Xbit Labs, having glanced at the chip maker's latest roadmaps.

Whichever way you cut the market, TSMC remained the world's biggest chip foundry during the first half of the year, well ahead of its nearest rival, UMC.

Proof - if it were needed - comes from market watcher IC Insights, which this week published its league charts for pure-play foundries and for foundries that also do their own chip development work. Put the two together and you have a picture of the overall foundry business.

A survey by market research firm iSuppli said that AMD lost market share in China, while both Intel and NVIDIA gained ground in what all three see as a lucrative future marketplace.

According to the figures, Intel stayed number one in China in 2002, NVIDIA moved from number four in 2001 to number two, while AMD fell from number eight in 2001 to number 12 in the following year.

Just spotted this bit of news over at Xbilabs.com

ATI?s new graphics monster will utilize a new type of VPU cooler, a more efficient one to cool down the powerful 0.15 micron R360 VPU running at astonishing 450MHz.. Other features of ATI graphics cards will remain untouched: the product will come equipped with D-Sub, DVI-I and TV-Out connectors.

The Firing Squad have thrown up their image quality comparison Showdown between NVIDIA and ATI high end graphics cards! Here's a snip.

Once upon a time, evaluating graphics hardware was a simple, straightforward process. You could get away with a couple of benchmarks, a bit about the card itself and a conclusion that compared the product in question to its competitors.

Intel's CEO Craig Barrett has warned everyone not to break open the Cristal champagne too soon, as it's too early to say whether the PC market is recovering.

In an interview with Dow Jones, Barrett described demand for PCs as spotty but Intel is buying 35,000 PCs for his own company. We presume they're not Athlon 64s.

Reports of problems with the 754 pin version of the Athlon 64 and of performance not being good are ill-founded, according to motherboard makers we've talked to.

At launch in late September, AMD will introduce a 754-pin and a 940 version of the Athlon 64 and that will be followed next year by a 939 pin version.