In the IT world, delays can be fatal. We have seen that happening a long time ago, when delays killed 3dfx. Now, the time has come for NVIDIA to delay some products, especially when those were expected by everyone. Well, being given the excellent behaviour of the 88xx series on the market, they won't go down from such a tiny hit, but ATI could take advantage of this and recover some of the lost ground...

According to various sources, almost everything NVIDIA promised to offer next month will have to wait at least until March to hit the shelves. Despite the fact 88xx video cards are still strong alternatives for the high-end gamers, ATI has a full DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1 lineup already available, while the delayed products from NVIDIA include 780a, 750a, 790i, 790i Ultra chipsets, as well as the card that should battle with ATI's HD3870 X2, the 9800 GX2.

For now, there's no rumor about the reason of the delay, but everyone would like to think this is happening because the Chinese new year holiday is near. But what if this is only an excuse? Well, ATI should go ahead and sell as much as possible, and work on improving those drivers to the max.

At last, it should be noted that, despite its poor performance, the HD 3600 series is already available, while its future competitor, the 9600GT, was delayed from the 14th to the 21st of February.

These being said, it should be clear that now is the right time for ATI to put the pedal to the metal and come back in the mid-end and high-end video card sectors, because NVIDIA may be late, but they will surely get back with a vengeance...

AMD's idea of having a CPU and a GPU on the same chip is not something new, because others tried it before, without any interesting results (I am talking about the dead & gone Cyrix MediaGX). Anyway, the market looks different today when compared to late 90s, as well as AMD's approach to the idea. The AMD Fusion technology should hit the market in late 2009, and we have a long road until then, but for now, let's stick to what we know: according to sources from AMD, the Fusion chip will be a redesign of the current Phenom processor...

Today, we have on-board video chips for low-cost and media center computers, and tomorrow, with Fusion's help, we could have the CPU and GPU on the same chip, taking the manufacturing price of such systems even lower. On the other hand, such solutions could also be used on various portable devices, such as game consoles and other gadgets.

For now, 2009 seems one century away, but in the meantime, AMD should bring in a Turion 64 mobile CPU with even closer integration of the GPU, which should help extending the battery life of notebooks using it, according to sources from inside the company.

I don't know how good is going to end up Fusion to be, but this may be the winning card for AMD. If the desktop and server markets seem lost, the mobile devices market is a sector where AMD could make up for the lost territory and prepare its comeback against Intel, but until we get to see that, the coming year is going to be probably one of AMD's hardest years so far...

My, that one was fast! Two days ago, I was telling you about the release of the new HD3400 and HD3600 series from ATI, and today I already started to find full reviews, with benchmark results and a lot of technical details, as we all like them. It seems now ATI has a full line of DirectX 10.1 video cards available, while NVIDIA's 9xxx series are still hiding in the shadow of the excellent 88xx generation. Obviously, things are going to change pretty soon, but for now, let's talk a bit about ATI's new products, shall we?

As I was saying, the new cards are targeting the low-end sector, with prices that should go between $50 and $100, and featuring Display Port, HD video upscaling and DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1, both only available in Vista (yes, I know...). The only problem is that ATI may have forced these cards a bit on the market, but if they manage a good entry in the OEM market, my opinion is only dust in the wind. Anyway, let me detail this...

A couple months ago, I had to choose between the older X1950 Pro and the new 2600XT cards from ATI. After reading a lot of reviews and checking my choices at the store I usually use for my hardware purchases, I ended up choosing the X1950 Pro. I don't regret it at all. Now, the HD3650 should fill the gap left behind by the HD3850 card, but it seems this is not happening. The reason? Well, in most real-life tests, the HD3650 finishes behind the older 2600XT.

According to Rick Bergman, “With the ATI Radeon HD 3400 and ATI Radeon HD 3600 series, AMD is delivering outstanding graphics performance to the mainstream. AMD is leading the industry by delivering top-to-bottom DirectX 10.1 support with modular graphics capabilities for easy upgradeability. It’s a part of our commitment to deliver ‘The Ultimate Visual Experience’ to more users than ever before.”, but no matter how much I would love ATI, I must disagree. Come on! Let's get serious! ATI delivers a lot of features to the low-end segment, but this is not what I had in mind as "mainstream graphics" performance, when talking about the HD3xxx series!

Once upon a time, you could simply get a $100 video card and enjoy a lot of games with all detail sliders pushed to the max. Are those time ever going to come back? Probably no, but it feels good remembering them...

Next year, one of my favorite hardware manufacturers should celebrate its 40th year of existence. Unfortunately, the latest evolutions in the industry and recent rumors make me doubt a little that they will get to have any party in 2009. If you didn't guess it by now, I am talking about Advanced Micro Devices, usually known simply as AMD.

Some analysts started to say that AMD and IBM's microelectronics division could change their current relationship to "a more formal" one, and they may even take things further, to a merger. Other disagree, and I tend to agree with them. Why?

Well, a merger between IBM and AMD would help them fight Intel better, and IBM would have a serios reason to merge with AMD, despite the fact this may be against their strategy in the last years. Let's remember that Apple dropped the PowerPC architecture for Intel's Core Duo processors, leaving IBM staring at the sun...

On the other hand, while AMD's processors may not be able to fight Intel, at least for the moment, latest graphics cards from ATI look pretty good, and since recent releases are boiling-hot, we need to wait for things to coll down a bit to draw conclusions...

Seagate is, without any doubt, the largest hard drive manufacturer on Earth. Since it's not enough to have the lead in numbers, they are also working hard in researching new technologies and trying to improve existing ones before anyone else. Since their consumer-level products are the only ones having a 5-year warranty, it's obvious their research and manufacturing teams are doing a great job, and today I just found out they are planning to improve hybrid hard disks, taking speed and reliability another few steps further.


If you didn't know about the existence of HHDs, it's pretty simple - they are the link between "old school" hard drives, and the new (and very expensive) solid state drives (SSDs). The MacBook Air is the best example of how an SSD can change the price of a product, since the price of the version using a 64GB SSD is more than $1000 higher than that of the "standard" MacBook Air.Anyway, currently the performance of HHDs over traditional hard drives doesn't justify the higher price tag, and so Seagate wants to set things straight. At this time, HHDs only feature up to 256MB of flash memory, and since regular drives already started to come with 32MB of cache memory, the improvement is not as high as expected.According to Joni Clark, senior product marketing manager at Seagate, "What the consumers came to us and said, and what the lackluster reviews told us, was that… customers want more performance out of hybrid drives. They said, go back to the hybrid technology, and give us either larger [amounts of] flash, a better use of flash, or a combination of both.", and since this is completely true, we need to see how well are they going to blend performance and competitive pricing into a single product.Unfortunately, the new drive generation from Seagate isn't something clearly shaped to anyone at this time, as Ms' Clark only said the new drive will be "focused on flash memory" and "will blow anything that's out there today out of the water" so, once again, we need to sit back and wait...