Starting at $599, Apple's Mac mini claims to be the smallest way to Core 2 Duo on your desktop. Well, from now on, we could send it into the past with that claim, since ASUS has fitted the Core 2 Duo processor into an even smaller case and, in my opinion, they even managed to come up with a better design. The name of their device - NOVA P22...


First of all, why would you get such a thing? Basically, there should be only one answer - space, but there's always more than meets the eye, so if you want a desktop computer to draw your friend's attention, one that would make you caress its case and go "my preeecioussss" every morning (maybe not quite that far!), the NOVA P22 is the latest thing to get!

The NOVA P22 comes with built-in HiFi speakers located in the front, and it also has support for analog or digital speakers with Dolby Digital Live or DTS technology, its heat dissipation technology allows 25dB operating levels, but it also incorporates a powerful Core 2 Duo desktop processor.

When talking about connectivity, the P22 comes with 802.11n wireless and Bluetooth 2.0, making it easier for this computer to interact with most notebooks and handheld devices.

At last, it should be noted that you'll get a Windows® MCE remote control included in the package, so you can enjoy your favorite music and movies without moving from your comfortable couch...

For now, I can't tell you anything about the price, but I am sure they'll have a decent pricing, to make it a worthy competitor to the Mac mini. Apple, get ready for the ASUS revolution!

These days are so dense in interesting news, that best way to deliver is pack'em and give them to you, as many as possible. Obviously, I won't do such a think without any logic, so here's what I have today for you - Alienware just released a quad-graphics gaming system thank's to latest Catalyst drivers package, AMD revealed some of its plans for the future, while Intel has shown its interest to be more active in the graphics market from now on. Pretty good for tonight's news package, don't you think?


First, let's take Alienware's ALX CrossFireX desktop - 2X ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2, each with 1GB GDDR3, 45nm quad-core Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 processor overclocked to 4.0GHz and no less than 4GB of DDR3-1333 SDRAM, all on an Intel X38 mainboard. The rest of the configuration can be imagined, and the base price goes a bit over $6000...

Next, we have AMD's official statements made during the introduction of the upcoming 45nm processors - by this month's end, the Perseus platform, a competitor to Intel's vPro, should arrive. This one will include dual- to quad-core processors, integrated 780-based graphics and, optionally, graphics cards to work in Hybrid Graphics mode.

Once the Perseus platform arrives, it should be followed shortly by a few quad-core Phenoms, as well as triple-cores. With frequencies around 2.2GHz, the new processors will have 95W TDP, which seems a bit too much, when compared to Intel's current CPUs(anyway, let's remember that Intel has made the step into the 45nm realm already!).

In April and May, AMD's gonna launch the Cartwhell platform for the mainstream market, followed by some more Phenom processors, and concluding with the mobile Puma platform, in June. Pretty busy spring for AMD, I must say!

Last one on today's list is Intel - they have the advantage now, and it seems they want to use it. Where? In the area of the market they only tried almost a decade ago, with their i740 AGP card, but 3dfx, ATI, Matrox and NVIDIA's cards of the time made them leave the discrete graphics market alone. Now, there's only ATI and NVIDIA to be afraid of...but Intel's situation is completely different.

The very short story about Intel is this - they promised a discrete graphics chip by the end of the year, as well as new integrated graphics to match AMD's 780, in the coming months. Will they do it, or not? Well, that's what remains to be seen, as usual...

Some people that leave a few years in the past say they are going with NVIDIA because ATI has unstable drivers, but that's completely wrong. ATI's drivers are better and better with each version, and today, AMD just confirmed all the goodies announced to become available in Catalyst 8.3, expected to be ready for download in the next 24 hours or so...


As you probably know already, the Catalyst 8.3 suite will deliver both CrossFireX for Vista, as well as ATI Hybrid Graphics Technology. The best part of the new CrossFireX is that you can mix any HD 3850, HD 3870 or HD 3870 X2 card, up to four-GPU. With CrossFireX, you could easily combine a HD 3870 and a HD 3850 card, so the old limitation of having two identical cards is no longer in place.

For casual gamers, ATI's Hybrid CrossFire allows to combine the power of an integrated GPU with a discrete graphics solution into a single graphics subsystem, and it's obvious that this could be a choice worthy to be taken in consideration by those with very low budgets that need to improve their gaming performance. On the other hand, the SurroundView feature offers support for up to four independent displays, for those who want to multitask on multiple displays...

At last, Catalyst 8.3 will also deliver DirectX 10.1 and Tessellation Support, Anti-Aliasing enhancements, HydraVision support for Windows Vista, Digital Panel GPU image scaling and Advanced Video Quality controls.

The Accelerated Graphics Port interface, simply known as AGP, is almost 11 years old, and despite the fact that virtually all new mainboards use only the new PCI Express, AMD/ATI is still trying to offer support for it. Unlike ATI, NVIDIA is dumping AGP, leaving it behind. These being said, it seems it's only a matter of time until ATI will do the same thing, but for now, there's a small market share to be hard with AGP graphics cards using last GPUs available on the market...


For example, while lucky NVIDIA fans may still find new GeForce 7 series cards for their old AGP mainboards, and unlucky ones will have to look for used AGP cards, ATI's followers could grab pretty powerful new cards for their old systems, for an example, the HD 3850.

Sapphire has started shipping AGP 8X HD 3850 cards recently, and AMD promised to release Vista drivers for them soon, since only Windows XP ones are available as we speak.

At last, it should be noted that some technical problems stopped NVIDIA from allowing their GeForce 8xxx cards to enter the AGP realm, so they decided not to bother to fix it, after all... so, for NVIDIA, the AGP interface is dead. May it rest in peace!

Today, at CeBIT, AMD is changing the world. While they aren't breaking any record in the CPU or video card market, they are coming up with something a lot of people need, but only a few dare to dream about - a platform with integrated graphics that actually allows you to play games, and when I say "games", I am thinking about much more than Solitaire, NFS Porsche or any other game that was great...almost a decade ago!


First, the promises - new Catalyst drivers are going to be released on a monthly basis (so far, so good), and the first two 45nm processors are going to arrive in the second half of the year, hopefully in summer, and not around Christmas.

According to what we know, these two processors are going to be the Shanghao chip for servers, and the Deneb desktop processor. Obviously, these are only codenames for now, so the final products may have different names. The good part is that, according to AMD's Garry Silcott, a "select list" of customers already have received samples, so let's hope for the better...

...but the better is already here, as the best integrated graphics solution available at this time, exactly as I mentioned in the opening part of this article!

What we have here is the 780 chipset, which features an integrated R620 core with DirectX 10.1 support, UVD and Hybrid Graphics, and if everything works as planned, the 780 could kill ATI's entry-level discrete graphics cards. Why? Well, according to AMD, the $19 chipset performs as well as the $50 low-end cards, in terms of graphics performance, so...why spend more when you can get the same for less money?

If we look at the entire deal from another angle, AMD's new chipset may simply wipe out Intel and NVIDIA from the integrated graphics market, so competing with its own low-end graphics card won't hurt them much, after all.

Now, the cherry on top of the cake - benchmark results! Compared to Intel's G35, the 780G(the faster version of the 780 chipset) reached twice the 3DMark06 score, was three times faster in 3DMark05, while announced frame rates (using a Phenom processor, of course) are these: 27 fps under Crysis, 43 fps under Call of Duty 4, 40 fps under Half-Life 2 and 35 fps under Doom 3, all using the 1024X768 resolution.

I'll stop here now, but I am sure we'll get more inside news in the coming days, and since there's a lot to talk about the topics above, you can subscribe to our news by email, so you won't miss a thing, because we won't miss a thing, for sure!