ATI is really giving NVIDIA a hard time. The RV770 GPU proves to be a cheap nonetheless powerful solution, and NVIDIA was caught off guard this time. Looks like ATI is way over those rough times it’s been through last year and now prepares to obliterate the competition with the HD 4870X2 powerhouse.

NVIDIA is now forced to come up with emergency plans. Fudzilla reports that, as of tomorrow, the green guys plan to drop the prices of Geforce GTX 280 and 260. NVIDIA is experiencing problems, as its new cards are not selling as well as previously anticipated. Not to mention that NVIDIA finally admitted that Radeon HD 4870 ended up better than expected.

In its desperate attempt to keep things under control, NVIDIA will cut $90 off the Geforce GTX 280 price-tag, but this is only intended for the GPU integrating partners, so we can’t tell for sure it this move is going to change the suggested e-tail price as well. However, end users will still pay around $90 less. Furthermore, GTX 260 will become $30 cheaper to partners, but NVIDIA specifically states that it will offer limited price protection, which means that some partners/distributors and stores might end up with some overpriced cards at their warehouses.

While NVIDIA clutches its fist and grinds its teeth in order to survive the devastating assault coming from ATI, the green fans could be expecting some more price drops as soon as Radeon HD 4870X2 is out in August and that’s all end users want to know.

AMD has recently unveiled an updated roadmap to a select group of analysts and affiliates. This doesn’t mean that some valuable info hasn’t already been leaked. ChileHardware has somehow managed to get a sneak peek at one presentation slide form the latest AMD map, a presentation slide that gives us some key features on the new SB800 Southbridge series.

First thing noted by the guys over at CHW.net is that the SB800 might come in more than one version.
The SB800 isn’t just an updated SB700. AMD has completely redesigned it and it is supposed to include a faster chipset interconnect called A-Link Express 3.0 which uses four 5GHz PCIe 2.0 x1 lanes instead of four 2.5GHz PCIe lanes that the current SB700/750 A-link Express 2.0 relies on.

Looks like AMD is going to make some radical changes with its next DDR3 architecture. One of these is the implementation the PCIe interface directly into the Southbridge. SB800 will be the first chip to take over the PCIe interface, as previous models have relied on the Northbridge for all PCIe connectivity.

Other features that will be integrated with the SB800 chips include a Gigabit Ethernet MAC, optional support for up to 6GB/s SATA and AHCI 1.2 with FIS based switching. Also, instead of 12 USB 2.0 ports, the new Southbridge is going to support 14, via a third EHCI USB controller.

As part of the Fusion platform, the SB800 is going to improve the power consumption. There will also be support for an integrated clock, embedded I/O controllers, of which one is going to focus on the DASH support for system management. Improved hardware monitoring options will also be present.

The Radeon HD 4850 and HD 4870 cards are changing history as we speak. Stocks are depleted as soon as the merchants are refreshing them, and producers that were only using NVIDIA GPUs for their cars are considering the ATI solutions now, too. In this new situation, NVIDIA overclocked the 9800 GTX and called it 9800 GTX+, to face the Radeon HD 4850, but what do you say if I mention a factory overclocked Radeon HD 4870?

"Sweeeeeeet," that's all I can say for now, but here's what Diamond has to say about its upcoming product, the overclocked ATI Radeon HD 4870, expected to be exclusively available, at least in its early days, from Smooth Creations :"The Diamond Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition was clocked to kick some ass. We didn’t just want a fast card out in the market, we wanted the fastest card that could kick the living daylights and bust some performance records. We wanted a card that kicked the competitions teeth into the curb, and that’s exactly what our engineers accomplished."

Yes, I know the card in the image is a Diamond HD 3870, but since we don't have any pictures with this new 4870, that should be fine, for now. The new card is going to have a pretty long name, so be sure to remember to add the "Diamond “Unlocked” Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition" to your shopping list. Why? Well, 800MHz core and 512MB GDDR5 memory operating at 4400MHz, up from 750MHz/3600MHz on reference design ATI Radeon HD 4870, how's that? Even more, you can push this card higher, as sources from Diamond Multimedia claim.


Mario Gastelum, director of product development and engineering at Diamond, said "The firmware was custom designed to enable end users to go beyond the normal over clocked speeds and allow them to push their cards for higher performance via the Catalyst Control Center. The GPU’s custom firmware has been unlocked to push cards to GPU settings of up to 950MHz and Memory of up 1200MHz."

Awesome! No pricing is available yet, but since this card may beat the 280 GTX, and come for a lower price tag than that, I am sure Diamond's "Black Beauty" will become the best HD 4870. Anyway, I have one demand for the PCB of the card - any color you want, guys, as long as it's black! Thank you! ;)

The scorching temperatures outside are ready to give you and your PC a bit of a headache. You’ll probably be relying on huge fans and air conditioners for yourself, but don’t forget to upgrade the PC cooling systems in case Everest reports some nasty temperatures inside your shiny case. If water cooling isn’t what you need for the moment and you’d like to stick to old school air stuff, maybe you should check what Cooler Master prepares for you this July.

That would be Cooler Master’s new V8 CPU cooler. It’s sort of big, measuring 120 x 128 x 161.1mm so you might want to check if you have enough room around the CPU in order to fit this behemoth. Moreover, it weighs 865g because it has four aluminum heatsinks which are connected to the copper base via eight 6mm heat-pipes. The heatsinks are cooled by a big 120mm fan placed in the middle of the cooler.

According to Fudzilla, the imposing fan integrates a nice rifle bearing system and it can spin up between 800 and 1800 RPMs. The good thing is that you also get a speed controller bundled with this one. V8 supports all the actual platforms out there including Intel's LGA775 and AMD's older 940 plus AM2/AM2+ socket processors.

There’s no price info for the moment, but at least we know it’ll hit the US market in a couple of weeks, while Europe will have to wait for it until August.