If I could do something to make a full day last at least 48 hours instead of 24, buying a gaming console would be the first thing to do afterwards. Unfortunately, I can't make the planet spin slower, so I will stick to my computer for a while, together with Snake Kenzia, when I have a meeting and I get to early or other similar situations (thank you, Nokia!). Anyway, I find it rather interesting to see that Nintendo Wii is headed to domination, despite the strong opposition it has from Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation, and this is exactly what we're going to talk about next...


Despite the evolution of gaming related sales this spring, recent figures from NPD show that, while sales of Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3/2 as well as handheld Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable dropped in April, Nintendo Wii sales are very strong, almost as half as they were during the last Holiday season!

Anita Frazier, an analyst from NPD, said "The industry continues to set a blistering sales pace, and now shows a year-to-date increase of 31% over last year’s record-setting revenues. This is the first month in many that we’ve seen a decrease in portable hardware and software sales, but it’s important to remember that this year, the Easter holiday fell in March as compared to April in 2007. April 2007 and March 2008 saw sizable games in portable in part due to the holiday timing."

Regarding those figures I mentioned above, it's enough to say that Nintendo Wii, with almost 715,000 units sold in April, managed to surpass the sales Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 2 and Sony PlayStation 3 got together. Do I have to say more?

Well, Shane Kim, corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios, seems to disagree with the above. He said "This is only the third year of our [X360] existence and only the second year of Sony [PS3] and Nintendo’s [Wii] existence. Are we just amusing ourselves by trying to declare a winner and loser while the customers are still out there deciding? […] I think it’s way too early… When somebody’s well on their way to reaching 100 million units [that would be the time]."

For me, the Wii is a winner in 2008. What's your opinion?

The ATI Catalyst 8.5 driver package is here, so I'll skip the introduction, jumping right to the part I am sure everyone is interested in - the performance improvements brought by this new version:


- Call of Juarez DX10: Performance increases up to 12% on systems containing an ATI Radeon HD 3xx0 series of products
- Halo: Performance increases by 10-30% across all of the supported ATI Radeon series of products
- Lost Planet DX10: Performance increases from 5 to 35% on systems containing an ATI Radeon HD 3xx0 series of products
- Stalker DX9: Performance increases by 20-50% when HDR is enabled in the game; across all ATI Radeon HD38x0 series of products
- World in Conflict DX10: Performance increases up to 25% on systems containing an ATI Radeon HD36x0 and/or an ATI Radeon 38x0 series of product. Higher performance gains are noticed on systems containing an ATI Radeon 3870x2 series of products.

Basically, all cards since Radeon 9500 are supported, but most improvements are targeting the last generations, of course. Here's more...

- Catalyst Control Center Component Video - This release of Catalyst introduces 480i and 480p support. These formats will be found in the predefied component video format list found in the Catalyst Control Center->Component Video->Advanced page.
- ATI Graphics Driver Uninstall Enhancement - This release of Catalyst introduces an update to the ATI uninstall utility.
- SECAM TV Out Support - This release of Catalyst introduces support within the graphics driver to enable TV output adhering to the SECAM standard.
- 1080p HDTV custom mode - This release of Catalyst 1080p HDTV display mode. This feature will be available for display devices that use an HDMI connector and is available under the Windows XP and Vista operating systems.
- Adaptive AA on OpenGL for Catalyst Control Center - This release of Catalyst introduces Adaptive AA for Orca Driver, geometry for alpha tested objects are now submitted multiple times to the hardware using the multi-sample mask feature to update one sample at a time in the frame buffer using centroid sampling. With each pass of the sampling position for textures is shifted to be at the location of the sample that is being updated in that pass.

...and it doesn't stop here, but I don't want to become boring, so just go to the official ATI drivers page, select your OS and card, then click on "Go." Good luck!

Less than a month ago, we were talking about Qimonda and its jump from GDDR3 to GDDR5, and now it seems those memory chips have found their place. Where? Obviously, in ATI's latest graphics cards! Today, it became official - AMD announced the first commercial implementation of GDDR5, but they won't work only with Qimonda, since Samsung and Hynix have also been mentioned.


Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Graphics Product Group, AMD, said "The days of monolithic mega-chips are gone. Being first to market with GDDR in our next-generation architecture, AMD is able to deliver incredible performance using more cost-effective GPUs. AMD believes that GDDR5 is the optimal way to drive performance gains while being mindful of power consumption. We’re excited about the potential GDDR5 brings to the table for innovative game development and even more exciting game play."

These being said, I hardly wait to see the first ATI cards using GDDR5, because that day is surely not that far. With NVIDIA's upcoming GPUs probably still missing the technology required to use GDDR5, ATI may finally grab the performance crown...or not, because this is something that remains to be seen.

Corsair is not a perfect company, despite some people's claims. Anyway, we can't underestimate the hidden powers of this notorious memory (and not only) manufacturer, the latest event proving the fact that Corsair is one of those companies able to break world records, and we're not talking about market share or popularity, but about raw performance!


On Tuesday, Corsair made public the fact that its engineers broke the world record for the DDR3 memory frequency. Using the new Dominator memory module, together with the Intel X48-based platform, Corsair managed to overclock DDR3 memory to an amazing 2462MHz, using CL9 9-9-24 latency settings, which provided 19.696GB/s of bandwidth in single-channel mode. Impressive!

Regarding this performance, Martin Mueller, senior director of engineering at Corsair, said "Corsair is obsessed with pushing memory technology to its limits and beyond. This world record demonstrates the overclocking and high speed memory expertise within Corsair Labs and definitely pushes the memory enthusiast community to achieve even faster, more outrageous speeds."

Sounds good to me! So...when to expect 3GHz?

While VIA retreated from the desktop processors business, it still has a strong position on other markets, and now they even managed to break a world record! No, we're not talking about any performance record, but size, because they just succeeded in creating the smallest x86 computer platform, coming in the pico-ITX form factor!


"Pico-ITX, what is that?" Well, what do you think about 10cm x 7.2cm? Small enough? Daniel Wu, vice president of Via embedded platform division, said "The introduction of the Via Epia PX5000EG elevates the Via Epia range of innovative embedded solutions to new heights of thermal and energy efficiency in an extremely miniaturized form factor. The Via Epia Pico-ITX form-factor continues to evolve, addressing the embedded industry's needs for greater efficiency and miniaturization."

A computer inside a pack of cigarettes, how's that? The Via Epia PX5000EG uses a fanless 500MHz processor from VIA, the Eden ULV, with a TDP of only 1W, supporting up to 1GB of DDR2 memory. The Via VX700 system media processor delivers graphics by using the Via UniChrome Pro II integrated 3D/2D graphics core with MPEG-2/-4 and WMV9 hardware decoding acceleration, as well as pin support for LVDS, DVI and VGA display configurations.

At last, you should know Serial ATA and Parallel ATA connectors are also present, and even an integrated 100/10 Fast Ethernet port was fitted on the tiny board. Even more, there are connectors included to support PS/2 keyboard and mouse, external TV-out, video capture port interface & LPC interface (add-on card required), 1 audio connector for line-out, line-in, mic-in, S/PDIF in and 5.1 channel audio output and 1 Pico-ITX power connector.

These being said, I will repeat the size, so you won't forget - 10cm x 7.2cm, that's the smallest x86 platform available in the world as we speak, and it's really astonishing to think about the fact this may be more powerful than the desktop computers we were using a decade ago!