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Intel and MasterCard have just shaken hands on a new deal for a multi-year strategic collaboration to further enhance the security and consumer payment experience for online shopping. The new collaboration is set to combine MasterCard's expertise in payment processing and commerce with Intel's strengths in silicon innovation and chip-based security.

The deal will provide more options for a safer and simpler checkout process for online merchants and consumers using Ultrabook devices and future generations of Intel-based PCs. Intel and MasterCard are working together to optimize a variety of emerging payments technologies which include MasterCard's PayPass and Intel Identity Protection Technology (IPT). IPT can enable consumers to use strong two-factor authentication and hardware-based display protection.

What this does is provide increased online security against malware, and additionally, when used with an Intel Identity Protection Technology-enabled reader, consumers will be able to pay for online purchases with a simple tap of their PayPass-enabled card, tag or smartphone on an Ultrabook device. The idea is for simplicity-meets-security.

The past 24 hours have been quite good for PC enthusiasts and end users alike, Intel's launch of their LGA2011 socket and accompanying X79 chipset launched quite spectacularly. Now we have a slew of companies releasing their X79-powered gear, with it starting today with Corsair.

Corsair have announced a full line of quad-channel DRAM kits for the LGA2011 socket motherboards, with both Dominator and Vengeance. Dominator is rigorously tested for extreme-performance PCs, with every kit tightly screened as well as including Corsair's DHX+ heatsink patented technology. All Dominator quad-channel kits support Intel's latest XMP 1.3 profiles for easy performance tuning. They are available in 4 sets, 2 of 32GB and 2 in 16GB. The first 32GB kit is at 1866MHz, the second at 1600MHz. The 16GB ramps it up a bit with one kit at 2133MHz and the other at 1866MHz.

Next up Corsair have the Vengeance kits, which are great looking and great for overclocking, all at a great price. Vengeance is designed with overclockers in mind and is built specifically for performance potential. Sporting aluminum heat spreaders that dissipate heat, it also provides an aggressive look that looks awesome in gaming rigs. XMP 1.3 support is here too, and the Vengeance kits come in a much wider range of sizes and speeds.

While suited toward a different crowd for the most part, AMD has made efforts to steal a bit of the limelight strongly shining on Intel and its Sandy Bridge-E/X79 platform by kicking out a big announcement of their own at the same time.

Adter several weeks of being delayed, today finally sees the launch of AMD's first 16-core Opteron server processors, the Bulldozer based Opteron 6200 series (formally known as Interlagos). According to John Fruehe, the director of product parketing at AMD, these new processors are said to be 25 to 30% faster than their 12-cored Opteron 6100 predecessors.

The new Opteron 6200 family of processors includes 6262 HE, 6272, 6274, 6276 and 6282 SE models, running at clock rates of between 1.6 and 2.6GHz with pricing starting at $523 US and going up to $1,019 US. Power draw from the new processors starts at 85 watts and goes as high as 140 watts. The chips are compatible with existing server sockets to make upgrades from older 12-core chips a breeze.

Sony are starting their gift-giving season right now with the introduction of a brand new PlayStation move bundle that includes two Move games, Sports Champions and Medieval Moves: Deadmund's Quest.

This bundle is set to hit retailers nationwide next week and contains everything you need to have a fun game night, the PlayStation Move motion controller, PlayStation Eye camera, and a copy of the greatest-selling PlayStation Move title Sports Champion and Medieval Moves: Deadmund's Quest for $99.99 MSRP!

Medieval Moves is a game specifically designed for PlayStation Move, where you use your PS Move motion controller to sword fight, shoot arrows, and fling throwing stars at your enemies. It also offers support for full stereoscopic 3D.

Now that the Intel NDA is up for the X79 Express chipset, we can finally let fly with all of our content on the subject. Our latest is from the GIGABYTE headquarters here in Taipei where last week we visited them and got a good look at their range of motherboards to support the new Socket 2011 Intel processors.

Since we've already spent a good amount of time previewing some GIGABYTE X79 boards and others, we didn't want to focus too much on the boards themselves, but some of the features included. We will start off with the all new 3D Dual UEFI BIOS. 3D, you say? Yes - well probably not the kind of 3D you are thinking with movies and the need to pull out some fancy active shutter glasses.

This new BIOS from GIGABYTE focuses on an easy to use experience for people who may be venturing into the BIOS for the first time, yet it is still loaded full of advanced settings for advanced users and overclockers who know what they are doing. When first loading the BIOS, you are shown a full size picture of your motherboard, which can be rotated to show different angles of the board. Using your mouse, you move the cursor over different parts of the system and it gives you a description of what type of options and settings you can change for that part of the motherboard.

We are really letting loose now with our Intel X79 Express content and next up is another GIGABYTE video related to said product and this time it's another software feature called 3D Power and it's included with GIGABYTE's full range of X79 motherboards that should be online at many places as of now.

3D is obviously a big theme with GIGABYTE's X79 range of products and while there is little "3D" as we know about GIGABYTE's new software utility, 3D Power, we do like the insane level of control it gives you over your brand spanking new motherboard.

3D Power gets its name for its 3-way digital engine which allows you to control digital CPU power as well as both digital memory power controllers. This is all made possible since GIGABYTE's full range of X79 motherboards use an all digital power system with added controllers which give you the ability to fine tune power related options and settings down to a level we've never really seen before.

Today is the big day for Intel and its new Sandy Bridge-E processors and X79 Express chipset platform. The NDA just came off moments ago and now we can give you the full run-down on the ASRock X79 Overclock King Series of motherboards based off the new platform.

Last week we met up with Chris Lee, Director of Marketing, at the ASRock HQ here in Taipei where he gave us a full introduction to its first batch of X79 motherboards. ASRock is launching with five X79 boards right now including the Extreme3, Extreme4-M (Micro-ATX), Extreme4, Extreme7 and the Extreme9.

We spent most of our time in the video above focused on the top-dog, the ASRock X79 Extreme9. This board is packed out with loads of good features including eight DDR3 DIMM slots for quad-channel memory support, five PCI-E x16 slots, active fan cooling for the X79 chipset, loads of SATA-III ports and full digital VRM power management with 18 phases of power for RAM (2) and CPU (16).

On Thursday last week, a US judge ruled that Twitter must release the details of Icelandic MP and former WikiLeaks volunteer Birgitta Jonsdottir's Twitter account and those of two other Twitter users linked to WikiLeaks.

Jonsdottir learned that in January of 2011, her Twitter account was being watched by the Justice Department because of her involvement last year with WikiLeaks' release of a view showing a US military helicopter shooting two Reuters reporters in Iraq. Jonsdottir believes the US authorities want to use her information to try and build a solid case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Jonsdottir says:

Below, we have a picture of the AMD accelerated processing units in both FM1 and future FM2 packages, which the latter will be based on the next-generation Trinity APU. In the picture below, "Llano" FM1 APU is on the left, "Trinity" FM2 is on the right.

Both packages are pretty much identical, with the difference between them a set of blanked pins in the sub-central portion of the pin array. The FM2 package sports 904 pins whilst the FM1 package has 1 more at 905 pins. One pin is blanked, whilst a pair of blanked pins are arranged further away from the central cutout.

What does this mean? It means that FM1 and FM2 are completely incompatible, and won't allow you to run today's A-Series APUs in the FM1 package on future socket AM2 boards, nor will you be able to run future FM2-based CPUs on today's FM1 motherboards.

Intel's new Sandy Bridge-E flagship processor, the Core i7 3960X has been thrown through a handful of benchmarks by Chinese website Inpai.com. The benchmarks put the i7 3960X head-to-head against the Sandy Bridge-based i7 2600K.

Intel's Core i7 3960X will be the bees knees of the Sandy Bridge-E series, featuring 6-cores and 12 threads clocked at stock clocks of 3.6GHz and 3.9GHz when using Turbo Boost. The chip uses a maximum TDP of 130W, features 15MB L3 cache and launches on November 14.

Inpai.com tested the i7 3960X and i7 2600K against each other in various benchmarks, such as X264 Benchmark, which saw the i7 3960X score 47.4 versus the 2600K's 37.21, a decent improvement. Cinebench sees a bigger improvement, with the i7 3960X scoring 10.4 and the 2600K trailing far behind with 6.92.

While we can get mixed up in the David vs Goliath battle that is Call of Duty vs Battlefield, we can forget another amazing open-world RPG launched from Bethesda. No, wait, no we can't. Skyrim has been getting its fair share of press too, and while it might be able to boast of nearly half a billion in first-day sales, it can boast with its near-perfect reviews.

It looks like its gotten 90-percent or higher in every review, without me over-exaggerating. I'll let a few quotes from some reviews convince you:

Guardian:

Everyone is waiting on Apple to "reinvent" the television set, but Sony CEO Howard Stringer has recently confirmed that Sony are stepping up to battle, too. Stringer recently said during a breakfast hosted by The Wall Street Journal, that:

Stringer said that he has "no doubt" that Steve Jobs had intentions of designing a brand-new kind of television, but also stated that "it will take a long time to transition to a new form of television". Reports have floated around that Apple would use its Siri voice control engine on their yet-to-be-announced television set, where Stringer wasn't specific on how Sony would reimagine the television set.

Is this what a post Steve Jobs Apple looks like? You would think in a closed-off world that Apple keeps iOS-based products in, that these sorts of issues just wouldn't happen, but here we are. Apple says that they are still investigating battery drain issues with the iPhone 4S after some users complained that the newly-released iOS 5.0.1 update didn't solve their issues.

Now Apple users are looking at more issues, such as microphone failures, Wi-Fi signal loss, and cellular network reception issues. Apple said in a statement to All Things Digital:

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has done it again, it has become to biggest entertainment launch of all time, smashing the previous record set by... Call of Duty: Black Ops last year. MW3 took in over $400 million in revenue in just 24 hours, selling 6.5 million copies of the game across 3 platforms in the US and UK.

Black Ops pulled in $360 million on its opening day last year, with Modern Warfare 2 raking in $310 million in the first 24 hours. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotickt says:

In typical standout fashion, chinese based VGA add-in board partner Colorful has come forward today introducing their latest super duper, highly modified graphics card - the iGame GTX 560Ti Kudan.

Straight off the bat when you look at the accompanying photos of this card, you can see it's a huge step away from the norm and clearly stands right out. There might be a real lot of GTX 560Ti's on the market, but nothing quite like this one.

Colorful has not only designed a stronger custom PCB for this card, but it also comes with a add-in card that provides additional power phases. The triple-slot cooler boasting ten heatpipes and three fans (one 90mm and two 80mm) is truly a work of art, as shown in the photos, with a chunky backplate and also coming with five detachable heatsinks (which are a part of the Air-Kit), along with paints and brushes in the Color-Kit to further customize the look of your GTX 560Ti Kudan's cooler how you see fit.

LG has readied up its latest 13.3-inch ultra-thin laptop for the Korean market, the P330 under its Xnote line. The laptop weighs in at just 1.7Kg and is only 4.5mm thick. Due to the thin 8mm bezel on the 13.3-inch (1366 x 768) LED-backlit display, the laptop ends up being right around the size of a typical 12-inch laptop.

Packed inside is a 2nd-gen Core processor with 4GB of RAM, while its storage setup includes both a HDD and SSD and graphics in the form of NVIDIA's GeForce GT 555M. Other features include 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Gigabit ethernet, USB 3.0, HDMI output and a 6-cell battery.

The P330 works out to about $1,323 in base form, which can be pushed up to as much as $1,954 depending on your chosen configuration.

AMD's 28nm-based next-generation GPUs are rumored to arrive in January 2012, according to a report from Fudzilla. Grains of salt are being thrown left, right and centre, and while the 7000-series was meant to be released this year, Fuzilla report that word from "multiple industry sources" that Tahiti won't make it until 2012.

Tahiti will be the direct successor to Cayman, which is what powers the current Radeon HD 6900-series cards, and is expected to come in both XP and PRO variants. Specific models haven't been announced, but if AMD stick to their current naming system and don't throw it all around again, we should expect the new cards to be Radeon HD 7950 and Radeon HD 7970.

Both cards will be single-GPU parts, replacing both the HD 6950 and HD 6970, while a dual-GPU powerhouse card featuring two Tahiti cores will arrive later in 2012 and be dubbed the Radeon HD 7990 aka New Zealand. This could see either a March release, and if its too busy sipping cocktails waiting for NVIDIA to play catch up, we could see it laze through until early Q2 2012.

Sony's PlayStation Suite SDK was shown off at the Tokyo Game Show in September, but Sony have just opened up the SDK application process for a closed beta test. This allows Windows XP and Windows 7 users in the US, UK and Japan to submit their credentials for early access.

For those who get approval from Sony will have the ability to develop apps for use on the PS Vista when it drops in February, 2012, along with the PS Suite - that "hardware-neutral" framework that will allow access from non-PlayStation branded products, including the Xperia Play, Tablet S and Tablet P, with the potential for third-party devices to come too.

The PlayStation Suite SDK uses the C# programming language, and doesn't require developers to have access to actual Sony hardware. You can apply to be a Sony developer by clicking the following link.

Have you wanted panoramic picture mode for your iPhone? How about the Android-like autocorrect bar for the on-screen keyboard? Well, you're in luck. Developers have recently discovered a few hidden features in iOS 5, with both items having the ability to be enabled without jailbreaking your iPad or iPhone.

Why they're hidden, is a mystery in itself. But iOS hacker, Sonny Dickson, is responsible for finding the "Android-like" autocorrect bar Thursday morning. The autocorrect bar is so close to the Android autocorrect bar, that it may explain why Apple left it out of iOS 5's initial release.

Enabling the autocorrect bar requires a simple .plist file edit, but since Apple does not allow an easy way to access the file system, it requires a few steps which I've listed below. The second feature unearthed was the enabling of the panorama mode for the iOS camera app. Apps exist that do this now, but this is the first time it's had the ability to do so within the native camera app.

ARM have just announced its next-generation mobile GPU, the Mali-T658. ARM have said that this design is set to offer ten times the performance of their current Mali-400 MP which is found in smartphones such as the amazing Samsung Galaxy S II handset.

T658 is ARM's second GPU using an architecture it calls Midgard. Midgard is designed to support both 3D workloads using modern APIs, with support for both OpenGL ES and Microsoft's Direct3D 11, and computation workloads using OpenCL, Microsoft DirectCompute, and Google RenderScript. Compute tasks get some love, with Midgard supporting full IEEE 754 floating point.

The first Midgard design, the T604, was announced last year, and was licensed by companies such as Samsung and LG. The new T658 is quite the powerhouse, with each core having four arithmetic pipelines, and one each of load/store for texture, doubling the number of arithmetic pipelines found in the T604. Up to eight cores can be integrated into a single GPU, again representing a doubling in performance relative to T604, which allows up to four cores to be ganged together.