As you might have noticed, AMD has moved to a new naming scheme with the latest Athlon X2 BE-2xxx processors. So what does the new letters and numbers mean? Well, it's not as hard as you think and AMD has given it some thought.

The first letter will be G, B or L, G being a premium product, B an intermediate product and finally L is for entry level value processors. The second letter is related to power consumption. P is for processors over 65W, S for parts around 65W and finally E for those under 65W. It wouldn't have hurt to have a few more categories, but it seems like AMD is trying to keep it simple.

AMD will have four families once the Phenom launches, although the Athlon and Sempron brands will be kept for a little while longer. This means that a 1000-series CPU will be a single core Athlon or Sempron, the 2000-series is a dual core Athlon, then there's a jump to the 6000-series which is the dual-core Phenom and this is followed by the 7000-series which is the quad-core Phenom.

According to the Inquirer, AMD has four new desktop chipsets coming out this year. The top of the range model here being the RD790 which we reported about from Computex last week. As you probably already know, this is the next CrossFire chipset and it supports PCI Express 2.0 which allows for 150 Watts of power per PCI Express slot. This chipset will come out for socket AM2+ and 1207+.

The next version down is the RX780 which is the mainstream version of the RD790, but without CrossFire support. What's missing here is the RD780, which is a cut down version of the RD790 with support for CrossFire but it is limited to x8 bandwidth per card. The Inquirer should double check their roadmaps before missing out a key chipset like this one. So the total is actually five, not four, so if you thought our headline was a type, then we're sorry to dissapoint you.

Next up we have two integrated graphics models, the RS740 which is a DX9 part and the RS780, which is a DX10 part with support for UVD. All the above chipsets will be paired with the current SB600 or the upcoming SB700 depending on AMD getting the new southbridge done on time. Remember the delays of the SB600?

As first discussed here at TweakTown, Diamond Multimedia today announced they are first out with their Viper Radeon HD 2900 XT, which comes with 1GB of GDDR-4 memory.

We are unsure on clock speeds at this stage but we have emailed the folks at Diamond and are awaiting a response - we will update this post shortly.

UPDATE: Diamond got back to us and let us know there will be two versions of the 1GB card. One with 745MHz core / 2000MHz DDR memory and the souped up version with 825MHz core and 2100MHz DDR memory.

Remember the original Razer Boomslang mouse? If you don't, then you might not be all that excited about the 2007 collector's edition of the Boomslang, but Razer will have it out in time for DreamHack Summer this year. The Boomslang was the first real gaming mouse for FPS games, but it wasn't to everyones taste. It used a ball and was higly sensitive compared to other mice back then.

The 2007 collectors edition will be a limited run of 10,000 units and will feature a titanium finish and it will have a green under glow as well as a green scroll wheel. There's no mention if the collectors edition will use a ball or if it has been given an upgrade to a laser sensor. Nor has Razer released any price information.

Up until this week, DivX Inc. specialised soley in software with its excellent mpeg4 compression algorithm. But a posting on the DivX Labs website today reveals information relating to beta tester signups for a (now not so) secret project.

So far whats known is that they are working on producing a dedicated hardware device for streaming media, this dubbed the "GejBox;-)". Engadget have posted up some pictures and info on it here, but they also comment that it's most probable this device wont actually hit the market (at least in its current form).

The Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI-e has finally arrived, although it's only an OEM card so far as it doesn't come in a retail box. It looks rather basic with support for 7.1-channel analogue outputs and optical S/PDIF in and out. This card doesn't seem to have support for any of the upgrade options that the current X-Fi cards have and the audio processor looks like it comes from the newer entry level cards.

The blue PCB also makes it look more like he entry level products, as the higher end cards are using a black PCB. It also seems to lack support for some of the more advanced audio features, again akin with the lower end models. Interestingly it seems to have a standard connector for case mounted audio connectors, so it would be easy to use this card with the front audio connectors on your case. At US$65, it is priced quite reasonable and it ships with Windows Vista drivers.

Toshiba is first out with a notebook based on the new 8700M GT GPU from Nvidia and it looks like a real stunner. Apart from the new GPU which Toshiba has paired with 256MB of GDDR3 memory, the Dynabook Satellite WXW also features a Core 2 Duo T7300 processor clocked at 2GHz as well as either 1 or 2GB of DDR2 RAM. It's based on the Intel PM965 chipset and comes with a 120GB SATA hard drive. It has a 17-inch widescreen display with a native resolution of 1,680x1,050.

There's also a built in TV-tuner, a Super Multi DVD drive, HDMI and a 1.3Mega pixel web camera. Other features include an Express Card 54 slot, a multi format card reader for SD, SDHC, MMC, xD and MemoryStick, S/PDIF out, and a four pin FireWire port. It has no less than six USB 2.0 ports and it does of course have support for 802.11 a/b/g wireless networking and Gigabit Ethernet. A finger print reader is also part of the package.

Nvidia has launched its latest mobile GPU, the 8700M GT, which is its top of the range GPU in the GeForce 8M series, for now. It has 32 stream processors, just as the 8600M GT, but the core clock is up from 475MHz of the 8600M GT to 625MHz. The shader clock has been increased from 950MHz to 1,250MHz and the memory has also been given a boost from 700MHz to 800MHz. Nvidia is also using something it calls dual-rank 128-bit memory, although we're not quite sure what this does at the time of writing this, but it sounds like some kind of dual channel memory interface. It can be paired with up to 512MB of GDDR3 memory.

The memory bandwidth is up from 22.4GB/s to 25.6GB/s and the texture fill rate has been improved from 7.6 billion instructions per second to 10 billion instructions per second. The 8700M GT is between 27 and 70 per cent faster than the older 7950 GS mobile part. It is manufactured at an 80nm processor and has a TDP of 35W. It features PureVideo HD and Nvidia's PowerMizer technology.

MSI has launched a new overclockable notebook today, the Turbobook GX600 Extreme Edition. It has MSI's Turbo Drive Engine Technology that with a simple press of a button when the notebook is attached to a wall socket and the CPU and system bus will be overclocked by up to 20%. MSI also claims that it takes a mere 40 seconds to boot up the GX600 when in Turbo mode. The GX600 is based on the Intel PM965 chipset and will be offered with a range of Core 2 Duo processor options.

The graphics chipset comes from Nvidia and is an 8600M GT with 512MB of graphics memory. The system will also have 2GB of RAM, although this can be expanded to 4GB. A wide range of hard drives will be offered from 80 to 250GB. The optical drive will either be a Super Multi DVD or an HD DVD drive. Sadly the 15.4-inch display is limited to 1,280x800 resolution which feels a little bit too low on a powerful notebook like this.

CoolIT Systems have entered the market with a bang, producing the first reference series liquid cooling solution which is capable of keeping HD 2900 XTs in CrossFire configuration mighty cool (providing for very nice overclocks).

The system itself is a rather clever factory sealed maintainence free single slot design.

As we prepare and setup our booth at Computex Taipei 2007, we were joined by our friend Coolaler who did some initial LN2 overclocking at our booth in Hall 1. Using a GIGABYTE P35 DDR-3 board and Intel Core 2 Duo 6850 processor, we managed an initial OC of 5.4GHz (600 x 9) at around -125c. Keep in mind, thi was done in a less than ideal environment - there is no air con on at the moment and we expect things to only get better throughout the week.

This resulted in a high detail 3DMark01 run of around 85,000 with stock clocked HD 2900 XT in Crossfire mode, which ranks us about 4th for world records, even at this early time. Tomorrow and throughout the week we will tweak the system (no OC to VGA or RAM so far) and try and break some records as we push things further. We are rock stable at 600MHz FSB, so after some tender love and care, we should be able to crank out around 5.6GHz.

TweakTown takes on Computex Taipei 2007 with huge media presence

TAIPEI, TAIWAN - Friday June 1st 2007 - TweakTown, one of the worlds's most respected and trusted online computer publications in Asia and the world is set to make a big splash at Computex Taipei 2007. TweakTown will host a one of a kind media party on Monday evening attended by top media and manufacturers. The party will be assisted by a demonstration machine running DDR-3 memory at over 2000MHz on an Intel P35 motherboard. Cool new hardware and software will be given away to members of the press as they celebrate the beginning, of what many say, is the most important computer trade show in the world.

TweakTown will rock the socks off Hall 1 as it showcases a highly overclocked liquid nitrogen system featuring Intel Core 2 QX6850 quad-core processor, Intel P35 DDR-3 based GIGABYTE GA-P35T-DQ6 motherboard, Corsair DDR-3 1333MHz DHX memory and GIGABYTE Radeon HD 2900 XT in Crossfire. OCZ power the show with their ProXStream 1000-watt power supply. The booth will be joined by famous guest Taiwanese overclocker Coolaler who will take things to the absolute limit, live at the show, for all to see. World record holders might want to hold onto their hats, as we attempt to break records!

I thought I was just unlucky the first time but when something happens two times in the exact same fashion, you just got to check into it a little more.

System is Vista Ultimate 32-bit with RAID 10 on Intel ICH8R chipset. A couple of weeks ago I tried running a .mov file using Apple QuickTime software (latest version) and that is when things started to go downhill. The file seemed very slow to load and eventually QuickTime crashed after a lot of persuasion. Once QuickTime was closed, I was notified of a RAID error through the Intel Matrix Storage Console but the same thing will happen if you reboot during the lockup as well.

Thinking the worst, I promptly went about getting the affected drive replaced, naturally thinking it was dead. I got the drive replaced without any issues from the friendly chaps at Seagate, plugged it in and rebuilt the array without any issues and with everything back to normal. Just recently the exact same event occurred and I knew the chances of that exact same set of occurrences happening was extremely rare.

Recently we received some engineering sample DDR-3 1066 memory from our friends at Corsair.

We will be comparing it against DDR-2 at a range of different settings on two similar Intel P35 boards very soon, which should prove for some interesting test results.

For now, here are some photos for you to enjoy...

If you still have got enough RD 2900 XT news for today, then bad luck - here is some more for you addicts.

Here are some shots of retail cards from Sapphire, MSI and GeCube. The latter two cards are just using the reference cooler but Sapphire does things a little differently.

Reading around today, some over excited folk got their wires crossed and claimed AMD would be launching their upcoming R600XT on May 2nd.

That's simply not correct - Nvidia is launching the 8800 Ultra on May 2nd at a retail price of at least $999 USD but supply will be very low due to yield and pricing related issues. The word on the streets of Taipei tells us that unless Nvidia reduce their 8800 Ultra pricing, you'll have a hard time actually buying this part.

We got a little hot under the collar when the rumors starting circulating around that the Radeon HD X2900XT was being released on May 2nd but after some simple phone calls to our friends here in Taiwan, they confirmed the launch is May 14 and product should be for sale on the day or soon after with fairly decent quantity.

Our good friend Coolaler from Taiwan has teamed up with G.Skill at CeBIT to run some extreme overclocking demonstrations of the Core 2 Extreme processor.

Operating at around -50c using LN2 cooling they managed to impress hitting a maximum CPU clock speed of 4.5GHz (500MHz FSB x 9) and they had DDR-2 memory humming along nicely at 1300MHz DDR or PC2-10400.

A little while ago our friends at Sapphire announced they were going to produce dual Radeon X1950PRO cards and it seems like they are finally ready. Not only are they ready but they have a Quad Crossfire system up and running at CeBIT.

Woo, holy smokes! Cheers to the boys at PC Hardware and Games in Germany.

"Twice the performance of R580" - from AMD...

A little birdie recently sent some in-depth roadmap information into our inbox regarding AMD's upcoming R600 series of graphics cards including Radeon X2900XTX, X2900XT and X2900XL.

The folks over at PC Games and Hardware (German) have been busy hunting down R600 and finally managed to find a working demo behind closed doors.

While they don't have any pictures of the card itself, they have pictures of the R600 technology demo for your viewing pleasure.