Expreview have acquired a fresh Intel roadmap which outlines the company's Nehalem launch schedule well into 2009.

The first wave will hit in Q4 of this year with the top-end 3.2GHz Bloomfield part sitting in the Extreme/top-end segment along with 2.93GHz and 2.66GHz models entering the performance and mainstream markets.

We mentioned yesterday about a killer Mini-ITX base from J&W Technology which would suddenly make the Mini-ITX form factor much more appealing for HTPC builders. We also weren't aware at the time that it had any form of competition on the horizon.

Turns out ZOTAC has a nice little ITX board readied for the market as well. The lads at Expreview have stacks of images and info outlaying the boards characteristics. Unlike the J&W offering with its 780G chipset for AM2+ processors, this model steers over to Intel with its nForce 610i chipset supporting up to 1333MHz FSB LGA775 processors (incl. 45nm Wolfdale).

Chinese website XFastest has been playing with a pre-release NVIDIA G96 based GeForce 9500GT graphics card, and they took the opportunity to not only take a bunch of quality photos showing off the card, but also to put it through its paces in some synthetic benchmarks including 3DMark'05/06 and Ozone3D FurMark.

The results hold much promise for the success of this little entry-level card. We're used to seeing absolute dismal performance in this market segment, but scores of 12331 in 3DMark'05 and 5894 in '06 are a massive leap forward and it should be a steal at around $50/$60 USD.

The Mini-ITX form factor is a great solution for the embedded market, with the obvious benefit of being extremely compact. This would have made it a terrific base for HTPCs as well, but unfortunately more often than not it just doesn't allow for the kind of power people want. VIA's ITX solutions have come a long way, but they still struggle to do much beyond fairly basic tasks.

A mob by the name of J&W Technology are about to come to the rescue here; details and images have surfaced on their upcoming "MINIX-780G-SP128MB" which holds much promise indeed.

We covered reports of a $549 launch price for AMD's flagship HD 4870 X2 2 GB GDDR5 SKU, last week, yet today brings some more information, courtesy of Fudzilla, pertaining to a launch price for the HD 4850 X2 2GB part.

Let's recap. The HD 4850 X2 2 GB model is expected to feature GDDR3 memory, versus the mightily impressive GDDR5 counterparts on its more costly sibling, whilst two RV770PRO GPUs will form the foundations of the offering. The duty of counteracting the hindrance in performance stakes, against its behemoth sibling, will be taken charge of by some attractive pricing.

We garnered some foresight from the sneak performance preview of, Intel's upcoming 2.66 GHz Nehalem microarchitecture derivative, Bloomfield CPU, that we reported on last week.

If this article, from HKEPC, citing Taiwan's motherboard industry as its source, is to be believed, Intel will launch the 2.66 GHz Penryn successor, at $284 (1000 unit tray quantities).

On Tuesday at a Blu-ray Disc Association conference in Beijing, it was announced that the Sony DADC disc replication facility in Sydney would be recieving a substantial floorspace expansion, which will enable the facility to manufacture Blu-ray discs. The production aim will be set at 1,000,000 units per month by February next 2009. Sony DADC Sydney have replicated DVD discs from the earliest stages of the format in 1998.

This will lighten the load on loaded Blu-ray manufacturing lines worldwide which have reached stretching point, leading to staggered release dates and limited numbers.

The HD 4850 member of AMD's HD 4800 series is diversifying, with AIBs finally having the opportunity to express the creativity they've had to restrain, whilst releasing reference based SKUs.

We reported on a Sapphire HD 4850 part, bragging 1 GB of GDDR3 memory onboard, only for it to be leapfrogged by a 2 GB PowerColor iteration, raining on its parade.

Yet, it bodes well that some product differentiation is appearing within the ranks. Sapphire's 'Toxic' branding is lending its glamorous name to yet another, HD 4850 SKU aiming to break out of the box. These images from Fudzilla, show it doing just that:

Amongst much wrangling and dragging of heals, Intel enthusiasts may finally be able to partake in some NVIDIA SLI goodness, or so this report from Expreview would have us believe.

Unrevealed sources have suggested that by selling its BR04 chipset to Intel, the Santa Clara, CA based company has effectively given its blessing to Intel, to incorporate SLI support into its upcoming X58 platform.

AMD's foray into 45nm CPUs is expected to set sail, at some point, during the remainder of this year. Those all famous engineering samples have been set loose again though, with the 45nm Phenom X4, codename Deneb, CPUs in 2.2 GHz and 2.3GHz flavours, being captured at ITOCP.

Here, the 2.2 GHz iteration, running with its 11.0x multiplier and a CPU-Z indicated core voltage of 1.224V, braves its shiny face for the camera: