AMD has released some nifty documents which outline the architecture behind their upcoming Core i7 competitor, Bulldozer. The Bulldozer CPU architecture is one of the biggest things to come from AMD in the form of CPU technology in a long time and the slides below outline Zambezi for the Socket AM3+ platform. The AM3+ socket infrastructure adds quite a few new things and a few surprises along the way. Check out the below images for a bit of a tease of things to come from team RED.

One of the surprising things is older AM3 processors are plug-in compatible with AM3+ motherboards, which would allow people to pick up a board in preparation for the new CPUs and then upgrade as they see fit. As well as the impressive 72-bit DDR3 memory channels which will see support for DDR3-1866. Bulldozer is quite power-efficient too, as it will increase clock speeds if there is spare TDP headroom and when there is not much workload on the CPU, it will disable un-used cores.

Very impressive, AMD. If it can keep up with Sandy Bridge-based Core i5/i7's, then we'll finally see some true competition in the CPU fight.

Oh no, please leave it alone now Gearbox. We've all been through enough false promises followed by eventual (catastrophic?) disappointment that has deeply tarnished an iconic memory of our gaming past.

Would you believe guys, Gearbox is already looking to reboot Duke despite no doubt taking notice of all the negative reviews and feedback following DNF's recent launch. In actuality, they were already working on the "Duke Begins" project before they took over development of DNF; and as an agreement was made to hand ownership of the Duke Nukem IP to the studio, they can do whatever they like with it now. Once they've wrapped up development on their current title - Aliens: Colonial Marines they'll be waking the poor bastard back up for more.

Whatever they have planned, obviously they must think they can somehow make it up to us very unsatisfied, crippled fans. The real question now, however, is whether or not us fans are willing to give it the slightest of attention, after an over 15 year saga filled with broken promises and what some say was the final nail in the coffin when Gearbox offered up a rather weak result, worsened by the extended wait and frustrating hype we all had to endure.

Think back before the iPod, could you have imagined how much it would change the industry? What about the iPhone? Could you have predicted that? Well, Makorakara, a Japanese site has published a rumor on what the next "absolutely different" Apple product could be. The rumor contains no detail at all, but here it is:

According to anonymous source in Asian supplier company, Apple seems to be preparing project to release new Mac line-up which is absolutely different from current products until end of this year.

Though this source does not told in detail, this new Mac line seems to be clearly different products from current ones, so new product name could be given.

While things are a little up in the air as to what exactly is on the cards for HP following this news late last week, it hasn't stopped them releasing new models just yet, with a new all-in-one PC becoming available in stores from today under their Compaq series.

The new Compaq 8200 Elite is a business oriented all-in-one PC which uses a 23-inch LED-backlit 1920x1080 display. Packed inside is a 2nd Gen Intel Core (Sandy Bridge) processor, up to 8GB of system memory, a HDD (or optionally, SSD), webcam, SRS Premium Sound and highly efficient power supply (up to 89% efficiency).

HP backs the Compaq 8200 Elite with a 3 year warranty (honored, regardless of what becomes of the company in its volatile future) and bears a base price of $999 USD.

While inevitably not bringing anywhere near the amount of excitement the upcoming FX-Series will once launched, AMD has just kicked out three new APUs catering to its Brazos platform - the E-450, E-300 and C-60.

Using AMD's Bobcat x86 architecture, all three models are dual-core, built on the 40nm process. The new top dog "Zacate" E-450 APU clocks in at 1.65GHz (where the previous top model, the E-350 ran at 1.60GHz). The integrated Radeon HD 6320 GPU has its core clocked at 508MHz and with its TurboCore tech it can be driven at up to 600MHz.

THe E-300 lacks TurboCore on both its CPU and GPU components, with the CPU clock at a fixed 1.30GHz, and the Radeon HD 6310 GPU at 488MHz. As for the C-60, this is AMD's latest ultra low power APU with a TDP of only 9W (the other two are double that). The C-60 does have TurboCore technology embedded for both its CPU and GPU components. The CPU's stock clock rate is 1.00GHz, but with the help of TurboCore can head north to 1.33GHz, while the Radeon HD 6290 GPU has its core clocked at 276MHz, but TurboCore can increase it to 400MHz.

Late last week news hit the web that Intel was pushing back its new netbook platform, Cedar Trail-M from a September release to November, with the reason given that the platform had encountered some graphics driver hiccups resulting in a failure to meet Windows 7 certification.

Fast forward to the other side of the weekend and we're now finding out that there's unsurprisingly more to it than that. Where it was initially thought to be just some video decoding issues holding them back, it's actually a different, more alarming element of the driver that Intel can't rustle out at this time, one directly relating to DX9 (not a typo).

The story goes that while the graphics core in Cedar Trail is based around DX10.1, Intel wasn't going to have supporting DX10.1 drivers ready in time for the platform's launch as it was, so that's where (what was supposedly) easier to build DX9 drivers came into play, to give a working base for the launch until such time as Intel can produce the DX10.1 drivers.

After five days of intense competition in the International DOTA 2 Championships at Gamescom, six Ukrainian kings have emerged victorious, known as team Na'vi (yes, Avatar fans). And along with the immense pride in securing their #1 result, they also get to walk away with a cool $1M in prize money.

Chinese team EHOME came in a close second, securing their runner up prize of $250,000. The remaining top six teams (out of 16 teams in total for the event) that were awarded include :-

1. Scythe.SG - $150,000

The ongoing bitch-slapping between Valve and EA has resulted in (what my opinion will be) the biggest FPS title of the year being blacklisted from Steam; Battlefield 3. EA have decided to launch Origin, their own digital distribution service and ditch Steam in favor of it.

Valve boss, and leader of the resistance of releasing Half Life 3, has sais that [in response to EA pulling a bunch of games from Steam":

I don't think Valve can pick just one thing and think that the issue would go away if we fixed that," he said, noting that it was Valve's responsibility to prove that EA stands to gain by having its games on Steam. "We have to prove we are creating value on an ongoing basis, whether it's to EA or Ubisoft or whoever. We want EA's games on Steam and we have to show them that's a smart thing to do.

GamesCom 2011 - News is flowing through for Borderlands 2 and it's sounding like its coming along well. Details from the Borderlands 2 livestream are that it includes (new in the sequel); Splitscreen online, trading items with others in a "reasonable way".

The UI has been "nearly entirely reworked. The splitscreen skill tree is way better". There are also now "no problems with eligibility for multiplayer". Gearbox are aiming for more diversity in the environments and there will be a new game+ mode.

Gearbox also talked of "refined" vehicle controls, inclusive of power-sliding and "independent suspension", Randy Pitchford also teased they might try to support Halo-style point and go controls and direct steering, he says "as a gamer, I want both."

GamesCom 2011 - NVIDIA has hinted at GamesCom that they could be working on technology that would allow users to stream games from their PCs to other devices within the home.

Bit-Gamer talked to "an NVIDIA representative" who wouldn't offer any concrete details [of course], but did give some hefty hints towards such a device:

Imagine you're playing Crysis 2 on your PC and you're able to stream it around your home to a tablet device, which you could then plug into your TV if you wanted