AMD Llano, we finally meet. AMD has officially donned the Llano chips with the Fusion A-Series name and are 32-nanometer APUs designed with desktops and mainstream laptops, taking a glaring stare at Intel's Core 2011 processors. AMD are claiming superior processing, discrete-level graphics and a whopping 10-plus hour battery life with Fusion A-Series.

AMD is also looking to take a break from the CPU plus GPU paradigm, this is not to say they're ditching Radeon cards, because they too can be coupled with an APU for a 75-percent boost in graphics performance, something AMD calls "Dual Graphics." The Fusion A-Series chips come in at just 228 square millimeters, quite tiny, ain't it?

The A-Series include no less than seven laptop APUs across three different families, offering up to 4MB of cache and clock frequencies as high as 1.9GHz in the dual-core A4 chips, with up to 2.5GHz if you include AMD's Turbo Core technology. Surprisingly, these chips are also stereoscopic 3D-capable, inclusive of USB3.0 support, DirectX 11, OpenCL / OpenGL, AMD Wireless Display and both 1600MHz DDR3 and low-power 1333MHz DDR3L memory.

This is quite the rumor, Intel's upcoming X79 chipset may have support for both LGA1366-based CPUs as well as the new LGA2011-based chips. Documents viewed by X-bit labs have taken a look at show two X79-based "Extreme Board" motherboards, the DX79SA (Siler) and DX79TO (Thorsby) for both LGA1366 and LGA2011 microprocessors. The DX79SI is geared toward no-compromise performance enthusiasts whilst the DX79TO is aimed at users who want performance but under the inflated enthusiasts level.

The DX79SI does not hold back, it has support for the LGA2011 processor with up to eight DIMMs supporting up to 64GB of memory. The motherboard also features three PCI Express 3.0 slots (!!) which will support three-way multi GPU setups, 12 SATA ports (6 x SATA 6Gbps), 4 USB3.0 ports, 14 USB2.0 ports, 8-channel audio, Bluetooth/Wi-Fi module, two GbE ports and probably a few other yet to be disclosed features.

The cheaper DX79TO board is not as feature-laden as the above DX79SI, it includes support for the LGA1366 CPUs, high-speed DDR3 memory as well as two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots. 8 x SATA connections, 2 USB3.0 ports, 6-channel audio, GbE.

Acer is proud to announce their new slim and stylish Acer Revo RL100, a digital hub for the den or living room which connects to a flat-screen TV and includes a dual-mode wireless touchpad/keyboard for smooth navigation from the comfort of your couch, bed or bean bag. It also has the option of including Blu-ray.

Highlights from the Revo RL100 are actually quite surprising, it's the size of a game console and has the ability to lay flat or stand upright on a stand and connects to your TV via HDMI. It features the next-gen NVIDIA ION discrete graphics with support for 1080p/720p HD video playback as well as the ability for Web HD Flash acceleration. Sports an AMD Athlon II K325 processor at 1.3GHz, 750GB hard drive and 4GB of DDR3 RAM. Plenty of storage and power for a truly cinematic experience.

It's also enhanced with Dolby Home Theater V3 which allows the Acer Revo RL100 to provide and immersive, crystal-clear audio experience. Also, when Acer say it's thin - they really mean thing. The Revo RL100 measures up at just 1.0 x 11.81 x 7.09 inches! Look how thin it is! The RL100 will have an MSRP of $499.00 with the Blu-ray-equipped RL100 coming in at $569.99.

Steve Jobs has proposed a giant, ring-shaped office at the old HP location. I'm guessing he'll get it as I see Steve as the kinda guy who when he wants something, he gets it. Jobs approached the Cupertino City Council to sell Apple's plans to transform the old HP site. The new ring-shaped design is built to hold 12,000 employees and actually looks quite amazing.

During his presentation to the Cupertino City Council, Jobs said that Apple had pulled together "some great architects, some of the best in the world" to come up with the design that encompassed Apple. He added "there's not a single straight piece of glass in this building". Apple was able to achieve this design based on its knowledge of building Apple stores throughout the world and its particular experience in employing large pieces of glass in them.

The new proposed ring-shaped spectacular is a four-story building that houses an underground car park so it preserves Apple's plans to enhance the natural beauty of the property. Even though the proposed building looks huge, it will actually reduce the building footprint on the site by 30-percent from what stands now. Apple plan to turn the site from 20-percent landscape to 80-percent landscape after the re-polish.

AMD were a little quiet last week at Computex when it came to replacing their Phenom II line of CPUs, but it seems they've made a bit of noise at E3. AMD have actually now setup a page for the new FX series CPUs that we've known are a part of the Bulldozer platform for some months now.

Unfortunately the closest thing to an actual release date is "Coming Soon." Well, hopefully that's sooner rather than later.

Before the new FX series CPU hit our labs we'll see Llano first, the latest APU from AMD which is a step above the E series Brazos platform. AMD is doing a great job at that low to mid-range segment, but the question of how they will do at the upper echelon still hasn't been answered. It's "Coming Soon", though.

E3 2011 - Last week was surely Call of Duty week with the announcement of the paid service of Call of Duty Elite, but this week is a different week and E3 is the current flavor and Battlefield 3 is the beautiful, amazing topping. There's so much Battlefield 3 news I thought I'd dedicate an entire write up on it - sit back, relax and enjoy the mountain of information I'm about to expel. Battlefield 3 has been shown off at E3 to much applause, it is powered by a next-gen engine dubbed Frostbite 2, is centered and created on PC first and scaled down to consoles - a first for games of the last 5 - 6 years where we've seen development on consoles and a simple port with bells and whistles on for the PC.

All BF3 videos thus far have been gameplay videos on PC, not consoles - no console videos have been shown yet. Battlefield 3 will feature a change in classes, nothing huge but it's definitely a change from Bad Company 2. Remember, Battlefield 3 is a sequel to the PC-only Battlefield 2, it is not a sequel to the multi-platform Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

Assault has been changed to include medic abilities which now transforms the once front-line brute force soldier to a soldier that still has the power but can also assist in the healing of fallen or hurt team mates. The Assault player is also able to revive players.

E3 2011 - That title is rockin', if I may say so myself. Next order of business? Nintendo's next-gen console announcement! As the dust settles from various Microsoft and Sony announcements, sans-next-gen consoles (BOO), Nintendo walk out of the rubble, dust and glare with their next-gen console, previously codenamed "Project Cafe". Wii U. Nintendo's Wii U is their next-gen console ready to change things up.

Nintendo changed things up with their motion-based controllers with the Wii, but now they've kicked it up a notch, or twenty. Included is a tablet-based 6.2-inch touch screen controller which has the usual array of buttons inclusive of a d-pad, four face buttons, four shoulder triggers, a power button and a camera. The controller features two analog sliders at the top of the controller versus the traditional sticks. IGN reports after a hands-on that it is remarkably light for its side, given that it's quite large for a controller.

The Nintendo Wii U is also backwards compatible with Wii controllers, which is a great thing considering how many Wii's are in the market now. The controller incorporates some pretty amazing capabilities such as acting like a camera in-game, with a demo of live footage of Japan being shown, the camera moving down a crowded street hovering above vehicles. The tablet shows the same footage from the television but as the controller is moved, you're able to see more of the city around you without altering what is being displaced on the TV.

E3 2011 - E3 is not just about games, but graphics that power them also require cooling, this is where the teams at PNY and Asetek have teamed up to provide consumers with a high-end Liquid Cooled Graphics solutions that is geared towards gaming enthusiasts. Enter the XLR8 GeForce GTX liquid cooled graphics system with a combination GPU/CPU version available as well.

Engineered with a closed loop system and built with an Asetek sealed water cooler already attached, it gives PNY the great pleasure of offering consumers and out-of-the-box ready, simple to install and reliable product. Not to mention, much cooler than traditional cooling systems. This new cooling solution delivers up to 30-percent cooler temperatures, quieter acoustics and faster performance versus the stock reference designed NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580.

Because the GPU is liquid cooled, there is obviously much more headroom for overclocking and because of the lower temperatures that headroom only expands. On top of the overclocking headroom there is also less noise and for gamers this is quite important. A GTX 570/580 GPU can get quite loud when it hits 97C and those of us with SLI know this too well.

Google have today released a new stable release of Chrome which they say brings improvements in security, privacy and graphics to the 160 million Chrome users. Chrome is now more secure thanks to enhancements that Google have made to their Safe Browsing technology. In addition to protecting users from certain malware and phishing websites, Chrome now warns you before downloading some types of malicious files.

Google have also added more control over the data that websites store on your computer through Chrome. Included is Flash Player's Local Shared Objects (LSOs) which were previously only manageable using an online settings application on Adobe's website. Google have worked with Adobe to integrate Flash LSO deletion directly into Chrome which makes it easier to manage your online privacy.

Finally, Google Chrome's graphics capabilities continue to improve; support for hardware-accelerated 3D CSS has been added which for some websites will give a "snazzier" (Google's word, not mine!) experience in some web pages and web apps that choose to implement 3D effects. If you'd like to check out the hardware-accelerated 3D CSS in action, take a look at this Chrome Experiment on Windows Vista / Mac OS X 10.6 or above which feature clips from Aardman Studio's "Shaun the Sheep." In this experiment, you can rotate the video, scale it up and down, toggle the reflection on and off and activate a rotating carousel of videos.

Computex Taipei 2011 - It wasn't all about just netbooks and tablets for Nicole, also at the MSI booth on the floor she managed to get some hands-on time with the MSI X-Slim X370 notebook. We know, we know - it's not a tablet, these shows get really crazy.

The X370 is based on AMD Fusion technology implementing the E-350 APU dual-core processor along with AMD Radeon HD 6310 graphics. It comes from the X-Slim series from MSI and is very lightweight and slim with it coming in at 1.4kg and it is just 22.8mm thick. It gets a Windows performance rating of 3.8, which is pretty good for a notebook in this class and price range.

Nicole loves the appearance of the notebook and the chiclet keyboard, but after using it wasn't very pleased with the usability of the keyboard. It comes with a range of ports including VGA, HDMI, card reader and so on.