Tomorrow is the big day, Intel is finally launching the X38 chipset and some motherboard manufactures have already seeded journalists with review samples and many have already put their product information up on their websites. MSI has finally, if you can call it finally since the products haven't even launched yet, put its X38 boards up and although we knew about the X38 Diamond, we didn't expect the X38 Platinum.

While you're having a look at the pictures below, try to find out what the difference between the two is, it's not that easy to spot. Both boards feature the new Circu-Pipe cooler which has been specifically designed for the X38 chipset and as you might have noticed, these boards also have an extra chip below the ICH9R.

Continue reading: MSI puts its X38 boards online (full post)

Pictures of MSI's upcoming RD790, or as it's now known AMD 790FX chipset based K9A2 Platinum motherboard has appeared online. Although we saw this board as far back as Computex in June this year, it still hasn't launched. AMD is holding back on the chipset launch and MSI isn't the only manufacturer that's ready as soon as AMD gives the word. We know that several of the big manufacturers are just waiting for the launch, so at least there should be plenty of boards available when we get there.

Onto the board, which has no less than four PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots, one x1 PCI Express slot and two PCI slots. The second pair of connectors only works if the board is switched to four x8 mode, which means all of the slots have x8 bandwidth. Of course you can't use all of them at once unless you use single slot graphics cards. It's got a different kind of Circu-Pipe heatpipe cooling solution than MSI's Intel based boards and this could well be because the AMD 780FX chipset doesn't run that hot.

VIA have done what they do best with their new vmpc vm7700, this being a very compact, power efficient computer system small enough to hide behind compatible LCD displays with its VESA interface.

The VESA mounting holes on the back of LCDs are rarely used for their original purpose of wall mounting etc. so VIA have come up with a great way here to make good use of it for saving space on the desk.

The vmpc vm7700 box itself comprises either a 1GHz C7 or 1.5GHz Eden ULV processor (passively cooled), and is paired with VIA's CX700M2 media processor, and it has a total power consumption level of just 12W!

We first heard about Seagate's first generation of hybrid hard drives for notebooks around a year ago, and now it appears Seagate are finally shipping in volume. Known as the "Momentus 5400 PSD", this is a 2.5" drive with 5400RPM spindle speed and comes in capacities of 80GB, 120GB and 160GB. As a hybrid HDD, it also sports 256MB of flash memory which is designed to work together with Windows Vista's ReadyDrive technology for reduced boot times and lower power consumption (particularly useful for battery life).

ExtremeTech have more information on the new hybrid drives here, meanwhile the Dailytech report that these drives are not likely to sell very well due to the supposed lack of a significant performance increase over non-hybrid Momentus 5400 series drives. More on that here.

Now we usually leave the gaming stuff to TweakTown Games, but the "new" 40GB PS3 announcement made us a little bit upset to say the least. Whereas in Europe the "new" lesser PS3 will set you back AU$625, it will cost you $699 in Australia, uhm why? As if this wasn't bad enough, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is dropping the price of the 60GB starter pack to the equivalent of AU$782 while SCE Australia has figured there's no need to drop the $999 price tag according to Kotaku

The "new" lesser PS3 has as you've most likely already guessed a 40GB hard drive, but this in itself isn't what makes it so much cheaper, as Sony has removed a few more features just in case to try to spend as little cash as possible on its new entry level model. The multi-slot card reader is gone and so is a pair of USB ports, so you're left with only two on the "new" version.

The Inquirer has a few pictures up of a pair of AMD's upcoming RV670 cards running in CrossFire. The pictures of the cards were snapped at the World Cyber Games in Seattle and it looks like AMD is keen to show off its new hardware. Normally you'd expect to see one card when something new like this is being shown off to the general public, but considering the perceived performance of these cards, it might not be a bad move by AMD.

The test system belonged to Sapphire and they'd got their hands on one of the brand new Thermaltake cases we wrote about last week. The motherboard is also brand new, although Theo mentions that it's Sapphire's own creation, we can tell you that it's not, it's been source from a well known performance motherboard manufacturer here in Taiwan. The RD790 board would've been an early sample as well, since the manufacturer is as far as we know not quite ready for mass production of these boards.

Leadtek has announced a new dinky graphics card for those that need something affordable with HDMI output. The good news is that the PX8500 GT TDH HDMI as Leadtek calls it, still has a DVI connector. As the model name suggests this card is based on the GeForce 8500 GT GPU and it's paired with 256MB of 128-bit DDR2 memory

The Core is clocked at 450MHz and has 16 stream engines while the memory is clocked at 800MHz. The GPU is cooled by a heatpipe and a passive heatsink which should keep the card nice and cool. It's a low profile card and this should make it a great option for home theatre PC machines.

Continue reading: Low profile HDMI 8500GT from Leadtek (full post)

Belkin has announced its new SpeedPad, the Nostromo n52te which has been co-designed with Razer, something that seems to be a popular thing to do these days. It seems like Razer has branched out from only working with Microsoft and the new SpeedPad truly looks like a gaming accessory now rather than some cheap piece of tat. The te bit in the model name stands for Tournament Edition, we're not quite sure what this reefers to, it might just be a marketing gimmick.

The features don't seem to have been updated to any larger degree, you still get the small 15-key programmable keypad with a wrist rest strapped on the end, but the thumb control looks to have been improved hugely. Gone is the ugly orange button and so is the four-way controller which looked like it was borrowed from a NES controller. In their place is a new shiny metal looking button and something that looks more like the analog stick from an Xbox 360 or a PS3.

Continue reading: Belkin & Razer team up for the new n52te (full post)

Razer has announced a new gaming keyboard and a new headset and both look really sweet. Let's start with the keyboard, which goes under the Razer Lycosa name and features some gamer specific features such as a non-slip rubber finish and backlit keys. More specifically, the W, A, S, D keys can be lit up on their own without the need of the rest of the keyboard being lit up.

The keyboard also has a set of touch sensitive media playback controls which Razer has christened the TouchPanel. So rather than having an array of extra keys above the function keys, there's a small touch sensitive pad around the keyboard LED's where these controls are located.

It seems like Asus has followed suite on Viewsonic by announcing a new 19-inch LCD with 1,680x1,050 resolution alongside a new 20 and two 22-inch model. This is as far as we know only the second 19-inch display on the market with this resolution. The three new models are the VW198S, the VW202S, the VW222S and the VW222U and they're not related to Volkswagen even though the VW moniker might suggest that.

Most 19-inch widescreen LCD's are stuck at 1,440x900 which is good enough for 720p HD video content, but it doesn't give you as much desktop real estate as a 1,680x1,050 display. The only downside here of course is that a 1,680x1,050 display still isn't quite good enough for 1080i/p video. The 20 and 22-inch models are using the same resolution and we're really wishing for someone to produce a 1,920x1,200 22-inch display.