Earlier on today we visited the GIGABYTE headquarters here in Taipei where we got some exclusive hands-on time with its range of upcoming Intel Z77 "Ivy Bridge" Socket 1155 motherboards. GIGABYTE told us to say "3rd generation" processors, but to be more clear, we're telling you they are indeed "Ivy Bridge" processors. These are the boards that will support the upcoming third generation Intel Core processors that are due to come onto the market sometime in April as far as we know at this stage of the game. These boards will also support current Sandy Bridge based processors such as the 2500k, 2600k and 2700k.

We also know that the performance of these said processors is really impressive and the power consumption numbers are great, too. We cannot go into too many details about this platform at this stage, but what we can do is give you a look at what GIGABYTE has planned for the platform with a look at four of its upcoming Z77 boards which we went hands-on with today.

We'll start off with the big daddy which is the G1.Sniper 3, this is a board designer for gamers as well as overclockers and represents as the highest end Z77 board from GIGABYTE at this stage. It comes with an improved cooling setup with oversized heatsinks and a more minimalistic cooler design - rather than a big gun shaped heatsink at the south end of the board, there is just a small golden skull with a knife held in its mouth.

Ever wanted to buy a car with an 'Intel Inside' sticker on it? Well, soon you'll be able to. Intel is creating a new venture fund to invest in companies that develop technologies used in cars and other powered vehicles.

Intel is planning on putting $100 million into the fund over the next four-to-five years, promising research for automotive hardware, software, and services. The investments could be for a range of things, from navigation to in-car entertainment systems.

Intel is wanting to bust out of the bubble they've created for themselves with a market of processors for laptops and PCs. We can see this as they want to get into the smartphone and tablet market, but now cars? Sales of computing products is expected to decline over time as domestic and global markets become saturated. This should be translated to "because people don't need faster upon faster desktop processors as their dual- or quad-core smartphones and tablets are more than powerful enough'.

Boxee has slowly been making their Boxee Box more awesome, but I think today's change will catapult it into the hearts, souls and pants of many more. Boxee has just teased they're nearly ready to introduce Pornhub.

Yes, Pornhub. Pornhub is considered the YouTube of porn, where it offers user-generated video, as well as professional-grade content. Yes, it's porn, but porn is a multi-billion market, and Boxee are smart for entering that arena. Boxee are also not new to offering adult services, such as Fyre.

Pornhub will make its ad-free debut, free to watch is a great way to get customers interesting. It also claims its the first, official free adult app on Boxee to do so. This marks the first move of Pornhub being made available on TVs. Right now, Pornhub's bread and butter (I was going to use a pun, but I'll keep it clean!) is still the web, where they enjoy an insane 100 million page views per day, with 25 million visitors and 3 billion page views per month.

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview came out just a little over 24 hours ago, and has enjoyed an insane 1 million-plus downloads in those 24 hours. This is a runaway success for Microsoft, which is pretty much going all-in with their next-generation OS.

Considering that over 1 million people downloaded the OS, the servers handled it pretty damn well. I personally had no issues with the download, with it maxing out my 8Mbit connection. I also didn't notice a single person on my Facebook news feed whinging, so that's a good sign, isn't it? Or maybe I don't have enough friends?

Microsoft broke the news on their BuildingWindows8 Twitter feed, saying "One day later... one million downloads of the consumer preview.

WHERE WAS MY INVITE, ROCKSTAR?!?! Anyway, the worldwide gaming press have had their first hands-on taste of the slow-mo, gun-toting Max Payne 3 and have some seriously amazing things to say about it.

Rockstar showed them a bit of the game, with the story early on, they find Max and his partner Passos meeting up with the ruthless Comando Sombra gang at a local football stadium in an attempt to exchange cash for the captive Fabiana Branco. However, things quickly turn bad as the deal is crashed by unknown assailants. From there, they're also given a taste of a level where Max tracks Fabiana's kidnappers to the hostile, rain-soaked docks by the Tietê River...

The impressions and quotes? Incredible. Excitement... building... The only thing holding me back is most of these sites give games like Call of Duty: Yet Another Sequel games high scores, but Max Payne is quite close to my heart, please let these quotes be complete 100-percent excitement and truth.

OCZ have just added two more drives to their Agility 3 range of SSDs, with new capacities: 180GB and 360GB. The SandForce SF-2281 controller is here to help, by supporting up to eight channels, but it can also run in 6-channel mode, which is how you get the 180 and 360GB capacities.

SandForce-powered drives use roughly 7-percent of the storage space for over-provisioning by default, plus possibly RAISE as well, depending on the SSD itself. These SSDs sport 192GiB and 384GiB of actual NAND on the drive. 2.5-inch drives usually sport 16GB NAND packages but in order to run in 6-channel mode you only use 12 packages (i.e. two NAND packages per channel).

This means, for the 180GB mode, it would have twelve 16GiB NAND packages with two 8GiB dies per package. The 360GB model just doubles the dies per NAND package, so we're left with twelve 32GiB packages, with four dies each.

I've just watched the new trailer to The Avengers, and holy crap it is amazing. The first trailer was good, but this had the hairs on the back of my neck well and truly standing.

The trailer shows off some insane action, and the scope and scale of the movie is shown much better in this trailer. I'm loving that they have crammed so many characters into one movie, something that could've only been dreamt of 20 years ago.

There are tonnes of tracking shots in the movie, one-liners should be rampant, too. I just love Robert Downey Jr playing Tony Stark. Chris Evans plays Captain America amazingly, too. It's also good to see the soon-to-be new Bourne playing Hawkeye, too.

If we listen to the latest data from comScore, Google+ users actually spent an average of 3.3 minutes per month on Google+ in January of this year. Comparing this number to Facebook, where they have an average of 7.5 hours last month, this is a whopping 136-times greater than the average Google+ visitor.

Google of course downplayed the super-low numbers, claiming that their own internal data shows much higher numbers, and that Google+ is actually growing. If we look at the other comScore data, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter all beat Google+ in minutes-per-month spent on the respective social networking websites. We have 17 minutes, 8 minutes, and 21 minutes for LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter, respectively.

Just 7.5 hours a month on Facebook? Well, considering I'm on the thing for 8 hours-plus per day, what am I? A super non-average Facebook user? Am I addicted? Not as much as some, I have friends and family who literally spend those 7.5 hours, in a single day, on a smartphone, and not get bored. I'm bored of Facebook in minutes, I just have it sitting in a Chrome tab, waiting for that (1) to show up and haunt me to check it out.

Rumors of Doom 4 being cancelled have once again been shot down by Bethesda Softworks, after All Games Beta publishing some information stating that the game had been cancelled, simultaneously releasing leaked screenshots that originally surfaced on 4Chan.

Bethesda vice president of public relations and marketing, Pete Hines, said to Joystiq in a statement, that Doom 4 is not cancelled and that when they are ready to discuss the game and show it off, they'll let everyone know. All Games Beta opened the floodgates and have now added more screenshots to their gallery, totalling 170 images.

Considering that id's RAGE was not that great, personally, critically and across the world, it would be hard to have faith in this after RAGE took five-plus years to develop. id need to go back to their roots as a PC-exclusive developer and push the envelope with Doom 4 if they want their time in the lime light once more. A PC-exclusive, PC-crushing, crap-your-pants horror game is what we need right now. Doom 4 could re-spark PC's constantly-dimming light.

Foursquare lover? PlayStation Vita owner? Well, the Foursquare app has officially checked in to the US PlayStation Store, and for just 4.5MB, it can be yours. The app works over Wi-Fi, but the app does suggest you use 3G to help the Vita's GPS get the correct position of your check-in.

Foursquare's app is also said to be compatible with the Vita's rear touchpad and cameras, which is a nice bonus. Engadget have prodded around with the Foursquare app and report that it feels similar to the Facebook app released just a few days ago for the PS Vita.

Vita owner? Foursquare user? Be sure to leave a comment to let us know your experience with the Vita + Foursquare, there's over 1.2 million of you out there now!