With AMD's launch of the ATI FireGL range today (full news will be posted later), the FireGL V7600 was revealed, but this isn't the big news here, instead the interesting story is the GPU that the card is using, the R600PRO. Although it's not yet available as a consumer product, this is at least a confirmation on the fact that it's coming.

However, from what we know, the consumer model will differ from the FireGL V7600 by having only 160 stream processors instead of 320. This means that the consumer model, which everyone assumes will be called Radeon HD 2900PRO, will be a fair bit slower. It will have 8 ROPs and 16 TMUs and a 256-bit memory interface. The good news here is that AMD didn't cut any of the TMU's, as this is the weak point of the R600 design.

The FireGL V7600 is clocked at 600MHz, but we'd expect the Radeon HD 2900PRO to be clocked higher, as the Radeon HD 2900XT is clocked higher than the FireGL V8600-series. The consumer card will use GDDR4 and should be available in 512MB, but we'd guess a 256MB version would also be available as a lower cost option.

Some hot *HOT* details have come to light in regards to Intel's next-gen "Penryn" family of processors (due next quarter), these taking Core 2 micro architecture down to a 45nm process.

Dailytech let us know that we can expect much more than just the usual benefits to come from shrinking the die of a chip, as it appears there are quite a number of other tweaks done to it for even greater performance than the current crop of Core 2 offerings, clock-for-clock (faster cache and more of it, SSE4 optimizations etc.).

HKEPC go one better and give us all an excellent idea of the kind of performance increase we can expect from current to next-gen core 2 architecture, having gotten a hold of a "Wolfdale"ES Sample(2.33GHz/6MB L2/1333MHz FSB) and pitting it with a current E6550 Core 2 chip running at the same 2.33GHz to see the yields in a huge array of tests.

Samsung seems to be very busy these days and is apparently working on a new Symbian based smartphone, the SGH-i570. It does look similar to its Windows Mobile 6 based sibling, the SGH-i620. Both phones features a slide-out keyboard and somewhat similar styling, but in all honesty, the SGH-i570 looks like the dogs in comparison in stylish gunmetal black over plastic iPod white for the SGH-i620.

The SGH-i570 will be running Symbian 9.1 and it should feature Wi-Fi, HSPDA, EDGE and Bluetooth. Pretty good specifications in terms of connectivity and the only thing missing is a mini-USB port. It also comes with 160MB of built in memory and it takes microSD cards if that's isn't enough.

The day has come that you never expected would arrive, someone has been made enough to build a dual tape deck that connects to a USB port. Ion Audio, the company behind the USB record deck came up with the idea to make a tape deck, since its USB connected record player has been a huge hit.

The imaginatively named Tape2PC comes with MixMeister's EZ Tape Converter which does the dull stuff for you and sticks your recordings into iTunes. Aparently the Tape2PC doesn't even need any drives to work, it's all plug and play and off you go.

Ideazone, the company behind the Zboard is back with a new product, the Merc Stealth. Although the Merc has been around for some time, the new, updated version comes with three different backlights, red, blue and purple. This might not seem all that special, but the Merc Stealth also has illuminated characters on all its keys.

This should hopefully make it easier to use the keyboard in a dimly lit room and you can adjust be backlit in three steps as well as switch it off completely. As with the original version, the Merc Stealth features 34 dedicated gaming keys that are labeled and according to Ideazone are positioned for ultimate precision and control.

Samsung is apparently working on a new handset with integrated GPS as part of its new line up of handsets that are expected to arrive late this year or early next year. The unofficial model name is i550 and it will also be using the Symbian S60 operating system. This is not the first time Samsung has developed a phone with Symbian as its OS, although it's not Samsungs main choice of OS for its handsets, unlike Nokia that almost exclusively uses Symbian.

The i550 is also meant to be a 3.5G handset with HSDPA, although it only supports speeds of up to 3.6Mbit. It's meant to have a 2.6-inch display which will hopefully have better than 240x320 resolution, 128MB of RAM and 150MB of ROM. The built in memory can be expanded via a microSD card slot and the phone features a mini USB connector.

The Xbox 360 will drop in price in the US, by as much as US$50 depending on the model. If this is in preparation for a new model or not isn't clear. However, the Core model is rumoured to be dropped shortly, but until Microsoft confirms this, it's only a rumour. It would be nice to see more models with HDMI and we wouldn't think that it is a costly addition and Microsoft should really offer it across the range.

The Core version is dropping from US$299.00 to $279.99. The Premium version will drop $50 in price, from $399.99 down to $349.99 and it will come with a free copy of Rockstar's Table Tennis. Finally the Elite will drop $30 in price from S479.99 to $449.99, making it much more competitive against the PS3.

It will be interesting to see how Sony responds to this price drop, if at all, since it doesn't seem to be enough of a price drop to really worry Sony. Microsoft is still too far Nintendo's super low Wii pricing to cause Nintendo any concern. Let's just hope that Microsoft follows suite in the rest of the world and gives us a price cut as well.

Remember the spy shots of the Logitech G9 that we posted a couple of weeks ago? Well, it turns out they were the real deal and the new Logitech G9 mouse was announced today. It really looks just as weird as the ones on the pictures, but there's a good reason for it, as what wasn't shown on the spy shots, was the fact that it comes with two removable "jackets".

Logitech supplies what it calls a Wide Load and a Precision grip for the G9 to make it fit different hand size and different play styles. The Wide Load grip features a satin finish while the Precision grip features Logitech's DryGrip technology. Logitech is planning to release additional grips for the G9 in the future. The G9 features the highest resolution we've seen on a mouse at 3,200 dpi and it does of course feature laser technology. The sensitivity can be set between 200 and 3,200 dpi.

Although Gigabyte was showing the GA-X38T-DQ6 at Computex this year, we've found out some more details about the board and Gigabyte is still working on the final details of the board to have it ready in time for the launch. As you might notice from our pictures, there's something lacking, namely the chipset cooling.

There's a good reason for this, as the version that was on display at Computex didn't feature the final cooling solution. It seems like the X38 chipset is running as hot as we've heard and it demands quite a good cooling solution to keep it cool. Gigabyte has also changed the VRM design on this boar and as you also can see from the picture, the board has most of the power regulation in a straight row.

Continue reading: Gigabyte X38 getting ready (full post)

Nvidia's MCP73, or GeForce 7050 and 7025 has made an online appearance on a Chinese website called Yesky.com. They've got their hands on a board from a company called Topstar, not a brand we can say that we're familiar with. You might have notice that Nvidia is using the same models names here as they're doing for the MCP68 for AMD.

The MCP73 is a single chip solution and it will be available in three different versions, the MCP73PV or the GeForce 7050/nForce 630i, the MCP73S or the GeForce7025/nForce 630i and finally the MCP73V or the GeForce 7025/nForce 610i. The main difference here is that the most basic version doesn't support 1333MHz bus speed, DVI or HDCP and it also lacks Gigabit Ethernet and some USB ports and some RAID functionality.