It looks like the new P55 and P57 will not ship with SATA 3 support.

Despite the fact that AMD is planning one with SATA 3 support for Q1 2010, Intel will not make that feature available on tits next two chipsets.

SATA 3 can support up to 6Gbps (750MBps) while the older SATA 2 only supports up to 3Gbps (375MBps).

Something very very interesting for Phenom II X3 and X2 owners; if the site Playwares.com is to be believe there might be a way to turn your Phenom II X3 or X2 into an X4.

According to screen shots it looks like all you need to do is set the Advanced Clock Calibration feature (if it is present in your BOIS) to Auto on any SB700/750 equipped mainboard and magically you have an X4.

We will try to confirm this but let's hope that this is true and X3 owners might have gotten a really great deal.

ATi has pushed the Catalyst 9.2 drivers out on the world. The gang over at PCGamesHardware has had the chance to see if they are worth the bandwidth to download.

ATi has had a string of bad luck with drives. The last few releases have not been very well received, and have failed to correct some rather large issues.

However, 9.2 looks like it will change all of that. PCGH ran the new drivers through nine modern games to see if ATi's claims of improved performance can bug fixes were true.

If researchers can overcome a few annoying issues we may soon be looking at 10 terabyte drives that are no bigger than a US quarter.

The break though in size reduction comes from nano-technology research that in to self-assembled data structures. Using a crystalline structure like sapphire or silicon they would first cut the disk at an angle to expose the lattice structure. This disk would be further heated to allow the exposed lattice to re-form into saw-tooth like ridges (about 30k of these ridges would cover the diameter of a human hair). From there a polymer would be layered onto the disks. This layer would form into a hexagonal screen. Using this screen like a template nickel would be vaporized onto the disk and screen removed, this would create a perfect data matrix at an incredibly small size.

The problems they face; making a head small enough to float over the data spots, along with a magnet that can read from and write to such a minute area.

Asus seem to be working on an Android based EEEPC. Although the Asus thightop at first was very much looking to be a linux product, the EEEPC quickly switched back to the more comfortable XP home.

This move has lead to a revolution in the industry that many other companies have rushed to cash in on. But it seems like Asus might be looking for other options. When MS finally kicks Windows 7 out the door, XP will more than likely not be sold anymore (even as a downgrade). This leaves Asus in an awkward situation. One solution they seem to be looking at is to work with Google's Android OS.

According to a statement made by Samson Hu, although Asus is indeed investigating the use of Android they are not sure if they will actually being this to market.

The Core i7 platform came at a very bad time. Although the enthusiast market wants the best that is out, and the Core i7 is undeniably the best CPU that Intel has ever made, the price of the platform change is putting many off.

The problem is the lack of affordable boards that support the i7, as it stands right now there are very few that are under $200, add to this the cost of the CPU $300-1000+ the cost of tri-channel DDR3 memory and you have a serious investment at a time when many are watching their budgets.

This means that X58 based board sales will drop, and we should see a corresponding drop in production. It will probably not be until the P55 hits the market than the Core i7 will really take off.

We reported yesterday that PcPerspecitve is stating that micro fragmentation caused by write combining and Wear Level algorithms used in the X25M were causing performance loss with certain usage patterns.

Well Intel has responded by casting doubt on the methodology used in the PCPerspective report.

According to an article at CNet, Intel thinks that they tests used do not show average consumer usage and could be very misleading in their results.

AMD recently gave a demo of its upcomming Istanbul Opteron's. It appears that Instanbul wil scale quite well with the addition of more cores due to the introduction of the new HT Assist (presumably HyperTransport Assist). This new feature is a probe filter that works to reduce the traffic on socket-to-socet HyperTransport links by storing an index of caches in the L3 cache and preventing unnecessary synchronization requests. AMD says that the amount of cache set aside for this in the BIOS and that the more space set aside, the more granular its operation will be.

When Istanbul hits, it will be a drop-in upgrade for existing Socket F systems, provided the system supports split power planes and a BIOS update is done to support the new procs. AMD has stated in the past that Istanbul would hit in the second half of the year, but nothing more specific has been said. With working chips being shown off, you might be able to expect them sooner rather than later.

HD Guru has some exclusive information on Honeywell's HDTV plans this fall. Without beating around the bush, Honeywell is bringing a monsterous 82" 120Hz LCD to the market.

The Altura LE series will include five 1080p models ranging from 47" to 82". The LCD's will feature the usual slew of various inputs on the back including 3 HDMI, 2 Component, and both Coaxial and S/PDIF audio. Stats on the screen itself include a 178° viewing angle, 120,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, and a rated brightness of 500-600 cd/m². Honeywell is planning on competing with Vizio who already has a solid hold on the cost-effective market in the US. No price details have been released but since Honeywell is planning to take on Vizio, you might not have to take out a second mortgage on the house to afford the behemoth.

Ars Technica has some interesting information on Comcast's plans for wideband interet connectivity in 2009. Comcast is set on continued rollouts for the DOCSIS 3.0 standard and hopes to increase its footprint on the technology by doubling the coverage to some 30 million homes and businesses. Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, and many other large cities already have the increased speeds available to consumers.

Comcast is pushing hard to stay in the game and compete with AT&T and Verizon to keep customers from switching internet providers. Verizon's FiOS already offers speeds of 50Mbps down and Comcast is looking to enable speeds of 100Mbps by the end of 2009 in some areas. However the increased speeds will not bring an increased cap on total bandwidth. The company has stated the the 250GB monthly bandwidth caps will remain in place, which means it will be so much easier to reach that limit.