The folks at bit-tech visited ECS' office in Taipei yesterday to see what the company has in store for budgeteers in the near future and caught a good glimpse of an AMD 880G based motherboard they've been working on.

Interestingly this board uses a full-ATX form factor, despite the lower-end market the chipset and this particular board is aimed toward. This was the first sign that ECS wasn't going as cheap as possible in the development of this board.

From there it was quickly discovered that they kept with the SB850 Southbridge as opposed to the cheaper/older SB750 some other mobo makers are still choosing to implement as another form of cost cutting, meaning this board gets native SATA 6Gbps support and a couple extra USB 2.0 ports.

There are a number of micro four thirds cameras on the market today. These cameras all have interchangeable lenses and cost about the same as some of the DSLRs on the market. The difference is that the DSLR has a mirror inside whereas the micro four thirds cams don't.

Sony is rumored to be getting ready to enter the micro four thirds market with a new Alpha camera supporting the format. The new camera is said to have a snap on lens mount system that needs no twisting for faster lens changes.

Along with the camera three lenses are rumored. The lenses include a 16mm f/2.8 lens, an 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens, and an 18-200mm zoom lens is rumored as well. The launch date for the camera is supposed to be May 11.

As we know, AMD's new hexa-core processors in the form of the Phenom II X6 series are set to make their debut early next week and will give users the ability to get six-core grunt out of their desktop systems without the massive cost that comes with doing it Intel style in its only hexa-core powered Core i7-980X processor.

However, Intel will make the gap a little smaller with a cheaper six-core i7 processor soon after, though still not as cheap as some would have hoped.

This processor will be dubbed the Core i7-970 and from what we're hearing a the minute it will still cost a hefty $900+ for ownership, only slightly less than their flagship model. The processor runs at 3.2GHz with 12MB of L3 cache and of course sports Hyperthreading for 12 logical cores.

Cooler Master's HAF 922 has been an attractive little winner in the mid-tower market for some time now, so the company thought they'd spice it up a little more with a limited edition run that features a shiny red exterior coating (with black mesh covers on the front bezel) and a black and red interior.

The mesh side panel of the standard version has also been changed in favour of an acrylic one and there's now a mounting spot for a 200mm fan on top, though that doesn't appear to come included with the case. The fans that come shipped in the case include a 200mm one mounted up front and a 120mm at the rear.

Apart from this the case remains much the same as the stock HAF 922 with five 5.25" bays, five 3.5" internal bays (all of which give tool-free installation) and front I/O panel with audio, USB and eSATA connectivity.

Tuniq has been working on improving its thermal paste recipe and has come out with the new TX-4 branded paste which it's aiming to release to market next month.

It goes without saying that Tuniq made sure TX-4 would offer better performance than TX-3. TX-4 has increased thermal conductivity and broader thermal range over previous pastes from the company. More specifically, its thermal conductivity is 6.53 W/mK and it has a temperature range of -45°C to 160°C.

A chart giving performance estimates hints that TX-4 will lower temps by as much as 5% over TX-2 and 11% over generic thermal pastes. Of course, they use their impressive Tower 120 Extreme to obtain these readings nestled atop a Core i5 750 processor at 4GHz under load (using Stress Prime 2004).

We've known for a while now about "Zosma" which is the codename for AMD's Phenom II X4 900T series of processors scheduled for launch soon after the company's X6 (six-core) "Thuban" processors hit the market; on the 26th of this month to be exact.

Zosma is basically a cut down version of Thuban with two cores disabled, giving the potential to unlock the other two cores and get a six-core Phenom for quad-core Phenom money (sub-$200 bracket).

But as was the case with earlier Phenom II X2 and X3 processors, unlocking was always a case of hit and miss where some could do it successfully, others not a chance.

It's no secret that Apple has been using Intel processors for several years now. However, a story over at AppleInsider hints that perhaps Apple's relationship with Intel isn't as strong as it seems.

Rumour has it the company is considering jumping ship to AMD and has even been testing AMD based chipsets in their labs. But there's no form of substantial evidence to support this as yet.

Apparently there are two main reasons for why Apple might decide to do this. The first is due to Apple having to push back the launch date for their latest MacBook Pro line-up with Core i5/i7 based processors because of chip shortages. This had Apple pretty steamed and they are concerned repeats will occur with future refreshes.

So there has been a lot of news about Slate PCs, like phones and SSDs I swear that everyone is working on one. However we have found out something very interesting. It seems that the little NVIDIA Tegra SoC that we all loved in the Zune HD will be getting a serious upgrade in the form of the Terga 2. Now, that all by itself is not interesting at all. What is very interesting is the information that NV might be gearing the new Tegra 2 towards Google's Android over Microsoft Windows Phone 7.

This was found in some information relating to Google's plans for a slate and the fact that even internal information from NV does not seem to show any movement towards an OS from the gang up in Redmond. What is disappointing though is that a Tegra 2 based Windows Phone 7 would have been a serious threat to both HTC and Apple. Of course it would be serious if Microsoft knew how to market anything.

Still we are waiting to get more information as the time nears for these devices to see daylight. As of right now our little birdie is saying June...Just about the time someone else is planning a launch too.

The concept of virtual house windows has been talked about and demonstrated in various forms for years now, but always left much to be desired and getting the right kind of effect to give a realistic and convincing impression was the most challenging and difficult hurdle.

However, what you're about to see in the video demonstration below is by far the most impressive setup known yet and goes the extra mile in making the illusion much more convincing than anything we've seen before with the use of an IR necklace (complete with baby for this particular demo) interacting with a Wiimote and the brains of the setup being a Mac Pro in this case.

As you can see in the video above, as widdle bubs physically moves around the room, the images from the pair of 1080p plasma screens shift in the opposite direction to give that true feeling of looking out of a real pane of glass to the detailed scenery beyond.

MSI has made the first step in giving GTX 400 series owners more flexibility in obtaining higher than stock clock rates with its latest Afterburner software (1.6.1 Beta 4). The installation of this software together with a GTX 480 gives the ability to start tinkering with the voltages.

Shane has confirmed that the software is not restricted to MSI-only branded cards either; you can see in his latest article here that he used a GIGABYTE branded GTX 480 to test with and it worked a treat.

GTX 470 owners don't get the ability just yet, but don't worry guys, we've been informed there's another Afterburner update coming out within the next week or two that will make it possible to do the same on your card(s).