Motherboard makers have hinted that Intel plan to release NINE 45nm-based (Penryn) CPUs for the desktop market.

Digitimes report that the lineup comprises five dual-core variants (Wolfdale), with the remaining four to be quad-core offerings (Yorkfield).

Four frequencies are known for the Wolfdale processors, these being 3.16GHz, 3.0GHz, 2.83GHz and 2.66GHz, with the fifth chip's frequency not yet disclosed. All of these will each feature 6MB of L2 cache.

Samsung has announced three new MP3 players today, the YP-P2, the YP-S5 and the YP-T10. All three models will be officially unveiled at IFA in Berlin next month, but it has already pre-announced many of the features of the upcoming models.

The YP-P2 (pictured below) features a huge 3-inch 428x240 pixel touch screen and it looks like Samsung has borrowed a few design cues from Apple's iPhone. It will have 8GB of built in flash memory and it plays MP3 and WMA audio files as well as WMV, H.264 and ASF video files. IT's also got built in Bluetooth, integrated speaker and mic and an FM radio. Pretty neat, especially as it only measures 100 x 52 x 9.2 mm (HxWxD).

HKEPC has got its hands on the brand new, upcoming AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ Black Edition CPU and given it a thorough trashing through a wide range of benchmarks. They've also compared it against Intel's Core 2 Duo to see how it stands up against the competition.

Although it performs quite well in comparison to the Core 2 Duo E6750, it doesn't really have a chance compared to the E6850. Nor does it stand up well in the game tests, as it's beaten hands down in the real world games, but manages to better the E6750 in 3DMark 06.

But AMD is going to have to suffer until the next quarter, since it will be launching its new Phenom CPU then, although at very low clock speeds of around 2GHZ initially. The Phenom FX80 might hit 2.4GHz at launch, but AMD hasn't confirmed any clock speeds as yet. HKEPC has a list of what they presume the launch speeds will be and what features the various Phenom chips will feature if you have a look on page one of the article below. Please note that it's all in Chinese.

Razer has launched a new website for an upcoming product, which we presume is a new mouse, but we and you have to wait until the 23rd of August to find out what it really is. The site features a sliding cartoon and some sound effects, but it doesn't reveal anything about the product itself.

The picture above is from an email that was sent out from Razer and it says even less. From what we can guess, this will be a new mouse, but what Bringers of Silent Death stands for is something we'll have to wait and see.

Corsair have introduced some new "Flash Padlock" secure USB 2.0 drives today which have a hardware-authentication lock feature. If you want to keep your data secure whilst on the go, one of these would be a perfect partner.

The drive will "auto-lock" everytime you remove it from a computer, requiring you to key in your PIN number on the simple touch-pad interface.

The Flash Padlock comes in two capacities, 1 and 2GB with pricing of $29.99 and $39.99 USD respectively.

James Bannan, our former collegue over at APC Magazine, has got hold of build 16549 of Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista - and as you do, it played around with it all weekend.

It's no secret that there's a leaked beta of Vista SP1 floating around, but no-one yet has really taken the time to analyse it in detail to find out what it really does.

I made it my mission this weekend to trawl through the registry and file changes in SP1 to find out as best I could exactly what SP1 does.

There has been numerous reports floating around the web that Intel's upcoming X38 enthusiast chipset motherboard will officially support not only AMD Crossfire dual graphics but also Nvidia SLI technology.

We heard plenty of those rumors ourselves from one source to the next and at one point, we were even so sure it was going to happen we even started saying you could probably look forward to X38 supporting SLI. Sadly though, all these rumors are untrue!

During Computex back in June of this year, a couple motherboard companies slipped up and claimed that their X38 boards would support SLI. Technically and as far as the hardware goes, X38 does support SLI but it is not officially sanctioned at all by Nvidia. During a drunken Taipei rampage last year in a place which will be left unnamed, we asked the question to an Nvidia senior rep who is high up on the food chain and the answer was something along the lines of that Intel would never get a SLI license unless Intel gave them a free CPU bus license in return (loosely quoted). Of course, neither are likely to ever happen.

Boy Genius Report has scored some real information as well as some pictures of the upcoming Blackberry devices which have been heavily rumored. The trio of new devise is the updated Pearl (no real name given as yet), the Curve 8310 (already available in Europe) and the 8820, which coincidentally launched in Spain on the Orange network a couple of days ago.

The new Pearl will be available in two different versions, one for GSM/GPRS/EDGE networks and it will have Wi-Fi as standard. However, we can't but feel sorry for those looking at getting the CDMA version, as it won't have Wi-Fi. In its place is a GPS receiver, which as handy as it may be will never replace Wi-Fi.

Other new features include an externally accessible microSD card slot, a 3.5mm headset jack, a 2 Megapixel camera with better flash, twin speakers, a spell checker, better wind noise protection and an improved SIM card holder. Looks like a full on upgrade then and it's expected to be available within the next couple of months. It's just a shame that it's still missing 3G.

Buffalo has released four external USB SSD drives with capacities of 8, 16, 24 and 56GB. The 56GB version would set you back US$750, with the 24GB version coming it at $336, the 16GB model at $234 and finally the 8GB one at $142. Although we dig SSD drives, this seems like a strange way of making the most out of them.

Buffalo has designed a fairly attractive drive enclosure for the SSD drives that measures 89 x 57 x 14 mm (H x W x D) and weighs in at just under 61g for the 56GB model. The drives are meant to be shock proof up to a drop of 2.5m, so dropping one of these off your desk shouldn't do any kind of damage to them.

Normally we wouldn't cover something as basic as a voice recorder, especially as it comes built into many MP3 players these days, but Olympus has launched four new models that features a built in USB port. Again, this might not seem like a big deal, but it's taken until now for a voice recorder company to release such a product.

The first two models, the WS-110 and WS-210S features 256 or 512MB of built in memory and measures 94.7 x 38 x 10mm (H x W x D) and features a built in LCD screen. They're powered by a single AAA battery and Olympus claims it has enough juice for up to 21h of recording.