Just recently we posted about the MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard based on the AMD RD790 chipset and now it is time to focus on the X38 Diamond which we also saw at the MSI HQ here in Taiwan today.

The MSI marketing people just sent through a shot of the almost final revision of their X38 Diamond with the new full cooper heat pipe cooling solution (the shipping version will be striped of DDR2 slots and will be DDR3 only). The X38 chipset does get quite hot and as a result, a rather exotic cooler is required to keep things in order but it is not quite as crazy as the previous types we have seen from MSI but almost.

A little bit later than initially expected, HTC has finally launched the TyTN II Windows Mobile 6 Professional smart phone. To call it a smart phone is almost an insult, as the TyTN II has more features built in that some budget notebooks. It's a quad band GSM, tri band 3.5G handset with HSDPA, GPRS and EDGE for data connectivity. It also features 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 for wireless connectivity.

It's powered by a 400MHz Qualcomm MSM 7200 CPU and comes with 256MB of ROM and 128MB or RAM. It has a 2.8-inch 240x320 LCD touch screen that slides out to reveal a keyboard and it can even be tilted for better usage on a desk. The TyTN II also has a 3 Megapixel camera with auto focus, a first as far as we know from HTC, as well as a front mounted VGA camera for video calls.

Today we got the chance to visit the friendly folks at MSI and they showed us some of their upcoming products.

We got a chance to see their working Intel X38 Diamond motherboard but since it is not quite ready yet and waiting to be suited up with a new heat pipe cooling solution, we will hold off on showing you the board we saw today.

The board was a combo version with DDR2 and DDR3 DIMM slots but MSI has decided to remove the DDR2 slots due to RAM compatibility and performance issues. MSI commented that they may produce a combo board based on the X38 at a later date but they are still unsure when and if they will even do it or not.

Hot on the heels of the Creative Zen, Sandisk has announced its latest MP3 player, the Clip. We really dig these simple, easy to remember names and this looks like another quality MP3 player from Sandisk. It looks like Sandisk is also taking on the two heavy weights in the MP3 player market, as the Clip goes up against the iPod Shuffle and the Creative Stone. It's definitely not a lot bigger in terms of physical size, but it's quite feature packed none the less.

The Clip will be available in two sizes, 1 or 2GB. The 1GB model will only be available in black, while the 2GB model also comes in blue, pink and red. The 1GB model retails for a mere US$39.99 and the 2GB model is $59.99. Supported music formats are MP3, WMA (with and without DRM) and Audible audio books.

Creative has launched a new PMP, simply named the Zen. Creative claims that it is credit card sized, but this does of course not apply to its thickness, as it measures 55 x 83 x 11.3mm (DxWxH) and it weighs 65g. The Zen features a 2.5-inch LCD display which supports 16.7 million colours. It's the first MP3 player from Creative that supports AAC and possibly the only one that doesn't start with an i and end with Pod that supports the iTunes Plus tracks. It also supports DivX, Xvid, MPEG4-SP, MJPEG (commonly used in digital cameras) and WMV9 video formats, although it only supports the latter two without transcoding and let not forget MP3 and WMA for audio and JPEG for images.

The Zen will be available in three different sizes and the price changes accordingly. At a fairly affordable US$149.99 you'll get 4GB, at $199.99 you'll get 8GB and at $299.99, the top of the range 16GB model. If this still isn't enough space, you might find the inclusion of an SD card slot useful, which allows you to add further storage, although there was no mention of SDHC compatibility in the press release.

The Inquirer have some startling info for us about the performance of AMD's upcoming Phenom 3GHz parts in conjunction with a pair of Radeon 2900 XTs in Crossfire.

They are claiming that they have had the chance to tinker with an early K10 system present at the Games Convention in Leipzig last week, and provide us with some (apparent) legitimate benchmarking scores which are quite crushing!

How's 30,031 points in 3DMark06 sound? Certainly a new world record right off the bat if it pertains to be true. Further information about the system benched is that the platform was running on the RD790 chipset along with Corsair's Dominator PC2-9136C5D memory modules, and the Crossfire setup was overclocked to GPU/MEM speeds of 830MHz/900 MHz respectively.

Using a rather exotic cooling setup, the Aussie boys from overclocking group Team Australia managed to hit 5.1GHz out of an Intel E6700 processor live at show during WCG Australia 2007.

Apparently later on they managed to hit 5.2GHz but we were not around to verify it, so we will just have to take their word for it.

They did it using a GIGABYTE P35-DS3P motherboard with settings of 511.5MHz FSB x 10 which actually puts them at 5115MHz. That is quite an impressive result considering it is a mid-range board but it is still not enough to beat our own record of 5.44GHz during Computex Taipei 2007. Keep in mind, we were using an E6850 processor and GIGABYTE's most high-end DQ6 P35 motherboard with settings of 605MHz FSB x 9.

Just last weekend we had the chance to attend WCG Australia 2007 (that is the World Cyber Games, baby!) and as one of the title sponsors of the Australian leg of the event, GIGABYTE were showing off a live demo of their forthcoming MA790-DQ6 motherboard matched up with the new AMD Athlon 6400+ and two Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB graphics cards in Crossfire mode.

Nathan, our man on the scene in Sydney, reported that the system was putting out over 12,000 points in 3DMark06 and we would assume that is at stock clocked settings. AMD will launch their AMD RD790 chipset, which includes support for their upcoming range of Phenom processors along with PCI Express 2.0 support, when the processors are ready and that date is still not really confirmed at this stage.

GIGABYTE's particular board pictured below supports a grand total of four PEG slots running at x16 each which supports rumors that AMD shouldn't be too far away from releasing Quad Crossfire to the world before the end of the year.

A little birdie sent us along some Foxconn marketing shots of the final revision of their X38A "Digital Life" motherboard based on Intel's soon to be released X38 chipset.

It is basically the same as the one we saw a few months ago at Computex in Taipei but here for the first time you get a first look at the final shipping revision.

We did not get a spec sheet, so we will just need to let the pictures do the talking and here they are...

Although there wasn't that much computer related at Cartronics, we found a couple of interesting things, the first being a 2 DIN in-car PC from a company called Giantec. It actually integrates quite easily into any card that can take a 2 DIN stereo unit and it's powerful enough to run Windows XP. The hardware might not be the most impressive around, but it seemed to do the job.

The model we looked at is called PCM600D and it comes with two different processor options, either a 1GHz or a 1.5GHz Celeron M and this have been paired with 512MB or RAM. An internal 2.5-inch hard drive caters for storage, although it seems like the company only offers 40 or 60GB. It has a front mounted slot-in DVD drive and a front USB port as well as a front microphone input.