ATi, after getting beat up by driver optimizations (for 5 nVidia picked games) for the GTX 260 (216 cores), is hard at work developing its own optimizations for their 4xxx series of GPUs.

The new drivers (8.12) should hit in December and may bring the 4870 back into the lime light if things work out better than the last two releases.

Fudo has the scoop on that here.

There are rumors that Foxconn might be getting out of the channel market.

A short while ago Foxcann had made the statement that it was giving its channel business six months to become profitable or it would close that portion down.

This is not terrible news as Foxconn's major strength lies in OEM and ODD production. They are the company that builds the iPhone, and many other electronic devices.

If you have been following the SSD game, the one thing that tends to turn most people off from (aside from the ridiculous prices) is capacity. Considering we have games in that take up tens of Gigabytes along with ripped movies and MP3 collections of vast sizes the 40, 80 and 128GB SSDs do not have enough room to make them worth the cost.

But Samsung wants to change all of that. Today they announced the release of a 256GB SSD drive that not only outpaces all other available SSDs on the market in terms of size, but (if Samsung is to be believed) can outperform the others too.

TechPowerUp has the scoop here.

The new Nettop arena has been heating up between Asus and MSI. Both want this new and burgeoning market all to themselves and both are putting out more and more exotic systems.

MSI in an effort to corner the market on Large Screen nettop has announced a 22" (in addition to smaller systems) flavor complete with a 1920x1080 HD display and optional BluRay drive.

Although this is an amazing sounding system, I thought the idea behind these was to have a small simple system to cover internet, email and some basic work. Maybe I missed something.

Ever since the birth of hardware accelerated physics we all have been waiting for a game to make use if this potentially game changing technology.

Ageia failed to bring that to us and in the process ended up being consumed by nVidia. Even under the hood of the Green Machine PhysX did not seem able to give us more than a few extra points in 3DMark Vantage.

Now it would seem nVidia is giving us what we have asked for as DICE and EA get together and prepare to launch Mirror's Edge a game that uses nVidia's PhysX to bring a new level or realism to the game world.

If you saw the movie "Minority Report" the one thing that probably stuck in your head (other than how bad the acting was) was the very cool hologram screen used by Tom Cruise in the beginning of the movie. At the time I thought it would be very nice to have a setup like that.

If you were like me then your wait might be over. Oblong (a group of inventors that includes one of the advisors to the movie) have come up with an interface that is very much like the one shown in the movie. The new setup is galled g-speak and only takes a hi-res DLP projector, special gloves, a large room, and an insanely expensive infrared camera to work.

Engadget has a video and more on this here.

NVIDIA is about to release its new ForceWare 180.47 driver in a few hours, with many new features and tweaks for new games this holiday season, but AMD got in a little earlier.

AMD has made available an ATI Catalyst hotfix for users lucky enough to be running a new Core i7 Intel X58 system.

It is said to improve performance in Far Cry 2 (DX9 and DX10) as well as in Stalker Clear Sky (DX10 and DX10.1). It also fixes a bug in Brothers in Arms - Hells Highway - get the full details below.

With Core i7 now officially off the hook comes a sudden rush of supporting components not only including motherboards and triple channel memory kits, but aftermarket cooling solutions as well.

We've seen a few companies like Cooler Master announce LGA1366 brackets for some of their existing LGA775 coolers as a more cost effective upgrade path, but there are also some entirely new coolers hitting the market specifically for Core i7, too.

Just recently Asetek introduced an OEM-only liquid cooling system which is an option for commercial PC builders to include in their Core i7 system packages before shipping to customers. You can read more about it here.

Further to the official announcement from VIA earlier today which introduces their new VIPRO Touch-Screen Panel PC, they have posted up a youtube video which allows you to see it in action.

This neat little compact touchscreen PC is designed mostly for use in industrial environments or for commercial use such as ATM, vending and information kiosks etc.

In what I would say is amusing turn of events it seems the President-Elect Barack Obama may have to give up his addiction to his Blackberry device.

Being the President of the United States is a very big job (understatement) and with that Job goes certain small responsibilities and dangers (again more understatement). One of these is the responsibility to avoid unnecessary dangers, such as communicating on the insecure RIM network Via a Blackberry device and through personal e-mail accounts. This means that Barack may very likely have to give up his Blackberry and Personal Laptop that he uses in his daily life.

Read the TGdaily article on this here.