The official launch of P45 chipset is a month away, and usually this means Taiwan manufacturers are at the Alpha or Beta stage of development for their new products.

Foxconn it seems has stepped ahead of the pack with a product that is complete and ready to launch ahead of schedule. We at TweakTown got some very tasty pictures and some pretty hot tips on the expected features of the Foxconn Quantum Force "Avenger" motherboard based on Intel P45 chipset.

The motherboard is aesthetically appealing in a standard blue color with quite a few colored ports, connectors and slots.

Finally after months of guessing, Paramount has confirmed their triumphant US return to the Blu-ray fold on May 20th by announcing 4 new release titles; Bee Movie, Face/Off, Blades of Glory, Next and re-releases of their previously released titles. These titles will suprisingly be shipping to stores as early as next week. Then in June, Paramount will bow Cloverfield, There Will Be Blood, and The Spiderwick Chronicles.

Whilst Paramount Home Entertainment Australia have yet to make a similar announcement, our spies tell us to look for releases beginning in July.

And no, no word of Transformers just yet; I just hope they don't hold off until Transformers 2 which will be released in July 2009.

If you're looking for a well equipped mid-tower chassis with bling, Thermaltake have just introduced a new model into their lineup that may be of interest.

The new M9D has a glossy finish to it with a large side window and 23cm Touchcolor fan which is where the bling comes from. The fan has a special switch located on the side panel which allows you to choose between five color modes; red, green, blue, random mix LED, and random single / mix LED.

Furthermore, there are two additional 120mm Turbofans located at the front and back of the case for better assisted airflow and some of the other highlights include a tool-free design, removable HDD cages and a very generous nine 5.25" drive bays.

Palit were one of the first companies to let us know about its custom designed and factory overclocked GeForce 9600 GSO graphics card.

Before you get too excited though, Nvidia's GeForce 9600 GSO is not new and is nothing more than a relabeled GeForce 8800 GS. In default configurations, it carries the EXACT same clock speeds and specifications.

The question on many enthusiasts lips at the moment is why does the new 3DMark Vantage benchmark from Futuremark lack DirectX 10.1 support.

It has full support for DX10 but not the extra extensions in the newer version. AMD and S3 are currently the only companies which offer DX10.1 support on their graphics cards with Nvidia lacking it at this stage of the game. Fudzilla is already making certain claims that Nvidia may have had something to do with the lack of DX10.1 support in the new benchmark, since its current GeForce 8 and 9 series cards do not support it.

HighPoint has long been producing affordable and relatively well performing RAID controller cards for various markets. Up until recently though, its product portfolio was missing true hardware controlled products.

That all changes with the launch of the RocketRAID 3120 two port PCI-Express x1 RAID controller card. It has its own onboard I/O controller and memory, which is essentially what makes it hardware controlled, rather than relying on the system CPU to take care of the important controller duties.

OCZ are now offering DDR3 memory as part of their Special Ops Edition lineup, these comprising both PC3-8500 and PC3-10666 singular modules in 1 and 2GB sizes as well as dual channel 2 and 4GB kits.

The Special Ops Edition Series of modules is primarily aimed at the gamers crowd, featuring a unique camouflage motif heatspreader design. The PC3-8500 (1066MHz) modules operate with latencies of 7-7-7-24 at 1.6v whilst the PC3-10666 (1333MHz) modules are set with timings of 9-9-9-27 at 1.7v.

Last week MWg launched two new Windows Mobile 6 based phones in Hong Kong at its lavish launch event.

The two new models launched were the Atom V and Zinc II. From Expansys in the UK, the updated Zinc II will set you back a steep £449.95 (inc tax) but it looks to have the features to match the price tag.

Attempting to cash in on the success of the ASUS Eee PC, A-DATA has announced a range of new themed flash memory devices for the highly popular Taiwanese made low-cost notebook PC.

First up is the A-DATA class 6 SDHC memory card which offers a hefty 8GB of additional storage to the Eee. It's promoted as a permanent second hard drive for the Eee with its branded color coding scheme - however, it begs question - what good it is that if you never see it installed inside the card reader? Tsk tsk tsk...

Now that Windows XP SP3 has been released to the world, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes over at ZDNet Hardware 2.0 blog has done a bunch of application and gaming benchmarks comparing XP SP3 to SP2 and RTM as well as Vista RTM and SP1 in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors.

Starting off with the application testing, Adrian uses PassMark PerformanceTest 6.1 and discovers that SP3 does produce a better result than SP2. Coming out on top is Vista 64-bit RTM which is slightly faster than SP1. You can get a closer look at those results over here.