It seems the folks over at Futuremark are as busy as ever at the moment - they're not only about to start making games but also busily working on the next 3DMark called "Vantage".

We are still not sure when 3DMark Vantage is going to be released but Futuremark sent us a work in progress screenshot from the latest build as a teaser for the upcoming launch. Here it is, we're a little early on releasing this screenshot but we couldn't wait any longer!

According to this story posted over at DIGITIMES, ASUS are expanding their existing Eee PC range with some product lines to cover more than just the notebook market segment.

These new Eee products will include the E-DT which is short for DeskTop PC as well as the E-TV and E-Monitor.

Despite recent news that Microsoft are apparently planning to withhold Windows 7 from being released until early 2011, we've decided to give you the other side of the story.

A recent roadmap suggests that Microsoft will launch "Windows 7", the successor to Vista as early as the second half of 2009. This is contrary to initial reports which stated its release sometime in 2010. According to APC Magazine, there are three milestone projects in the Windows 7 program, with the first stage already in progress. M1 is an Alpha build which has shipped to key partners for code evaluation. Stage two, due around April/May will be an updated version, and stage three is likely towards the end of the year if all goes to plan.

You would've been happy to go with Vista if it weren't for all the bloatware packed in which you have no say about? - A new independent tool has been released which solves that problem.

Some of you may be aware of nLite for Windows 2000/XP; the same team of people who created that are behind the newly released "vLite" currently sitting at version 1.1.

The question has inevitably been asked of them before, but most everyone thought it would never come to be. FutureMark who are most reknowned for their high quality and beautifully rendered synthetic PC benchmarking facilities have just announced that they're now making a bold move to enter the games development business.

This is particularly exciting news for gamers alike; if the 3DMark series is anything to go by then their games should be right up there with the likes of Crysis, if not overshadowing it substantially.

Thanks to their experienced team of highly talented graphics artists and programmers who have proven to us all that they're capable of producing some of the best rendering the computer industry has ever seen, we should certainly be in for a real treat.

Following CoolIT Systems' footsteps, world reknowned PC watercooling specialists Danger Den have also just announced that they're currently working on an aftermarket watercooling solution for the HD 3870 X2 graphics card. This block will also be of a single slot design and will cover most of the PCB as shown here :-

Kindly provided on Danger Den's website are several other pictures of the prototype cooler and a naked HD 3870 X2; given that they've said the final product should be ready within the next 5 to 7 days I dare say it will look very similar if not identical to the prototype shown today.

The third and final part of this update from Gigabyte will talk a little bit about new features that Gigabyte are planning to incorporate onto its graphics cards. If you wanted to know about upcoming GPUs or specific card models, then we're sorry to disappoint, as we'll be talking about slightly different things here. First of all we have Gigabyte's new Gamer HUD and eXtreme Voltage Gear Overdrive, which both works with the latest generation of 8800GT cards from Gigabyte.

The GV-NX88T512HP and the GV-NX88T256H are the first two cards to support these new features and the one relies on the other to make it all work. Let's start with the eXtreme Voltage Gear Overdrive, this is a new Voltage regulator that Gigabyte has added to these cards that allows for a wider Voltage range than we're used to see on graphics cards which tend to have a static setting. Many overclockers voltmod their cards to be able to push them higher, but Gigabyte have of sorts already done this for you. This ties in with the new Gamer HUD software, as this is where you can adjust the Voltage of the GPU.

Nvidia's upcoming GeForce 9600GT graphics card is not due to be released for at least a few weeks but that has not stopped the folks over at CHIPHELL in China having fun with pre-release samples that they managed to get their hands on.

They have just turned things up a notch and tested not just one but two of the upcoming GPU's in SLI dual graphics mode. For comparison purposes, they compare single and dual mode performance to a single GeForce 8800 Ultra in the 3DMark series.

PC World is reporting that MSI are preparing a low cost ASUS Eee PC notebook competitor.

After contacting a representative from MSI in Taiwan, we were told that the low cost notebook will be displayed at CeBIT trade show in March. We'll get a preview before then, though.

How do you make an awesome performing graphics card even better? Why slap on a hardcore liquid cooling solution onto it of course; and this is exactly what CoolIT Systems has done for the newly launched Radeon HD 3870 X2.

The cooling specialists have just announced their third installment of their Reference series line of liquid cooling systems for Radeon graphics cards. Not only does this cooler provide much better overclocking headroom for the card's GPU and memory clocks, but it also trims the monster down substantially whereby it'll only occupy a single PCI slot.

You can read CoolIT's official PR on the new cooler here.