July 1 - 4:55pm EDT   Apple and NVIDIA may be engaged in a fierce dispute that could exclude NVIDIA graphics chips from future Macs, according to sources reportedly aware of the talks. They claim to SemiAccurate that Apple views NVIDIA's proposals for renewed deals as "arrogance" and that much of the argument centers on the overheating material that triggered widespread failures in all GeForce 8400M and 8600M mobile graphics chips. The Mac firm has had to extend MacBook Pro warranties for up to three years and may be skeptical of NVIDIA's insistence that newer models aren't at risk of the same problem. [full story]

June 18 - 3:00pm EDT   Maingear recently introduced a high-end version of its Axess HD Gamer PC, which is meant to sit in users' living rooms as hinted at by its low-profile black aluminum case and front-mounted OLED display that shows song and artist or movie title information. It is the first PC to ship with the Phantom Lapboard wireless gaming keyboard. The highly-customizable PC ships with an Intel Core i7 CPU and up to 12GB of RAM, as well as dual NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT graphics cards in an SLI configuration. [full story]

June 18 - 2:20pm EDT   Intel is having enough success with its 32 nanometer manufacturing process that it plans to skip certain 45nm processors entirely, tips from within the mainboard industry. Rather than produce Havendale, the 45nm dual-core, desktop processor based on the Nehalem architecture, the company is purportedly ready to skip to its 32nm equivalent, Clarkdale. The new chips would arrive slightly later, in early 2010 instead of late 2009, and would be priced between $60 and $190 depending on clock speed and features. [full story]

June 17 - 4:00pm EDT   Intel's corporate communications manager Bill Calder, in a Wednesday post on the company's corporate blog, informed readers of forthcoming changes in the chipmaker's brand structure. Calder admits Intel's current complex structure has too many platform brands, and product names and brands, which confuses customers. This will start with leading with Intel and what it has done for technology, with Calder pointing to the company's Sponsors of Tomorrow ad campaign. [full story]

June 15 - 3:25pm EDT   New rumors from the mainboard industry today hint that Intel is poised to update its top-end desktop processor once more this year while also updating its Celerons earlier in the year. Currently topping out with the 3.06GHz Core i7 950, the fall should see that model replaced by the 3.2GHz Core i7 960. Its amount of cache and other features aren't expected by DigiTimes to change, but it should represent the first time a home, non-Extreme desktop processor from Intel has reached 3.2GHz and should be much faster than the similarly-clocked Core 2 Extreme. [full story]

June 1 - 11:05pm EDT   BFG Technologies has announced that its Phobos Advanced and Elite edition gaming and home theater computer systems now integrate Intel's Core i7 950 and 975 processors, respectively. The Advanced version features a liquid cooling system for the CPU, along with three 1GB GeForce GTX 285 GPUs and two 300GB Velociraptor hard drives. The basic configuration also includes 6GB of DDR3 memory and Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit. [full story]

May 26 - 3:10pm EDT   Intel's Core i5 processor platform has been pushed back until September, according to claims by those producing mainboards for the platform. The delay would move the launch from the original July and is purportedly meant to clear out stock of earlier designs due to the poor economy. When it does launch, the desktop processor range will reportedly start with 2.66GHz, 2.8Ghz and 2.93GHz processors in bulk prices of $196, $284 and $562 along with a matching mainboard chipset, the P55, costing $40 in volume. [full story]

May 21 - 4:00pm EDT   Memory maker Corsair maintained on Wednesday that it has set the world record for DDR3 RAM memory frequency running on a Core i7 system. Using the triple-channel 6GB Dominator GT 2000C7 (PDF) memory, the 2533MHz record was verified and validated by using CPU-Z, a Windows PC statistics app used to identify system components and verify overclocking results. This marks the first time such a frequency has been achieved on a Core i7 system with 6GB of memory and three modules. [full story]

April 28 - 4:50pm EDT   iBuyPower this afternoon publicized a relatively unique small form factor game PC designed to be easily transportable to a LAN gaming party but without sacrificing its speed. The LAN Warrior is only slightly larger than some SFF boxes with its NZXT case but has room to accommodate Core i7 processors up to the 3.2GHz Core i7 Extreme courtesy of dual side fans and liquid cooling. It can also address as much as 12GB of DDR3 memory and two GeForce GTX 295 or Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards. [full story]

April 21 - 5:05pm EDT   AMD tonight showed slight improvement in its performance by reporting reduced losses for its first quarter of the year. The chip designer managed a net loss of $416 million; while worse than a net loss of $351 million for the first quarter of 2008, the figure is less than a third of the $1.4 billion loss reported just in the fall. It also notes that revenue was "flat" versus the fall and thus that its losses are under better control. [full story]

April 16 - 9:40am EDT   Despite claims to the contrary, Intel's mobile Core i7 platform is still reported as on track for the summer. Although Intel publicly stated at its latest Developer Forum that the platform (nicknamed Calpella) and its matching processors (Clarksfield) aren't due until the fall, Fudzilla understands that suppliers are being told that all of the notebook components are due in the summer quarter. However, the initial wave of Intel-made chipsets won't include integrated graphics, forcing these systems to use either third-party chipsets or dedicated graphics. [full story]

April 15 - 4:30pm EDT   CyberPower on Wednesday released its high-spec graphics processing workstation, the Power Mega 1000. The headline specs of the PC include Intel's new 2.66GHz Core i7 processor set on an X58 Chipset SLI/CrossFireX-capable mainboard and NVIDIA's Quadro NVS 420 x16 PCIe graphics card, which is capable of driving up to four 30-inch displays. This can be achieved by connections on the card that are comprised of a dual DisplayPort/dual-link DVI port. [full story]

April 7 - 2:55pm EDT   BFGTech at mid-day updated its Phobos gaming PC to give it better performance at the base level and to improve its storage options. The stock Performance Edition system now comes with dual GeForce GTX 275 cards instead of a single GeForce GTX 295. BFG argues that the clock speeds of the single-chip discrete cards when combined in SLI are faster than the dual-chip 295 without hurting the price. [full story]

March 30 - 4:30pm EDT   Intel this afternoon finally made its Nehalem-based Xeon processors available to a wider audience. First introduced in the Mac Pro, the single-socket Xeon 3500 (not used by Apple) and the dual-socket Xeon 5500 share the same roots as Core i7 and drop the old northbridge system controller and system bus in favor of a point-to-point architecture known as the QuickPath Interface that talks directly to memory and peripherals. The memory controller is now built-in and can talk to three memory channels, improving bandwidth even as it drops lag. [full story]

March 27 - 9:00am EDT   NVIDIA late Thursday filed a countersuit (PDF) against Intel, accusing the semiconductor firm of a breach of contract. The response follows Intel's earlier formal complaint and accuses Intel of violating a 2004 license for NVIDIA by denying it the rights to build mainboard chipsets for Intel processors that use integrated memory controllers, which includes any Core i7 chip as well as newer Xeon chips like the 3500 and 5500 series. NVIDIA is currently only being allowed to engineer for processors no more advanced than Core 2. [full story]