July 3 - 10:10am EDT   NVIDIA on Friday has purportedly denied recent claims of a conflict with Apple. Insiders believed close to NVIDIA claim that the two are still "just fine" and that the graphics company's chief Jen-Hsun Huang is personally happy with the current situation. Apple is still understood to be ordering chipsets as usual. [full story]

July 2 - 4:05pm EDT   Packard Bell has recently updated its imedia series of desktops with a 60 percent smaller footprint and a matte chassis and soft curves along with a glowing blue power button. Buyers can pick from a range of processors, including Intel Core 2 Quad or AMD Phenom II X4 quad-core chips, and option up to 8GB of RAM. Storage space can be as large as 1TB, and there is an optional Blu-ray drive. [full story]

July 2 - 9:45am EDT   AMD is developing an integrated graphics chipset for budget PCs that could take the performance crown in the category, a leaked roadmap shows. Codenamed RS880 but likely to be badged Radeon HD 4200 when it ships, the design will have a new graphics core that should run about 15 percent faster than "anything comparable" on the market, implying that NVIDIA's GeForce 9400 or 9400M may be the primary targets. The Inquirer adds that it should support AMD's Stream general-purpose computing technology and, by extension, would eventually support OpenCL. [full story]

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]

July 1 - 2:30pm EDT   The sequel to NVIDIA's Ion platform could be much faster than its predecessor when it ships, leaks today would show. While the current graphics and chipset combo is based on the GeForce 9400M and has just 16 visual effects cores, Fudzilla now hears that it will have 32 cores, potentially doubling the amount of simultaneous effects it can handle at once. The difference will have the most dramatic effect on 3D but could also impact general-purpose computing tasks that need CUDA or OpenCL. [full story]

July 1 - 9:05am EDT   eMachines today gave a new look to its least expensive ET series desktops along with hardware upgrades to match. Like the recent EL1300 slimline PC, the ET1300 and ET1810 shed the company's previous black-and-silver look for a sleeker, glossy white. They all also make NVIDIA's lower-end graphics standard for slightly faster than usual performance in the category. [full story]

June 29 - 12:25pm EDT   Gateway has quietly updated its P series FX gaming notebooks with a pair of updated and lower-cost models compared to what it's offered in the past. The 17-inch P-7809u is new and has a Montevina refresh-era 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo despite costing less than the earlier P-7805u. It also has a full 500GB of hard drive space (up from 320GB), 4GB of RAM and the previously-used 1GB GeForce 9800M key to its gaming credentials. [full story]

June 26 - 10:55am EDT   Acer on Friday announced it has redesigned its Acer Aspire M5, M3 and X3 Series of consumer desktops, including the high-end Aspire M5800 with its brushed metal chassis, the value-oriented Aspire M3800 and the small form factor Acer Aspire X3810. The Aspire M5800 sports a silver chassis that matches the keyboard, speakers and mouse, with all featuring chrome and dark gray accents. The card reader, audio jacks and USB ports are on behind a hinged door on the front of the chassis. [full story]

June 22 - 9:40am EDT   Acer on Monday added three 16:9 ratio notebooks to its media-centric Gemstone Blue designs that all focus on price over raw performance. The 15.6-inch, LED-backlit Aspire 5739G is the fastest of the trio with a 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo, 4GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, an 8X Blu-ray drive and a GeForce GT 130M for video. It comes with a multi-touch trackpad and ships at the end of June for a particularly low $750, making it the least expensive new Blu-ray notebook today. [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 15 - 12:20pm EDT   At the InfoComm 2009 show in Florida on Monday, ViewSonic announced the availability of its PJD6211, PJD6221 and PJD6381 projectors with 3D display capabilities thanks to their 120Hz refresh rates. All three have network management capabilities and multiple inputs, along with a focus on low energy consumption. The highest-end model, the PJD6381, offers one of the shortest throw ratios among DLP projectors on the market, at 0.68. It is compatible with whiteboards used in school districts across the US, and sports 1024x768 resolution, a 2,500 lumens brightness and 2,500:1 contrast ratio. [full story]

June 15 - 10:05am EDT   NVIDIA this morning turned its attention to its mainstream notebook graphics chips by filling out its GeForce 200M range. The GTS 250M and GTS 260M are targeted at desktop replacement class but relatively affordable notebooks with 28W of peak power. They each have 96 visual processor cores and 1GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus. The two only differentiate in clock speed, as the 250M has a 500MHz graphics clock and 1.6GHz memory while the 260M gets a faster 550MHz graphics speed and 1.8GHz for its RAM. [full story]

June 9 - 10:20pm EDT   Confirming earlier reports, EVGA on Tuesday launched the GeForce GTX 285 Mac Edition graphics card which offers similar features to the Windows variant. The accessory supports single or dual displays with resolutions up to 2560x1600, while providing 1GB of DDR3 memory and 240 processing cores. EVGA has designed the component for improved graphics-intensive operations such as gaming, motion graphics, 3D modeling, rendering and animation. Users can connect the displays to two dual-link DVI-I ports. [full story]

June 8 - 10:05am EDT   NVIDIA hasn't seen a drop in orders for its mobile graphics chips in the wake of the wide-scale failures that have prompted major repair costs, the company's marketing VP Ujesh Desai said at Computex. Despite the effect on the firm's reputation, computer builders are still choosing NVIDIA's graphics cores and are actually increasing their usage this year. Trying to fix the problem quickly has reportedly helped preserve much of that business. [full story]

June 2 - 5:00pm EDT   iBuyPower late today made a leap for the speed crown by launching the Battalion 101 M865TU. The system is touted as the fastest current 15-inch notebook largely on the basis of its graphics chipset. Despite its smaller frame, the Battalion has a GeForce GTX 260M with 1GB of RAM capable of rendering modern games smoothly. It can also be customized with up to a 2.93GHz Core 2 Duo and multiple solid-state drive options, with the fastest being Intel's 80GB X25-M. [full story]