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]

June 17 - 4:40pm EDT   Shuttle PC has recently announced a new barebones mini-PC, the SA76G2, which is its first barebones product to support AMD socket AM3 processors using the 760G chipset, including the Phenom II as well as original Phenom, Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 and Sempron CPUs. There are also two DDR2 DIMM slots for up to 8GB of RAM. The PC is backwards-compatible with AM2 and AM2+ CPUs. [full story]

May 12 - 3:05pm EDT   Dell today lived up to promises and put its new-look Inspiron desktops on sale today in the US. Now called the Inspiron 537 and 537s, the finished systems are distinguished by their option of several colors and range in speed from Celeron through Core 2 Quad processors for Intel systems and Semprons through Phenom X4 processors for AMD. They can all have up to 8GB of RAM as well as dedicated ATI Radeon HD video, though storage varies slightly with a slimline tower limited to a 750GB drive while the larger mini-tower holds up to 1TB. [full story]

May 7 - 10:50am EDT   AMD late Wednesday announced intentions to move to a new operating model, in an effort to refocus resources on its struggling businesses. The announcement follows several other shifts in AMD's focus, specifically trying to improve integration between microprocessor and graphic processor development. The announced operating model organizes AMD into four operating teams: products, technology, marketing, and customers. [full story]

April 23 - 10:15pm EDT   AMD on Thursday announced its latest processor in the Phenom II series, the quad-core X4 955 Black Edition that is geared for gaming or overclocking. The CPU is claimed to be the company's fastest yet, running at 3.2 GHz, with a 4,000MHz bus, 2MB of L2 cache and 6MB of L3 cache. The platform, codenamed "Dragon," consists of the Black Edition processor, AMD 7-Series chipsets and ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics. [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]

March 30 - 1:25pm EDT   Dell on mid-Monday launcheed a major update to the look of its Inspiron desktops. The new models have sleeker redesigns and come in 8 solid colors for both slimline and regular mini-tower versions. The Texas PC creator also promises a wide spread between low-cost and mid-range systems ranging from either an AMD Sempron or Intel Celeron starter up to quad-core Phenom X4 and Core 2 Quad chips. [full story]

February 25 - 5:10pm EST   Gateway this afternoon swung its attention to its desktops with a trio of mid-range tower systems. The FX series gets a new balance between the budget and high-end systems with two new models. The FX6800-11 at $1,300 improves on the entry 01e version with twice the memory, at 6GB, and unspecified faster graphics than the 01e's Radeon HD 4850; the FX6800-09 has few details but at $1,650 is a further improvement that Gateway sees as sitting exactly in between the 01e and the flagship 05 system. Both use Core i7 processors. [full story]

February 25 - 10:15am EST   AMD Business Development head John Fruehe late yesterday confirmed plans for his company's first 6-core processor. Nicknamed "Istanbul," a variant of the company's current 45 nanometer Opteron processors is due in the second half of this year and should provide significantly more simultaneous computing power without hurting power use. Fruehe claims tests show the same levels of energy and heat as for existing quad-core Opterons. [full story]

February 11 - 4:45pm EST   NVIDIA on Wednesday announced that Intel has licensed and will make SLI graphics technology available on its DX58SO mainboard for Core i7 processor. Combinations of NVIDIA's GeForce GPUs, including quad SLI, can now be equipped on X58-based mainboards with Core i7 CPUs. At the same time, NVIDIA SLI technology will also be made available for Intel's Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Duo processors as well as AMD's Phenom II CPU. [full story]

February 9 - 8:10am EST   AMD this morning added to its just recently launched Phenom II processors with several new models geared towards undercutting Intel's mainstream line. Two of these, the Phenom II X4 910 and 810, both clock in slightly lower at 2.6GHz but also consume much less power at 95W. The 910 comes with the same 6MB of Level 3 cache while the 810 scales back to 4MB to further reduce its price. Both are also some of the first to use AMD's new AM3 socket and support higher-bandwidth DDR3 memory. [full story]

February 6 - 2:10pm EST   CyberPower has released its Gamer Dragon series, a set of three custom-built high definition towers based on AMD’s newer Phenom II X4 CPU. The complete group consists of a Gamer Dragon 8000 and 9000, and the Gamer Dragon CrossFire X Ultimate. Basic features of all three Gamer Dragon models include SATA II hard drives, an ATI Radeon HD video graphic card, a dual Blu-Ray and DVD drive setup for both the 9000 and CrossFire X series, or DVD drives alone for the 8000. [full story]

January 19 - 5:00pm EST   After introducing the Phenom II family of 45nm CPUs at this year's CES, AMD will reportedly release the fastest version of the chip, the Phenom II X4 950 rated at 3.1GHz, sometime in the second quarter of 2009. The CPU would include 8MB of cache which supposedly could be split up to 6MB for L3 cache and 512KB of L2 for each core. The CPU will also support DDR3, 1333MHz memory and have a 4GHz HyperTransport interface speed, along with a 125W thermal envelope. [full story]

January 8 - 12:35pm EST   Dell today used CES to launch its first gaming desktop to use AMD processors in place of Intel's. The XPS 625 mid-tower shares the same custom-lit aluminum case as the XPS 630 but switches to an AMD 790FX-based mainboard and can be equipped with one of several overclockable Black Edition processors up to and including the 3GHz, quad-core Phenom II just introduced at the same time. All video card picks are equally AMD-based and scale up to dual Radeon HD 4850 cards in CrossFire mode. [full story]

January 2 - 2:20pm EST   On Monday, Phenom announced the release of its Phenom SpecialOPS to add to its line of watch phones. The Phenom SpecialOPS has a tri-band GSM radio and is unlocked for use with most cellular networks. Users can send text messages with the SpecialOPS using the 1.3-inch color touchscreen with the included stylus or the keypad incorporated into the wristband. The watch is also capable of playing back MP3 audio files or MP4 videos and displaying JPG or GIF images. [full story]