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AMD has introduced new dual-core desktop processors aimed at the value end of the consumer market. Available now, the new Athlon X2 7000 series are the company’s first dual core chips based on its Phenom quad design, which means they have three levels of cache and support the faster HyperTransport 3.0 bus.

The new series comprises the 2.5GHz Athlon X2 7550, which will be available only to system builders, and the 2.7GHz Athlon X2 7750 'Black Edition' with an unlocked multiplier for improved overclocking priced at $79 – check out some benchmarks here. Both processors include 512KB of L2 cache per core and a shared L3 cache of 2 MB. The chips are part of AMD’s latest Cartwheel platform aimed at the budget market, which also includes the AMD 780G chipset and ATI Radeon 3200 integrated graphics.

Two of the largest firms in the semiconductor industry, Toshiba and SanDisk, have announced today that they will be cutting flash memory production by a steep 30 percent. The output reduction is largely attributed to a weak demand stemming from the global economic slowdown and an oversupply in the market for such chips.

The production cut will be effective beginning January 2009, for a yet to be determined period, and should affect the Yokkaichi operations plant in Japan, where the companies jointly produce flash memories on 200mm and 300mm wafers. This move will ultimately mean that chips will cost more, though SanDisk says it will also help them align their output in 2009 with demand in the current global market.

A few months back, Nvidia was happy to announce that they were the first video card vendor to get OpenGL support in their drivers, following a beta driver release that offered support on certain GeForce and Quadro boards. That driver package has since matured, and the company announced today that their drivers have moved out of beta and now offer full support for the OpenGL 3.0 spec.

For both Windows XP and Vista, Nvidia is making more OpenGL 3.0 extensions available. It isn't mentioned if their Linux drivers match the Windows drivers for OpenGL support as they have in the past, though their beta driver page says support is identical.

Nvidia may be the first to have a driver package that offers all OpenGL 3.0 extensions, but AMD isn't completely being left behind. Back in September, their update to the Catalyst driver package did include support for OpenGL 3.0, albeit with only a limited number of extensions. You can read more after the jump.

There’s been a lot of talk of Nvidia partner defections and reshuffles in recent months, following the low market performance of their graphics cards compared to a reinvigorated Radeon lineup. Earlier this year it was Gainward, and now another Nvidia exclusive video card partner has announced it is joining the red camp to bring XFX branded ATI video cards to market.

According to reports, XFX expects to offer ATI HD 4000 series products in early 2009. The company will nonetheless continue to sell its GeForce-based products, but obviously Nvidia won't be thrilled by the recent turn of events, which leaves EVGA as the only strong Nvidia exclusive add-in board partner.

In addition to launching their Vertex-series SSDs last week, OCZ has increased their flash profile even further with the release of their “Premium Gold” series SDHC cards, high-class memory modules aimed at photographers and people who own high definition camcorders. The modules promise Class 6 speeds, with up to 150X write rates, which would equate to a speed of over 22MB/s. That's certainly fast for SD storage.

The modules come in sizes of 4GB, 8GB and 16GB. With a 16GB module, that's several hours of high definition recording on most camcorders. If you absolutely must have “Gold Series” SDHC modules, you will certainly be paying a premium, but as with all OCZ products they stand behind it with a lifetime warranty. You can read more here.

Does Western Digital have a 2TB hard drive arriving soon? With 1.5TB drives from Seagate currently being the largest available, there's an incentive for other manufacturers to try and best them – what better way then to go the next step up with a 2TB beast, which current rumors claim is now being listed. The drive listed, a WD20EADS, is rumored to become available early next year, though none of that information has come from Western Digital itself. They made no announcement regarding a drive that size, and don't have listings for anything higher than 1TB currently.

A jump from 1TB to 2TB is a large one, which probably has a lot of technical hurdles that need to be overcome. We might see a three or even four-platter design to pull it off, but it's entirely possible Western Digital is planning to skip out altogether on 1.5TB models, in order to best Seagate. On the flip side of that, Seagate has already had their 1.5TB unit available for several months, and might be just waiting for their competition to make a move before they release a 2TB unit.

Pictures of a purported new Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 GPU are circulating the web, with the card expected to make its official debut at the CES in Las Vegas this January. The two-in-one card is reported to combine two 55nm GeForce GTX 260 GPUs via internal SLI, and while clock speeds are unknown at this point, it would apparently have twice as much memory as a GTX 260 with 1,792MB of RAM and sport 480 stream processors.

Considering the original GTX 260 had 216 stream processors it would appear that Nvidia has managed to squeeze out more stream processors with the die shrink – either that or this is a hybrid design between the GTX 260 and 240-core GTX 280. Final features are yet to be revealed, though from the leaked picture we can also tell the card will have two DVI ports as well as a full-size DisplayPort connector.

Following Super Talent yesterday, the latest vendor to announce a series of solid state drives is OCZ with a new line based on multi-level cell flash that promises unprecedented performance for this kind of devices. Dubbed Vertex, OCZ’s latest line makes up their “performance-level” SSD offerings and complements the Solid and Core series aimed at the “value” and “mainstream” markets respectively.

These 2.5" SATA-II drives can reportedly hit 200MB/s during sequential reads and 160MB/s during sequential writes and are available in capacities of 30GB, 60GB, 120GB and 250GB. OCZ claims the drives have a “new architecture and controller design” complete with 64MB of dedicated cache for the 120GB and 250GB models, and 32MB for the 60GB and 30GB offerings. They’ll come with a two-year warranty and range in price from $129 all the way up to $869.

Radeon users everywhere make sure to check out the newest Catalyst series driver that AMD has now released. Version 8.12 has been made available for Windows XP and Vista, in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors, which you can download here. The new driver has a laundry list of enhancements over the current driver, including performance boosts for many DirectX 10 games. Call of Duty, Crysis, Devil May Cry 4, Fallout 3, F.E.A.R, Left 4 Dead and more were all put into a long list of games that see performance improvements, from small gains of 5% to large boosts of 25% for some.

The drivers also fix numerous issues with the Catalyst Control Center, issues with system standby, problems with HDMI cabling on the All-In-Wonder series, dual display issues and more. There are 14 specific fixes for Windows XP and 14 specific fixes for Windows Vista as well. If you're a Radeon user, don't forget to update.

The slow process of improving batteries is taking yet another step forward today. HP is set to offer laptop buyers more energy efficient, longer-lasting batteries as a premium upgrade for certain systems. The Sonata batteries, which are manufactured by start-up Boston Power, are based on a refined version of the lithium ion technology found in today’s laptop cells and will supposedly offer “like-new” performance for three years.

Not only they’ll keep 80% of its initial charge for 1,000 charge cycles – compared to 300 cycles or less for conventional lithium ion batteries – but the Sonata battery is also able to recharge to 80% capacity after only 30 minutes. HP will begin offering the batteries to customers as an add-on option to its new Enviro line of laptops in early 2009, presumably for $20 to $30 more than current replacement batteries, and is providing a three year warranty on them.

Intel has completed the development phase of its next-generation manufacturing process that shrinks chip circuitry to 32 nanometers. The chipmaker said yesterday that it was “on track for production readiness” of the faster, more efficient chips starting in the fourth quarter of 2009.

The company promised more technical details at the International Electron Devices Meeting next week in San Francisco, but so far we know the new chips will use a second-generation high-K gate material to contain leakage current and transition to 193nm immersion lithography for critical patterning layers. The new production technology will enable the company to lower costs and power consumption in chips, while adding more speed and functionality.

The first chips to be built from it – codenamed Westmere – are expected to be die-shrink versions of the current 45nm Nehalem family of processors, as part of Intel's “tick-tock” strategy of alternating the introduction of a new chip architecture followed by a new process technology.

The Radeon 4870 graphics card is the centerpiece of the recent GPU comeback for AMD/ATI and the entire line of Radeon desktop products. The current 4000 series has apparently sold very well and now proved to be extremely successful with over 2 million cards sold since launch. A new price drop on the Radeon 4870 to just $199 will only help boost those figures.

While there's still plenty of room for argument about which vendor has the “better” card, there's no doubt that AMD has made a complete turnaround from ATI cards a few years ago.

Less than three months ago, the 512MB model of the 4870 was retailing for over $250, but now can be found easily for under $200. The 1GB version will now go for about $240.

Super Talent is entering the realm of enterprise solid state disks, with their new “UltraDrive LE” products. The announcement, made today, introduces the UltraDrive LE as a product pitched at high-end servers, citing performance figures that exceed that of traditional high-end 10,000RPM drives. The UltraDrive LE line boasts read speeds as high as 230MB/sec and write speeds as high as 170MB/sec.

They are also introducing the UltraDrive ME, a slightly lower performing drive destined for laptops, with read and write speeds of 200 and 160MB/sec, respectively. Even with the lowered performance figure, Super Talent still claims the drives will beat any mechanical disk in performance. Capacities range from 32GB to 128GB, so they certainly won't be winning any capacity contests, and while the press release did not mention initial pricing it's unlikely they'll be competing on price either.

The SLC NAND flash drives may have something to prove in the performance arena, though, so I look forward to seeing them in action. You can read more after the jump. The drives are expected for release next month.

Nvidia’s chipsets will have a broader reach in the future, with the company seeking to release a series of chipsets compatible with Atom processors. Working with Intel, the graphics firm plans to make its MCP79 the first to officially support the Atom, aiming the chipset at netbooks when it first comes to market.

Exactly what Nvidia plans to offer that Intel currently doesn't with their own chipsets isn't known, but they'll have to either shine in the performance category or energy consumption, as those tend to be the most important concerns for Netbook owners right now. Manufacturers of netbooks apparently encourage the deal, which they claim will give them more options for pricing, not to mention more choices when it comes to hardware.

Asus may have created the market for netbooks and for the longest time it sat pretty at the top of the sales charts. However, for the third quarter of 2008, the firm was unable to secure its place as the largest vendor of netbooks and instead was relegated to second spot by arch-rival Acer. This according to DisplaySearch, which measured a 38.3 percent market share for the Acer One followed by Asus’ Eee line with 30.3 percent, accounting for 2.15 and 1.7 million units moved respectively.

Third-place goes for HP, which leads the overall notebook market, with its VIA-based Mini-Note 2133 selling 330,000 units and capturing 5.8 percent share of the market. Rounding out the top five are MSI and Dell with 5.7 and 2.8 percent share each. Check out DisplaySearch’s complete report here.

Broadcom has released the latest of its so-called combo wireless chips for mobile phones and other portable media devices, combining for the first time 802.11n Wi-Fi connectivity enhanced data rate Bluetooth and FM radio into its BCM4329. According to the company, the chip supports up to 50Mbps speeds in both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands but actually uses less power than earlier parts limited to the older 802.11g standard.

The chip also provides a Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR transceiver to support wireless headphones and other peripherals, and carries both an FM tuner and a receiver to either pick up local radio or else to broadcast a device's sound to a car stereo. The company is already providing sample chips to manufacturers and plans to ship the BCM4329 in volume sometime in 2009.

Thin paper-like displays came one step closer to reality today, with HP Labs and the Flexible Display Center at Arizona State University unveiling the first working prototype of a supposedly affordable flexible display. The display is made almost entirely out of plastic which enables it to be easily portable and consume less power than typical displays available today – it's also said to use up to 90 percent less material that would be needed for a regular LCD, hence the low cost claims.

The researchers created the flexible displays by using self-aligned imprint lithography (SAIL) technology, invented by HP Labs, which enables the fabrication of thin film transistor (TFT) arrays on flexible plastic in what HP claims is a low cost and “roll to roll” manufacturing process. Potential uses for the new flexible displays, according to HP and the FDC, are in electronic paper and future electronic devices that could use the extra battery life, such as smartphones and notebook computers.

Exactly how long it will be until we see the technology in actual consumer products has not been disclosed, but HP expects the first units to be available to the U.S. Army for trials in the next three years.

AMD's struggle against Intel for CPU dominance had them facing numerous setbacks, including ones aside from process reduction issues and performance per clock. They also faced clock speed issues, with Intel passing the 3GHz mark for desktop CPUs and AMD somewhat stuck in the mud. AMD's newest K10-based dual-core unit may change that, with the 45nm processor hinting that it is capable of speeds higher than 3GHz.

The CPU is due in the first half of next year, though how much higher than 3GHz it can go isn't known because specific clock speeds are not available. AMD's venture into 45nm should definitely come with speeds above 3GHz though, as there's no real reason not to and they have a lot of ground to cover. Numerous existing AMD CPUs can already go over 3GHz with overclocking, but a factory stable CPU above 3GHz could open the door for AMD to compete neck and neck with Intel when it comes to clock speed.

Update: This article refers to current K10 architecture-based CPUs (Opteron, Phenom). Let's remember AMD did go past the 3GHz clock speed mark with the now older Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 X2.

AMD is preparing to release the low-power Brisbane-based Athlon X2 they announced a while back, with the 22W TDP unit hopefully being available before the end of the year. The CPUs have been pushed back past their original release date, which was in November. The X2 3250e, despite having such a low power profile, is using the 65nm process.

The low power profile of the CPU makes it ideal for media centers or home theaters, which is one of the areas Intel is pursuing with the Atom. Clearly the Atom wins in terms of power consumption, but the 3250e would no doubt have a huge performance advantage over it. AMD's latest batch of products has proven to look very promising, and the 3250e is included in that. No details on price have been specified just yet.

Shortly after abandoning it plans to develop a netbook platform alongside VIA, graphics maker Nvidia has revealed it is still interested in the booming sector – but it’s taking a cautious approach. This according to the company’s CFO Marv Burkett, who said it's a matter of how the market evolves before we can see Nvidia integrated graphics chips in these devices.

In other words, they are taking a wait and see approach. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, particularly when even Intel – whose chips can be found on the vast majority of netbooks – has stated that the market didn't develop the way they expected. If Nvidia did enter into the netbook market, the company’s most likely move would be to provide integrated chipsets with better graphics than those offered now, though perhaps they’ll go with a system-on-chip approach similar to what they are planning for the MID market next year with Tegra.