[H]ardNews 5th Edition

ASUS Going ATi?

Digitimes is reporting that Asustek will launch an ATi based card in Q3 of this year. Both ATi and Asustek deny it these rumors though. That is the big question on everyones mind though, will Asustek switch from NVIDIA to ATi?

Asustek Computer, a key customer for Nvidia’s graphics chipsets in Asia, expects to launch own-brand graphics cards featuring ATI solutions by the end of this quarter. The two sides expect to officially announce the news in late September, according to sources.

Samsung Announces GDDR2:

Samsung has announced production of its 256-megabit Graphics Double Data Rate2 SDRAM. I wonder how soon it will be before we see 512MB cards using this memory? Considering current cards will not have to be redesigned to use this memory, I’d bet it won’t be too long.

SAMSUNG’s GDDR2 devices incorporate new technical features such as On-Die-Termination (ODT), Off-Chip driver-Calibration (OCD) and posted CAS to boost performance by 50 percent over graphics DDR SDRAM. The 1.6-gigabit per second pin data rate delivers an aggregate bandwidth of 6.4-gigabytes per second.

Prescott On Fast Track:

Intel has next quarter shipments for the Prescott and Dothan processors in its sights. The Prescott should be 3.4GHz part with 1MB of L2 cache. Here is a clip from the story:

Intel Corp. is sampling the first processors manufactured on its 90nm technology process -- the Prescott for desktop PCs and the Dothan, an improved version of the Pentium M chip for laptops. Intel said it is on schedule for "revenue shipments" of both processors next quarter. The Santa Clara, Calif., company defines initial revenue shipments as limited-quantity orders placed by OEMs that use the processors to build enough computers to prepare for a formal market launch.