[H]ardNews 1st Edition

110 Nanometer VPU:

Digitimes is reporting that ATI will bring to market a 110 nanometer VPU this week for it X300 line of Radeon graphics cards and move to 90 nanometer later this year. PCI-Express parts are also slated for this week. Thanks Mike Stevens.

ATI Technologies will showcase its first 0.11-micron graphics chip, the Radeon X300 (formally named RV370), at Computex Taipei 2004 from June 1-5, according to market sources. The Radeon X300 chips aim at the entry-level card market with prices below US$100.

$.50 / Gig:

I see where CompUSA has 120GB 7200RPM Seagate ATA100 hard drives on sale for $60 after all the rebates. That sure does open up a lot of room for movies ripped to DivX. And while you are there, make sure you check out the All-in-Wonder 9600 for $150 after rebate. Thanks Peter Allison.

AMD Tech Tour:

See the seething underbelly of system integrator trade shows at the CoolTechZone.

AMD had 64-bit, unreleased versions of UT2004 and FryCry at the show. AMD went on to show how 64-bit computing is faster even on existing 32-bit applications such as games. AMD even had Microsoft's upcoming 64-bit Beta version of Windows XP at the show. AMD stated, upcoming SP2 from Microsoft combined with an Athlon 64 processor can protect users from 50% viruses that are online due to the virus protection built in Athlon 64 chips. AMD had a script that showed how a 64-bit Athlon 64 processor stopped the virus while a 32-bit system (Intel) didn't.

End in Sight for BIOS Guide:

After years of tweaking, Rojack is finally getting closer to calling it "finished," but not quite yet. Quite frankly, today's BIOS are working very very well in terms of performance when set to default for many boards.

Adrian's Rojak Pot has just posted The Final Interim Release of The Definitive BIOS Optimization Guide Rev. 8.0!