Filed under: Laptops

Intel’s Montevina mobile processors will get a significant bump in the 2nd quarter of 2009 with the 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo T9900, and the 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo P8800. A completely separate, slightly more suspect Digitimes rumor tells of a possible Core 2 Quad Q9600 CPU of unknown speed and power. Regardless, we won’t get to bask in their awesomeness for very long, as the switchover to the Calpella platform (and Clarksfield) will follow quickly in the 3rd quarter of 2009. Will the rumor-mill never cease to torture us?

[Via Electronista]

Read - Intel Clarksfield & Ibex Peak-M Chipsets In Q3 ‘09
Read - Intel planning Montevina Refresh

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Storage

We’ve been around this stuff long enough to know that hard drives just keep getting bigger with time, but if you were eager to know exactly when a 1TB unit would be prepped and ready for your notebook, try 2010. According to those infamous “undisclosed sources,” both Western Digital (which started shipping a 500-gigger today) and Fujitsu are looking to pump out 750GB 2.5-inch HDDs by mid-2009 and 1TB variants in 2010. Keep the faith, brethren.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Handhelds, Laptops

Just as you were getting your head wrapped around Atom-branded Diamondville-class processors based on a Silverthorne architecture, along comes the next generation. Expected to arrive in Q3 of 2009, the new 45-nm Pineview processors will come in hyperthreaded single- and dual-core versions like the current generation Atom 2xx- and 3xx-series. However, the procs will be based on a new Lincroft micro-architecture boasting an integrated graphics core and memory manager that connects to memory via DMI, not a FSB. Unfortunately, the all important TDP power-draw off your tiny netbook’s battery in currently undefined. Hit the read link for the full roadmap and processor timeline if that’s the kind of thing that twirls your propellor.

[Via RegHardware]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Cellphones

From the looks of it, Sprint has gone and gotten a decent chunk of its playbook leaked all over the interblogs, and it’s chock-full of titillating information. Thanks to slippery fingers and loose lips, we already knew that the Touch Diamond and Touch Pro were headed to the carrier, but now we have some solid dates (mid-September for the Diamond, October 19th for the Pro), and pricing ($549.99 and $579.99, respectively). Of course, this is all according to the above document, which admittedly could be the work of an extremely bored Photoshopper — but this jibes pretty tightly with a lot of other chatter we’ve been hearing.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

We recently learned that Intel would be (officially) calling Nehalem Core i7 and Centrino Atom, um, Atom. Now, however, we’ve got a few more related details for you to digest thanks to a stack of leaked presentation slides. The Tick Tock Development Model explains that both Westmere and Sandy Bridge (codenames, of course) will be fabricated with 32-nanometer technology in 2009 - 2010. Moving even further into the unknown, geeks can expect Ivy Bridge and Haswell (both doing the whole 22-nanometer thing) to surface between 2011 and 2012. The Sandy Bridge architecture will reportedly “double the number of cores per die to eight,” while a new instruction set coined Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) will likely get most of the attention. For those of you who haven’t conked out yet (you know who you are), hit the links below to get a better idea of what your future rigs will likely house.

[Via Electronista]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Desktops, Displays

With all the noise NVIDIA’s been making lately about slimming down its product line and going after Intel, we were sort of hoping a leak of the company’s Summer 2008 roadmap would have some fun surprises in it, but it looks like it’s just more of the same. The schedule, obtained by DailyTech, says that we should be expecting two cards based on NVIDIA’s upcoming D10U graphics core, currently codenamed the GeForce GTX 280 (D10U-30) and GeForce GTX 260 (D10U-20). The 280 is the full-strength version of the processor, with all 240 “unified stream processors” integrated into the die enabled, while the 260 will only enable 192. The cards both support three-way SLI, and there appears to be integrated PhysX support in the works, but we won’t know details until these launch sometime around June 18th. That’s great and all, but come on guys — let’s start backing up all that smack talk.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Laptops

See that? That’s Dell’s Latitude roadmap stretching into Q1 of 2009. We already told you about Dell’s XT2 tablet plans yesterday and gave you the initial peek at the E-series back in February. Details of each the new Es shortly as our week o’ Dell scoops continues. Until then, kick back and soak it all in with the assurance that Dell’s thinner, lighter Centrino 2-based E-series laptops with options for “all-day batteries” and an emphasis on design are on the way. Non-squinty version available below.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Although they’ve gotten better recently, Intel’s integrated graphics chipsets have never gotten a ton of love — the underpowered 915 chipset is at the heart of the whole “Vista Capable” debacle, for example — but it looks like the company’s about to make a strong play to be your new pixel-pusher of choice with the new Larrabee graphics chip. Based on the x86 instruction set, the new chip isn’t just limited to GPU duties, but can serve as a general-purpose processor as well. Early 16-core versions have been developed with max speeds of over 2GHz, but the design can apparently scale to thousands of cores in the future. The plan is first to release Larrabee chips as separate graphics units in Q4 of this year, but early next year we should see both laptop and desktop-oriented 45nm Nehalem processors with the Larrabee tech built right in. That should beat AMD’s Fusion processors to market — looks like the race is on.

Read - PC Perspective roadmap article with Intel slides
Read - DailyTech roadmap with Larrabee details

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Intel’s had its new processor plans slipped out to the public thanks to Sun, according to DailyTech. Details on the 6-core (!) Xeon Dunnington, as well as the kinda-sorta hush-hush Nehalem were apparently leaked out onto Sun’s public web server over the weekend, including plans for the new Xeons to overtake the company’s Tigerton CPU line. The Dunnington processors will have a 16MB L3 cache shared by all six cores, and will be pin-compatible with the Tigertons, thus making integration with your Clarksboro chipset slightly less painful… by being possible. The Nehalem also got the spy treatment, with news that it will not only replace the Penryn line in Q4 ‘08, but will also be the first time in 18 years that Intel includes on-die memory controllers. If this sort of thing is important to you (and we think it may be) hit the read link and get all the juicy details.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

The new budget-friendly 9600 GT (pictured) already has plenty of folks excited, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. NVIDIA’s new GeForce 9-series has a top-end 9800 GX2 card slated for March 11th — if these rumors are to be believed — that is supposed to best the 8800 Ultra’s performance by a solid 30 percent. The card is supposed to land for less than $599, but if that’s a bit much for you, the 9800 GTX should hit for under $399 in “late March,” with the 9800 GT following on April 3rd for under $299. If all of this is too much horsepower for you, the 9600 GS, 9500 GT and 9500 GS are slated to arrive in May, June and July, respectively, and all should hit at under the 9600 GT’s already friendly sub-$200 pricepoint. AMD’s latest offerings are pretty dang cheap as well, and aren’t slouching in the benchmarks, so it’s certainly a good time to be a PC gamer.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

What if Toshiba were to produce a Blu-ray player? If there’s one surefire sign that a company is recognizing the mortality of its own standards, it’s throwing some support behind the competition’s — and that’s exactly what Qualcomm has done in announcing new roadmaps for its mobile and cellular base station chipsets that include LTE. LTE, one of several 4G standards competing for the hearts and minds of carriers across the world, has a huge leg up on Qualcomm’s own UMB and WiMAX (which is technically a pre-4G standard, anyway) by having the blessing of the GSM Association, the global juggernaut of mobile industry organizations. Anyway, Qualcomm’s new plans call for future chipsets to support various flavors of UMTS, HSPA, and EV-DO, theoretically making it easier for carriers of all creeds to migrate to LTE while still supporting legacy cells and devices. The new silicon is expected to be available next year, and without a single major carrier having signed up for UMB, we’d say that’s not a moment too soon.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Cellphones, GPS, Handhelds

Evidence of Toshiba’s new Portege G920 QWERTY doesn’t get any better than an FCC filing. Still if you need more, you’re looking at the G920 held aloft in the wilds of some Tosh briefing. That slide on the left looks to be tattling on Toshiba’s 2008 roadmap too — at least Toshiba’s lineup for launch in Russia where this presentation was apparently delivered. From it, we see the G920 scheduled for an early Q1 release followed by a G930 in early Q4. Also spotted is the G800 with stylus input, G710 and G720 with GPS, and G450 classed as a “USB modem phone.” Expect to hear more on the Q1 column of devices at CES in a few weeks.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Desktops

Just a day after hearing that Intel was firing up its new Arizona-based facility in order to crank out heaps of 45-nanometer Penryn chips, along comes more news on the next best thing. Granted, Intel already gave Nehalem a share of the limelight earlier this year, but new documents are giving us a more detailed look at what types of quad-core processors we can expect in late 2008. Among the new names are Gainstown and Bloomfield, both of which are expected to land in high-end rigs and boast “Extreme” monikers. There’s not a whole of lot of surprises here, as the charts still point to an estimated Q4 release date and show speeds topping out around the 3.2GHz mark. For those with nothing better to do than overlook the present and long for the future, be sure and hit the read link below — preferably after you’ve rounded up a Japanese translator.

[Via RegHardware]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!