Colorful's AMD Radeon-centric graphics card brand, ColorFire, is out with a new graphics card which keeps in tune with the design principle of backing a performance-segment GPU with preposterous amounts of features (VRM, cooling, OC features, etc.) The company showed off its Radeon HD 7870 XStorm graphics card at this year's Computex event in Taipei, though it is only now that we're seeing pictures of the card taken apart. Pictured below is the card of the hour. This Radeon HD 7870 graphics card is so long, that it comes with a support brace for workstation cases and Apple Mac Pro.

The card powers the otherwise cool and quiet "Pitcairn" GPU with an 8+1+1 onboard VRM, which can be expanded by a 4-phase VRM card that supports higher power draw. The card draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Despite a VRM design that's fit to condition power for the HD 7970 GHz Edition (or jump-start an SUV), the ColorFire HD 7870 XStorm ships with mildly-overclocked speeds of 1050 MHz core and 1250 MHz (5.00 GHz effective) memory. It packs 2 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 256-bit wide memory interface.

Apple released the third developer preview of its OS X "Mountain Lion" operating system for Macs and Macbooks. The Developer Preview 3 (Build 12A178q) was released to members of the Mac Developer Program. While a change-log is not listed, a number of new known issues with the build were listed, which Apple, along with its MDP partners are working on. OS X "Mountain Lion" is Apple's next major operating system for Macs, Macbooks, Mac Pro, and Mac Servers. It is slated for late Summer, 2012.

Launched yesterday as a developer-preview, Apple's OS X "Mountain Lion" will support fewer Macs than its predecessor, probably because of increases in hardware requirements for smooth operation that older Macs can't quite guarantee. The support list for Mountain Lion looks like this:

• iMac (mid 2007 or later)
• MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, 2008), (13-inch, plastic, Early 2009 or later)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, 2.4/2.2 GHz), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later)
• MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
• Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later)
• Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
• Xserve (Early 2009)

As you can see, some x86 Mac models are out of the support list, including importantly, the pre-Unibody plastic Macbook Pros. Perhaps Apple will support Mac OS X "Lion" with security updates for a lot longer.

Japanese company Elecom unveiled a nifty new gadget for those on the move, and don't mind long sessions of thumb-typing, the TK-FBP029 Mini Bluetooth Keyboard. Measuring 146 x 78 x 21 mm, and weighing 96 g, the keyboard features a clam-shell form-factor like the electronic pocket organizers of last century. The keyboard works over Bluetooth 3.0, and is compatible with Apple iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad), Apple Mac OS devices (Macbook, Mac, Mac Pro), Windows devices (Windows PC, Windows Phone, Windows Embedded), and even Sony Playstation 3. The hinge of its lid can get locked into an obtuse angle, letting you place a portable device (such as your iPhone) on it. It comes in lid color options of black, white, and hot pink. The company did not give out pricing information.

Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced worldwide retail availability of 4GB DDR3 memory for Apple Mac desktop and laptop PCs.

Corsair's Mac memory kits are tested at Apple Developer Compatibility Labs and are guaranteed to work with any Mac desktop or notebook PC that supports 4GB DDR3 SODIMMs, including iMac, Mac mini, Mac Pro, MacBook, and MacBook Pro models. This includes virtually all models offered by Apple since 2010.

Matrox Graphics Inc. today announced connectivity improvements to the Matrox DualHead2Go DP Edition and TripleHead2Go DP Edition Graphics eXpansion Modules (GXMs) benefitting Apple Mac notebook and desktop users. The DualHead2Go DP and TripleHead2Go DP products now come packaged with a Mini-DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable that allows Mac users to connect these external multi-monitor modules directly to the mini-DisplayPort output of their systems to swiftly drive multiple monitors or projectors. Mac professionals and enthusiasts now benefit from the convenience of a true plug and play platform while experiencing the productivity-enhancements gained across an advanced dual- or triple-monitor workspace. In addition, an upcoming firmware release will enable the support of a dual 1600x900 resolution on DVI monitors, further expanding the list of supported resolutions for greater flexibility when choosing displays.

NVIDIA announced today the expansion of its award-winning line of NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics solutions to the Mac platform, bringing the computational and visualization breakthroughs enabled by NVIDIA Fermi architecture to Mac Pro users.

For professional users operating on Mac OS X Snow Leopard, this means the wait is over. The NVIDIA Quadro 4000 graphics processing unit (GPU) for Mac is optimized to accelerate workflows and drive a range of top professional applications. For example, the Adobe Mercury Playback Engine in Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 software leverages NVIDIA CUDA parallel processing technology to enable film and video professionals to work unconstrained. Other examples include visual effects and image processing applications from The Foundry, including NUKE and STORM, and MATLAB from MathWorks.

AMD today announced revenue for the third quarter of 2010 of $1.62 billion, a net loss of $118 million, or $0.17 per share, and operating income of $128 million. The company reported non-GAAP net income of $108 million, or $0.15 per share, and non-GAAP operating income of $144 million.

"AMD's third quarter performance was highlighted by solid gross margin and a continued focus on profitability, despite weaker than expected consumer demand," said Dirk Meyer, AMD president and CEO. "Our strategy to deliver platforms with superior visual experiences continues to resonate. We look forward to building on this momentum when we begin shipping our first AMD Fusion Accelerated Processor Units later this quarter."

Cooling specialist Asetek, which specializes in OEM water cooling solutions, has come up with a new CPU water cooling solution for the Apple Mac Pro workstation, which claims to bring down temperatures and noise of the stock heatsink-fan assembly. The cooler design is straightforward: two CPU waterblocks that have built-in pumps sit serial across a coolant loop that connects to a reservoir and radiator. The tubing is pre-fitted. In a video demonstration, Asetek showed how the cooling solution facilitates improved overall system performance and reduced noise overall of a 3.06 GHz Mac Pro compared to a 3.20 GHz model. Perhaps Asetek is pitching this new solution to Apple.

Professional videographers face continuous pressure to deliver high quality work under tight deadlines. To ease that burden and enable greater levels of creativity, NVIDIA today announced the availability of GPU-accelerated plug-in solutions for Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4) users, optimized to run on a wide range of NVIDIA Quadro graphics solutions.

NVIDIA is offering exclusive discounts of up to 50 percent on plug-ins from Elemental Technologies, Boris FX, Red Giant Software and proDAD when purchased at NVIDIA.com.

Among the plug-ins being offered is the NVIDIA CUDA architecture-based Elemental Accelerator 2.0 for Windows from Elemental Technologies (MSRP $499 discounted to $249). By leveraging the CUDA parallel computing architecture, this new plug-in offloads H.264 video encoding to the Quadro GPU, enabling Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 users to experience a performance increase of up to 11X when compared to CPU-only video encoders. Now available on a range of Quadro GPUs, Elemental Accelerator 2.0 supports the creation of Blu-ray DVDs and web content using Flash. In addition, NVIDIA and Elemental Technologies are bringing accelerated H.264 video encoding capabilities to Mac Pro users for the first time with the new Elemental Accelerator 1.2 for Mac OS X running on the Quadro FX 4800 for Mac.

EVGA quietly slipped in the GeForce GTX 285 Mac Edition graphics card, which is its fastest offering to Mac users. The card uses a standard PCI-Express interface available with Intel x86 based Mac Pro workstations, and provides all the features of NVIDIA's fastest GPU. It is technically identical to its base-model PC counterpart, using a reference design for the PCB and cooler, reference clock speeds of 648/1476/2484 MHz (core/shader/memory), and 1 GB of GDDR3 memory across a 512-bit interface. It bundles the necessary power dongles, and packs system software for Mac. Two dual-link DVI connectors support two Apple Cinema displays with resolutions of 2560 x 1600 each. The OpenGL 3.0 acceleration backs the advanced drawing features of Adobe CS4 applications. EVGA is pricing this at US $449.99, a notch higher than the GTX 285 2 GB FTW accelerator for PC.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, announced it has self certified its award winning UltraDrive SSDs for compatibility with the newest Apple MacBook (13"), MacBook Pro (15"/17"), and Mac Pro (Quad/8-Core) based on Intel's Core i7 CPUs.

During compatibility testing Super Talent was able to improve boot time by up to 58% and achieve performance gains of over 5.3x vs. the stock Apple Hard Disk Drive (HDD). The UltraDrive ME delivered 32x the bandwidth of the HDD on 256K Random Writes as measured by the xBench standard benchmark. The UltraDrive also outperformed the Apple SSD by 2.5x.

Apple just introduced the new Mac Pro featuring Intel "Nehalem" Xeon processors. Thanks to the new 8-core Intel architecture running at speeds up to 2.93 GHz, the new Mac Pro delivers up to twice the performance of the previous generation Mac Pro. It also features the latest graphics from both NVIDIA and ATI - the system can be purchased with either GeForce GT 120 with 512 MB of GDDR3 memory or Radeon HD 4870 with 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. The new Mac Pro also supports up to 32 GB of DDR3 ECC SDRAM and up to 4 TB of internal storage in four hard drive bays. Additionally the 45nm Mac Pro comes with revised interior that makes expansion even easier than before. Available next week, the new Mac Pro starts at $2,499. Visit Mac Pro web page, for more information.