HP today unveiled HP Pavilion notebook PCs that include enhanced features and reflect the company's new HP Mosaic design approach. The company also unveiled the HP Photosmart 5520 e-All-in-One printer, featuring HP wireless direct printing(1) and HP ePrint, enabling users to print from virtually anywhere.

• For stylish on-the-go computing, the HP Pavilion m6 is the ideal balance of mobility, performance and entertainment wrapped in a sleek, brushed silver aluminum design.
• The redesigned HP Pavilion dv-series and g-series notebook PCs offer performance in a simple yet distinct and colorful design.
• For users that want to balance affordable printing and brilliant quality at home, the HP Photosmart 5520 e-All-in-One is a compact, web-connected all-in-one printer for the home.

HP today expanded its award-winning notebook portfolio with thin and light Ultrabook systems and Sleekbooks packed with the latest technologies for both consumer and business demands. "Building on the success of the HP Folio13 and HP ENVY14 Spectre, we are now offering the most comprehensive Ultrabook portfolio in the industry," said James Mouton, senior vice president and general manager, Personal Computer Global Business Unit, HP. "Our expanded portfolio of HP Ultrabook systems and HP Sleekbooks for both consumers and businesses delivers uncompromised performance, quality and entertainment experiences within distinctive designs."

Devon IT, Inc., a leading provider of thin client and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) hardware and software solutions, today announced the powerful Devon IT TC6 thin client based on AMD's Dual Core G-T56N 1.6 GHz Processor with AMD Radeon HD 6320 Graphics. The TC6 will be fully manageable by Devon IT's Echo thin client management software.

"The TC6, operating with AMD's powerful, newly-designed processor, sets the thin client computing industry standard with high-performance application capabilities that rival the user experiences delivered by PCs," says Joe Makoid, president of Devon IT. "Devon IT's goals have always been anchored in driving innovation to develop high-performance products that use less energy and reduce IT costs across-the-board. We are excited to work with our industry partners, including Citrix and Microsoft, to deliver the enterprise-wide benefits of the TC6 to customers needing high-performance, low-cost IT solutions."

It's confirmed that AMD's "Trinity" APUs, which started shipping to ODMs in mid-April, will launch in May, only that these will be the mobile variants of the APUs, featured in mainstream and compact notebooks, and value netbooks. The launch of desktop variants of these chips will have to wait till August. A DigiTimes report points out that the new Piledriver microarchitecture-based Trinity APUs will bring with them up to 25% increase in processing performance, and up to 50% increase in graphics performance, over current-generation "Llano" APUs.

AMD's Radeon HD 7970 could not hold on to the single-GPU performance crown for too long. It lost it to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680, and the upcoming GeForce GTX 670 threatens to damage its competitiveness even further. Reports suggest that AMD is working on a new Tahiti-based graphics card SKU, the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. AMD unveiled the "GHz Edition" moniker to denote SKUs that come with engine clock speed ≥1 GHz. The new HD 7970 GHz Edition will come with reference core clock speed of 1050 MHz.

AMD needn't tinker with memory clock speed, as it already has a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface compared to the GeForce GTX 680 and its 256-bit memory bus width. Sources told Atomic PC that improved yields and manufacturing processes have benefitted Tahiti just as well as GK104, and ES Tahiti chips from the latest batches "easily" hit 1250 MHz core. These batches could make custom-design graphics cards with extremely high core clock speeds possible.

AMD today announced that its AMD Embedded G-Series platform now supports Windows Embedded Compact 7, the next generation of the Windows Embedded CE real-time operating system. Windows Embedded Compact 7, paired with AMD Embedded G-Series Accelerated Processing Units (APU) is optimized to deliver feature-rich applications on small, specialized devices for industries such as medical, retail and industrial automation. This enables board, module and system OEMs, among others, to develop a wide range of applications requiring high performance and integrated graphics processing with minimal size, power and cooling constraints.

"AMD is committed to providing our customers with the broadest possible range of operating system support to help them bring devices to market quickly and cost effectively," said Buddy Broeker, director, AMD Embedded Solutions. "Seamless support for Windows Embedded Compact 7 helps ensure that AMD Embedded G-Series customers are equipped to take full advantage of the many benefits afforded via the combination of these leading technologies."

Here are some of the first pictures of Acer Aspire E1-421, which caught the eye of a shopper in Asia. Its most distinctive feature is AMD E1-1200APU "Brazos 2.0", driving the machine. The dual-core APU is clocked at 1.40 GHz, and packs Radeon HD 7310 graphics. Other vital components include 2 GB of DDR3 memory, and 320 GB HDD storage. A DVD SuperMulti drive handles removable storage. The notebook's 14-inch screen packs 1366x768 pixels resolution, the GPU utilizes 256 MB from the system memory. 802.11 b/g/n WLAN, and a 6-cell battery make for the rest of it.

AMD announced today that Colette LaForce, 39, will join the company as senior vice president and chief marketing officer, reporting to President and Chief Executive Officer Rory Read. In her new role, LaForce will lead global integrated marketing for AMD, including marketing strategy, branding, internal and external communications, corporate events, sponsorships and entertainment marketing.

"Colette brings strong technology marketing and brand-building experience, a fresh perspective and a results-oriented approach that will strengthen AMD's global marketing organization," Read said. "Her deep expertise will accelerate the revitalization of the AMD brand, amplifying our voice in the marketplace while helping position the company for long-term growth."

Foxconn's Channel brand introduced a new line of fanless compact PCs under the Nano PC brand. The two newly launched models include the AT-5300, which is driven by Intel Atom D2700, and the AT-5600, which is driven by by AMD E-450 "Brazos" APU. The two are barebones, and require at least one DDR3 SO-DIMM module (up to 4 GB) and a 2.5-inch HDD or SSD. Both models measure just 190 x 135 x 38 mm, and weigh about 600 g. Connectivity includes two USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, an SD/SDHC/MS/MS Pro/MMC card reader, 802.11 b/g/n, gigabit Ethernet, and display outputs that include D-Sub and HDMI. Available soon, the two Nano PC models will be priced under US $200.

Tom's Hardware Germany found it difficult to explain lower than normal performance of an AFOX-branded Radeon HD 7850 graphics card. Upon looking at its stream processor count in GPU-Z, it was amazed to notice a value of 768, 25% lower than HD 7850 normal count of 1024. Attempts to replace its BIOS did not change the stream processor count, leading them to believe the stream processors were physically disabled. AMD was of little help, and they were redirected to talk to AFOX, which told them that since March, AMD has been shipping Pitcairn chips with 768 stream processor configuration to some OEMs. Could this be a new SKU under works? HD 7790? HD 7830?

At the Open Compute Summit, AMD - a member of Open Compute and a leader in driving open standards - today unveiled a flexible and innovative Open Compute Project server platform specification, codenamed "Roadrunner," to enable power-efficient, cost-effective solutions. "Roadrunner" is specifically designed to meet the general purpose compute, cloud infrastructure, high-performance compute and storage needs of the financial services industry. This move is in line with the Open Compute Project's mission of driving further innovation and greater energy efficiency in infrastructure technology.

Incorporating feedback from financial customers, the "Roadrunner" motherboard specification is intended to integrate the features that the financial services industry demands into a dense platform, stripping out unnecessary components and optimizing the most important ones. Using the AMD Opteron 6000 Series processors, which offer the highest memory capacity and bandwidth operation in the AMD family, "Roadrunner" is a feature-correct motherboard that is also extremely energy-efficient and slashes total cost of ownership (TCO).

TechPowerUp today announced GPU-Z 0.6.1, and with it, a new graphics card giveaway in partnership with PowerColor, in which you could win some of the fastest and coolest Radeon HD 7000 series graphics cards in the industry. Version 0.6.1 of GPU-Z adds support for some new GPUs on the horizon, such as NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690, GeForce GTX 670, GeForce GT 640 (desktop), GeForce GT 630, GeForce 605, GeForce GTX 675M (mobile), and GeForce GTX 670M; AMD Radeon HD 7970M (mobile), and Radeon HD 7450 (desktop); Intel HD 4000 and HD 2500 "Ivy Bridge". GPU-Z 0.6.1 improves NVIDIA GPU Boost clock speed detection. A host of other stability and reliability changes were made (refer to the change-log below).

With GPU-Z 0.6.1, TechPowerUp is teaming up with PowerColor to present to you this year's first GPU-Z Giveaway, in which you could win some great graphics hardware. Up for grabs are PowerColor HD 7970 PCS+ Vortex II, PowerColor HD 7870 PCS+ Vortex II, and the yet-unannounced PowerColor HD 7770 PCS+ Vortex II. To participate in the Giveaway, simply run GPU-Z 0.6.1 (main version), click on the "PowerColor Giveaway" tab, and follow the instructions. Entries are open till June 01, 2012; multiple entries may lead to elimination. Good Luck!DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.6.1 | TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.6.1 ASUS ROG Edition

The complete change-log follows.

Here are the first pictures of MSI GeForce GTX 670. The GTX 670 will be NVIDIA's third SKU based on the GK104, and will be positioned to compete with AMD Radeon HD 7950. The card pictured below is nearly identical to a Leadtek-branded one that was pictured last week, which leads us to believe that this could very well be NVIDIA reference design, with just MSI's sticker on. One can deduce, by the location of the two 6-pin PCIe power connectors, that this card also uses a different PCB layout from the one GeForce GTX 680 does.

The source also mentions some specifications, some of which we know from older reports, some of which we don't. The card packs 1344 CUDA cores, 112 TMUs, 32 ROPs, a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface holding 2 GB of memory, and clock-speeds of 900 MHz (core base), 1250 MHz actual or 5.00 GHz effective GDDR5 memory. It is predicted that future non-reference designs could come in much shorter PCBs thanks to rather slim VRM requirements, and just 8 memory chips, the GPU package isn't too big, either. Display outputs include two dual-link DVI, and one each of HDMI and DisplayPort. So the ability to set up 3D Vision Surround from one card could remain intact. Lastly, the box mentions "OC Edition", and so the card could come with out of the box overclocked speeds. There's also a juicy typo on that box.

AMD today announced an agreement with GameFly, Inc., to give gamers who leverage the quality and performance of AMD CPUs and APUs easier access to GameFly's leading online video game rental and PC download services for a limited time. Gamers purchasing select AMD A-Series APUs, AMD Athlon II CPUs, AMD Phenom II CPUs or AMD FX Series CPUs in regions where GameFly is accessible receive a free, 30-day GameFly membership as well as a 20 percent discount on a new PC game purchase via the new GameFly PC store.

"AMD draws inspiration from gamers, game developers and the PC gaming industry," said John Taylor, director of Global Product and Technology Marketing at AMD. "Hand-in-hand with the AMD Gaming Evolved program, we continue to listen to gamers and fulfill our 'Gamers Come First!' pledge. AMD's close affiliation with GameFly shows our gratitude to gamers and to GameFly for recognizing how AMD represents best-in-class PC gaming experiences."

Leading international graphics card and mainboard maker MSI today announced MSI R7870 Hawk, equipped with AMD's 28nm Radeon HD 7870 GPU. MSI introduce the flagship design concept of Lightning series into R7870 Hawk, adopting UnlockedDigitalPower that incorporates an Unlocked BIOS, DigitalPWM Controller, and Enhanced Power Design to boost overclocking potential and make overclocking easier than ever. With the industry first "GPU Reactor" power panel, it reduces power supply noise as well as increases overclocking stability. As for thermal solution, MSI R7870 Hawk utilizes the latest Twin Frozr IV Thermal Design with Dust Removal Technology.

The dual 8cm fan setup with PropellerBlade Technology generate massive airflow for fast heat dissipation while remaining whisper silent. The two form-in-one heatsinks improve cooling for memory and the power module as well ensure structural integrity. The R7870 Hawk uses Military Class III components which have passed rigorous testing to meet MILSTD810G standards, guaranteeing the card's stability and reliability under actual use conditions. Moreover, the "3X3 OC Kits" are designed to simplify overclocking, which makes it easier for users to fine-tune their graphics cards. Competing with flagship design of Lightning series, R7870 Hawk absolutely stands out on top among the industry's HD 7870 based graphics cards.

Just days after the monthly release of AMD Catalyst, Catalyst 12.4 WHQL, a beta built (version 8.97) of the driver, included in Catalyst 12.5 Beta, has been leaked to the web. This build updates both the display driver and Catalyst Control Center. There is no word on exactly what the new version brings to the table, and it's a very early version in the build up to Catalyst 12.5 WHQL slated for late May, so tread with extreme caution.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 12.5 Beta (ver. 8.97 display driver) for Windows 7/Vista

We are not new to AMD and NVIDIA bundling games and software in retail-channel graphics cards sold across all AIB partners. The most recent of these was DiRT 3 bundled by various AMD Radeon models. The latest such offer is dubbed "Three for Free", and is aimed at making getting a Radeon HD 7900 series graphics card a more juicy deal, on top of price cuts.

"Three for Free" is a bundle of three new PC game titles that are part of AMD Game ecosystem, which consists of DiRT Showdown, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and Nexuiz. All new batches of Radeon HD 7900 series graphics cards sold by various partners, that's Radeon HD 7950 and Radeon HD 7970, will include a coupon with product keys for the three games, which can be redeemed on Steam as digital downloads. This offer is already active in the Europe, and will come soon to North America.

AMD gained CPU market share at Intel's expense in the first-quarter of 2012, according to the latest data by Mercury Research. Intel's CPU market share dropped from 81 percent last quarter, to 80.2 percent, while AMD's rose from 18.2 percent to 19.1 percent. Principal analyst at Mercury Research, Dean McCarron said that AMD benefited from improvements in hard drive supplies. AMD is strong in desktop processors, with 43 percent of the market, the same as last year. Customers also opted for lower-priced laptops, many of which had AMD's chips. Supplies of AMD's A-series chips code-named Llano were restored after manufacturing issues were resolved, McCarron said.

HIS launched its newest custom-design Radeon HD 7770 graphics card, the HD 7770 IceQ X iTurbo X. The card comes with factory-overclocked speeds of 1170 MHz core, and 1250 MHz (5.00 GHz effective) memory, against AMD reference speeds of 1000/1125 MHz (core/memory). Based on the 28 nm "Cape Verde" silicon, Radeon HD 7770 packs 640 Graphics CoreNext stream processors, and is wired to 1 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit wide interface.

The card features HIS IceQ X cooling solution, which is a slight variation of the one featured on its previous-generation HD 6770 IceQ X (changes in color, heatsink shape, heat-pipe shape). Apart from a mostly black-colored cooler shroud, the card also appears to feature a black-colored PCB. The card draws power from a single 6-pin PCIe power connector. Display outputs include two each of DVI and mini-DisplayPort, and an HDMI port.

AMD's Brazos 2.0 platform has (quietly) hit the streets in South Korean as part of MSI's newest 11.6-inch notebook, the L2700. Seen below, MSI's mobile machine weights 1.3 kg, and features an 1366 x 768-pixel display, a 1.7 GHz E2-1800 APU (with two Bobcat x86 cores and Radeon HD 7340 graphics), 4 GB of RAM, a 64 GB solid state drive,a webcam, WiFi, Bluetooth, a 4-in-1 card reader, a HDMI output, one USB 3.0 port, and a 6-cell battery.

The L2700 costs just about $431.

AMD has today let loose the newest Catalyst release, the WHQL-certified Catalyst 12.4 which includes the 8.961 graphics driver and features support for the Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000, HD 4000, HD 5000, HD 6000 and HD 7000 Series desktop cards.

Download links Windows 7/Vista (32-bit) | Windows 7/Vista (64-bit) | Windows XP (32-bit) | Windows XP (64-bit)

Catalyst 12.4 Release Highlights

New Features

Windows XP support for the AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series
- In addition to Windows 7 and Windows Vista support, Catalyst 12.4 now also introduces Windows XP (64-bit/32-bit) support for the AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series

Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing: Level of Detail (LOD) Image Quality enhancements
- Supported on the AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series
- LOD Image quality enhancements have been improved when enabling Super Sample Anti-Aliasing and Adaptive Anti-Aliasing through the AMD Catalyst Control Center for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications.
- Applications must support in game Anti-Aliasing for the feature to work (Forced on Anti-Aliasing through the Catalyst Control Center is not supported for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications)

AMD today announced that the AMD Foundation has been named a 2012 Laureate of the International Data Group's (IDG) Computerworld Honors Program for the Foundation's use of technology to promote and advance the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills of youth around the world. The annual award program distinguishes organizations and companies that use technology to support and create positive social, economic and educational change.

The AMD Foundation was selected based on its ability to provide a significant benefit to society through its global signature education program, AMD Changing the Game, which is designed to take gaming beyond entertainment and inspire youth to learn. The program teaches kids how to design their own video games and, in doing so, enhances their STEM skills as well as problem solving techniques, critical thinking abilities, language skills and teamwork.

In what could be a blow for gaming PC users with lower-capacity SSDs (such as 60 GB, 90 GB, etc.), the minimum system requirements list of Max Payne 3, published by Rockstar Games, asks for at least 35 GB of free space on the installation drive. The game will likely ship in four double-layer DVDs, if not more. It could also make for an extremely huge download (over Steam, Amazon.com Digital Download, and GameStop. Other system requirements, particularly the requirements that the game is capable of taking advantage of, are particularly steep. For example, the game can take advantage of 6-core Intel Core i7-3960X, 8-core AMD FX-8150, the fastest single-GPU graphics cards in the market, as well as 16 GB of RAM.

HP today announced that AMD has improved business efficiency and streamlined operations by consolidating its worldwide data centers and standardizing on HP Networking solutions.

AMD's innovative computing and graphics technologies run a wide range of computing devices - such as personal computers, game consoles and servers - all of which power internet and business operations spanning cloud computing and virtualization environments throughout the world.

With 18 data centers worldwide, AMD recognized the need to consolidate its infrastructure to optimize resources as well as improve power and cooling efficiency. AMD conducted a comprehensive testing and review process of solutions from multiple networking vendors before choosing HP. The HP 12500 Switch Series and HP 5820 Switch Series will be used in AMD's newest private cloud data center, where the company makes heavy use of virtualization and cluster technologies.

There is light in the end of the tunnel for proponents of a native-Linux version of Valve's Steam platform, as a Steam for Linux is just months away, according to a Phoronix report. Linux has been hiring developers with experience in Linux OpenGL applications for some time now, and the gearwheels at Valve have been able to drive out an early version of Left 4 Dead 2 that was seen running native on Linux (Ubuntu 11.10), without translation layers such as Wine, utilizing the OpenGL API, with the ICD provided by AMD Catalyst. Although first denied in 2010, Valve is back to the idea of Steam for Linux, thanks to its "flat" company structure that lacks a hierarchy. Following the footsteps of Steam for Mac, Valve could port some of its games to Linux, and give the client SteamPlay capability.