Apple gave its flagship desktop computer, the iMac a healthy specifications update that warps the iMac right back into competing with the PCs of this generation. The update involves introducing two new models, a 21.5-inch one, and another massive 27-inch model, to replace the existing 20 and 24-inch offerings, respectively. The major update aims to achieve giving the iMac a true widescreen display that is at least full HD capable, powerful hardware including the advent of quad-core processors to the iMac, and a host of changes to the hardware and peripherals. Prices start at $1199.

To begin with, the 21.5-inch model features a 16:9 full HD display with a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, while the 27-inch model comes with 2560 x 1440 pixels resolution. The displays on both use IPS panels that provide a viewing angle as wide as 178°, with high color fidelity. The displays use LED backlit for uniform, instant-on illumination. Such technologies we previously found on Apple's high-end Cinema displays. Both feature enclosures that are distinctively "wide-screen", and slim at that. Both feature all-aluminum backs.

A Chinese tech community MyMyPC.com member pictured, and tested a Radeon HD 5750 graphics accelerator, which is intended to be AMD's flagship product in the sub $150 market segment. Unlike the Radeon HD 5770, which is pictured with a different cooler that resembles that of the Radeon HD 4770 (AMD reference), and Radeon HD 3870, this card makes do with a GPU cooler essentially similar to that of the more common Radeon HD 4770 cooler design, except for a few changes with the fan and the cooler shroud. Under the black, egg-shaped shroud is a heatsink with radially-projecting fins, in which is nested a red 80 mm fan. Everything else on the card, relies on its air-flow.

When HIS detailed its HD 4890 iCooler X4, it came across more as a one off model that probably takes the place of an IceQ 4 HD 4890. Apparently the company plans more accelerators with the iCooler branding, starting with the HD 4850 iCooler X4. Available in 1 GB and 512 MB variants, this card is poised to be simple and inexpensive. A short, blue PCB holds an aluminum fan-heatsink to cool the GPU, while the memory cools off under its air-flow. A minimalist 2+1 phase VRM circuit powers the card, which is passively cooled as well. It uses reference AMD clock speeds of 625 MHz (core) and 993 MHz (memory, 1983 MHz effective). Output connectivity includes DVI-D, D-Sub, and HDMI with 7.1 channel audio. It will be out later this month, standard pricing may apply.

Last month, Muskin announced a comeback lineup of graphics cards under the UltimateFX series. The lineup began with a number of high-end graphics cards based on the single-GPU GeForce GTX 200 series, and later topped up with the dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295 model. By then the company had made it clear that it will be selling graphics cards based on ATI Radeon GPUs very soon. One of its first works surfaced in the form of the UltimateFX Radeon HD 4850.

The card uses a fairly standard design with a red PCB with reference cooler markings, with the GPU cooled by 92 mm fan-heatsink made by Arctic Cooling, memory cooled passively under its air-flow, and a heatsink over the VRM area. The card provides output using DVI, D-Sub, and 7.1 channel audio-routed HDMI connectors. It will be available in two variants, one that uses the AMD reference clock speeds of 625/993 MHz (core/memory), and an OC variant with 700/1100 MHz (core/memory). Both feature 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. The cards are sold in the company's seemingly popular WoodBox packaging. Its availability is not known, though we expect a fairly competitive pricing structure for these cards, given the uphill task Mushkin has competing with established players.

AMD is preparing yet another performance-mainstream Radeon HD 4000 series SKU. The Radeon HD 4790 finds lineage from the Radeon HD 4890, currently AMD's fastest GPU. The RV790 GPU will be given a new set of specifications and memory configuration, to yield an SKU that performs better than the Radeon HD 4770, and slightly better than HD 4850. It beats us as to why it is positioned in the HD 4700 series, and not say "Radeon HD 4860", but we are too late to comment on that.

Specifications-wise, the RV790 core runs at 600 MHz, slightly lower than the RV770 in Radeon HD 4850 (625 MHz), but its performance increment over it comes from the use of GDDR5 memory. The GPU makes use of a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. It handles 512 MB of memory clocked at 800 MHz (3200 MHz effective). Being based on the RV790, it is pin-compatible with any existing HD 4890 PCB. Price-wise, it is expected to sit between the HD 4850 and HD 4870.

AMD is expected to introduce a series of price-cuts next month, for its ATI Radeon HD 4800 series graphics products. The price-cuts may amount to as much as US $50, perhaps taking advantage of the low manufacturing costs. The cuts also come ahead of the time-frame in which the company will introduce a DirectX 11 compatible future-generation of ATI Radeon, to sync with the commercial launch of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system.

When implemented, the price of the high-end Radeon HD 4890 is expected to be $199, down $50 from its current price of $249. Radeon HD 4870 will sell for $149 from its current listing price of $199, although there needs to be some clarity on how the 1 GB and 512 MB variants are positioned. Finally, the Radeon HD 4850 will enter the $100 realm, to substitute the Radeon HD 4770, which seems to be suffering an acute stock shortage.

With msi exclusive Turbo Drive Engine Technology, while the msi GT729 is in AC mode, just touch the turbo button above the keyboard and you can increase the speed of your CPU. Your computer will run smoothly to the very best of its abilities.

In order to provide the best and strongest performance ever, the GT729 features the latest DDR 3 System RAM to boost up overall system power. Moreover, in order to deliver innovative mobile solutions with unrivaled processor performance, stunning new HD capabilities, great wireless connectivity, and long battery life for full blu-ray movie playback, it features the latest Intel Centrino 2 Processor Technology, which uses Intel Core 2 Duo processor and Intel PM45 Express Chipset for the best gaming performance.

TechPowerUp and Hightech Information Systems (HIS) present you a great opportunity to bag a Radeon HD 4890 1 GB graphics accelerator with body-graphics designed by you! The contest is pretty simple if you have the creativity and competitive spirit. We will provide you with a template and some image resources (company logos). You put your skills to work, and come up with a body-graphics design in one month's time. You get to submit as many as three candidates of your own. At the end of the contest, a panel of judges from AMD, HIS and TechPowerUp will select three of the best entries.

The winner gets his/her design printed on a special Radeon HD 4890 graphics accelerator made by HIS, and of course, the accelerator itself! The first and second runners up receive HIS Radeon HD 4850 IceQ4 512 MB, and HIS Radeon HD 4650 iSilence 512 MB respectively. For more information, contest rules, and to participate, visit this page. Good Luck!

NVIDIA partner Gainward is preparing to launch a custom Radeon HD 4850 that, instead of the usual GDDR3 memory, utilizes GDDR5 memory. Gainward calls the card Radeon HD 4850 Golden Sample Goes Like Hell, pretty long name for a card, but you can always use the Radeon HD 4850 GS GLH abbreviature. The card's specifications include 512 MB of GDDR5 memory with 256-bit memory interface, a dual-slot cooler, and D-Sub, DVI, DisplayPort and HDMI connectors. Clock speeds for this particular model are 700 MHz for the GPU and 3600 MHz for the memory. Gainward's HD 4850 512MB GS GLH is expected to hit the stores in a few weeks time.

In an interesting observation, it has come to light that AMD's soon to be released ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4860 MXM modules will carry the industry's fastest 5 GT/s GDDR5 memory chips made by Qimonda. From the part name on the chips, IDGV1G-05A1F1C-50X. One can infer "50X" to be the bandwidth per pin at reference speeds: 5 GT/s (5 GB/s in one direction). Across the 128-bit wide memory bus the M97 HD 4860 has, the chips can churn-out a staggering 80 GB/s memory bandwidth, never before seen on any mGPU board. In comparison, NVIDIA's G92b-based GeForce GTX 280M delivers 60.08 GB/s and AMD's own M98 RV770-based Mobility Radeon HD 4850 doles-out 56.8 GB/s.

The 5 GT/s GDDR5 chips are yet to be used by AMD in its desktop products. Development cycles have gone as far as including "40X" (4 GT/s) memory chips labeled IDGV1G-05A1F1C-40X on company-internal RV790 samples. Another DRAM major, Hynix had announced its plans to introduce 7 GT/s GDDR5 chips back in November 2008. The company is known to commence volume production of the 7 GT/s chip by the end of Q2 2009.

MSI Computer is excited to announce GT725 - the world's first gaming notebook with ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB video card. The GT725 weighs just over seven pounds and comes outfitted with a 2.53 GHz Intel 45nm Penryn P9500 (6 MB L2 cache) CPU, 4 GB of DDR2 memory, a Blu-ray player and a 17-inch 1080P HD LCD display. "GT725 is our flagship gaming notebook," said Andy Tung, Vice President of Sales, MSI US. By the time the laptop was released, our friends over at HEXUS.net have already posted a very well written review here. If you need any additional information about MSI's latest desktop-replacing notebook, I believe it will be somewhere in the review.

With the release of ATI's next generation Radeon HD 4890 just a few weeks ahead, the company is going to cut the prices of its Radeon HD 4870 512 MB GDDR5 and Radeon HD 4850 512 MB video cards and thus balance its graphics cards product line-up. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB will drop $50, from $199 down to $149 and fight with NVIDIA's rebranded GeForce GTS 250 1 GB. The ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB will drop to $129, and will become main competitor of NVIDIA's GTS 250 512 MB version. Resellers and distributors are expected to start selling with the new prices this week.

Known to be an innovative lot when it comes to designing graphics cards, Palit has quitely slipped in a new variant to its Radeon HD 4850 series: the Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic Special Edition. What makes this card special, or rather different from the HD 4850 Sonic, are its memory and connectivity options. This is perhaps the first and only Radeon HD 4850 accelerator with GDDR5 memory. The card features 512 MB of GDDR5 memory across a 256-bit wide bus.

It uses an identical dual-slot cooler design to that of the HD 4850 Sonic. If the faster memory wasn't incentive enough, Palit has also expanded the connectivity options. The card provides a DVI, D-Sub (analog), HDMI and DisplayPort connectors all on the card. Owing to the Sonic branding, the card definitely sports higher clock-speeds than what AMD specifies. Further blurring the line between this card and a Radeon HD 4870, is its requirement of two 6-pin PCI-E power inputs. We are in the process of finding out its exact clock speeds, price and a larger picture.

NVIDIA is going ahead with the launch schedule of the GeForce GTS 200 series, that consist of products based on the current-generation G92 GPU. It is known that the GTS 240 and GTS 250 are re-branded 9800 GT and 9800 GTX+ respectively. The 9800 GTX+ SKU will officially be renamed GTS 250 on March 3. One can expect NVIDIA partners to come up with cheaper SKUs that fit into the US $ 130 range, lower than the current $150 range 9800 GTX+ and ATI Radeon HD 4850 compete in.

The GTS 240 on the other hand, will be introduced soon with a newer price-range of around $100, lower than the $120 mark the 9800 GT revolves around. This should make it more competitive against the Radeon HD 4830, which is currently winning in the price/performance figure. Additionally, the company is preparing a GeForce 9800 GT Green Edition, which carries forward the design methodology of the 9600 GT Green Edition: lowering the GPU voltage and slightly reducing the clock speeds. It is expected to carry clock speeds of 550/1375/900 MHz (core/shader/memory) against the reference 9800 GT specifications of 600/1500/900 MHz. The new SKU might be priced at a premium over the GTS 240, at around $ 120.

In the weeks to come, next month to be more precise, NVIDIA will officially rename its G92-based graphics cards series. Amongst the "new" SKUs that have surfaced so far, NVIDIA adds the GeForce GTS 250, or present-day GeForce 9800 GTX+. In a bid to garner support from its partners, NVIDIA issued a circular that includes the following statement:

GeForce GTS 250 carries over the same specs and features of 9800 GTX+, and hence the same GPU, memory, board, PCB, and thermal solution. AIC's should be confident in purchasing GPU's, PCB's, and other materials, since the only change is a new VBIOS to implement the new branding.

The GTS 250 model will be accompanied by yet another rebranding: GeForce GTS 240, present-day GeForce 9800 GT and GeForce 8800 GT. The GeForce 9800 GTX+ was released in July 2008, to compete with ATI's Radeon HD 4850. It was an evolution of the GeForce 9800 accelerator, to which it was built on a newer manufacturing process that facilitated higher clock speeds. NVIDIA is likely to choose CeBIT as the ideal launch-pad for its new series of graphics cards.

After RV740, the next AMD venture on the 40nm silicon process will be the company's next flagship GPU: the RV790. With this core AMD hopes to reclaim the performance and value crowns, more importantly, energy efficiency the newer fab process hopes to bring to the current-generation GPU.

Quite obviously, AMD will assign new SKUs to the products based on the RV790. The safest guess would be the formation of a new sub-series under Radeon 4000, the Radeon HD 4900 series. German website ATi Forum has learned that indeed AMD planning on a new sub-series based on the new GPU, following scoops on RV740 making the Radeon HD 4700 series. Once again, AMD might create two products based on a single GPU and one flagship dual-GPU accelerator, to begin with. The company's lackluster optimism in the R700 Pro (Radeon HD 4850 X2), has shown on the upcoming series with no mention of a second-inline dual GPU accelerator. In ATi Forum's theory, the RV790XT gets HD 4970, RV790Pro gets HD 4950 and the dual-GPU flagship SKU could be named Radeon HD 4995 X2. Talk about competitive naming.

Yesterday ATI released two updates to its Catalyst driver package, the one is actually being a whole new driver for Windows 7. The ATI Catalyst preview driver for Windows 7 includes drivers for all Radeon HD 2000, 3000 and 4000 series GPUs plus the ATI Catalyst Control Center with limited features support.
The ATI Catalyst release 8.12 hotfix is said to improve DirectX10 performance in various applications in multi-core CPU systems. It also resolves the BSOD issues using dual ATI Radeon HD 4850 in CrossFire mode.

DOWNLOAD: Windows 7 Preview Driver | ATI Catalyst release 8.12 HOTFIX

XFX seems to be ready with its initial lineup of graphics cards. Some European retailers have even begun listing their products and pricing. While there's nothing really interesting about the way XFX is pricing its cards, the way it's cards seem to be certainly interesting. Pictured below are its first two models based on the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and HD 4870 graphics processors.

Some surprises: Both use black coloured PCB, neither are 100% reference ATI design, and in fact, XFX designed its own cooler for the Radeon HD 4850 512 MB (model: XFX HD485X-YDFC). The Radeon HD 4870 in the picture is the 1 GB variant (model: HD487A-ZDFC). Both accelerators use AMD reference clock speeds. These cards will be released within the first two weeks of this month. More information as we come across.

ATI programmers have released a hotfix that corrects the black screen and boot OS failure when Catalyst 8.12 is installed on Windows Vista, and two or more ATI Radeon HD 4850 video cards are working in CrossFire X mode. This issue only occurs when two or more ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphic cards are installed in the system with ATI CrossFireX technology. One single ATI Radeon HD 4850 card will not encounter this issue. To download the hotfix for both Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit, please click here.

ASUS, the world's leading producer of top-quality graphics solutions, today unveiled the ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) EAH4870 MATRIX/HTDI/512MD5 and EAH4850 MATRIX/HTDI/512M graphics cards; which sport the Radeon HD 4870 and 4850 GPU respectively. These world's most intelligent cards are equipped with ROG-exclusive technologies and features that unleash the full power of graphics cards, allowing gamers to enjoy an unrivaled in-game visual experience.

In an exhibition of pure technological flexibility by AMD, the RV770 graphics processor is going to be used along with GDDR4 memory, in PowerColor's newest Radeon HD 4850 PCS+ GDDR4 graphics card. The inclusion of GDDR4 memory is to boost the memory clock speeds and to provide room for a little more memory overclocking.

The PCS+ GDDR4 features a GPU cooler designed by ZEROtherm, which is advertised to keep the GPU up to 10 °C cooler than what the reference cooler would. It features heatsinks for the memory and the VRM area. It features 512 MB of GDDR4 memory clocked at 2.20 GHz, with the core clocked at 675 MHz. The card supports CrossFireX, and sports dual-DVI connectors. There is no word on its availability pricing as of now.

ASUS has decided to run around and release a new MATRIX card, the EAH4850 MATRIX/HTDI/512M. The particular card is powered by a 55nm RV770 GPU with 800 Stream Processors, has 512MB of GDDR3 memory and the proprietary dual-slot Hybrid Cooler. While the EAH4850 MATRIX might sound like it's going to be an overclocked card thanks to its bigger cooler, it's not. It carries the stock 625MHz core and 1986MHz DDR memory clock. Instead the card comes with an integrated hardware and software set of controls that makes adjustments to the GPU and memory voltages depending on the card load and mode. ASUS software is also monitoring the card's GPU, memory, Power IC, and ambient temperatures. The MATRIX Radeon HD 4850 is expected to hit the stores in November.

ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 graphics card, which was formally announced way back in August and is still unavailable, was spotted today over at pchacc.cn leading us to believe that it will finally hit the market for real. The card below is build by ATI's major partner Sapphire and features custom dual-slot cooling system, 2GB of GDDR3 memory, a 256-bit memory interface, CrossFireX support and blue PCB. Last but not least are the two 55nm RV770 GPUs and the GPU bridge that links them. The card will require an extra 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe connectors. Currently, there's no exact release date, but the little brother of 4870 X2 is expected to become available later next month.

The ATI Radeon HD 4830, the newest foot-soldier from the red-camp, is AMD's answer to the GeForce 9800 GT, a gap left by the company, that may have been eating into its profits for months now. As usual, TechPowerUp received its review samples from TUL (PowerColor), AMD's long-standing partner, and AMD itself. We reviewed both of them, as soon as the product became official today. During the course of reviewing them, with the card from AMD in particular, our reviewer, W1zzard noticed an anomaly: the sample from AMD was showing an abnormal stream processor count of 560.

W1zzard also authors the GPU-Z diagnostic utility, and it is his routine chore to program the utility to detect a new GPU. The newest build of GPU-Z detected the card from AMD to have as many as 80 stream processors disabled from the original specifications for the Radeon HD 4830. In his article, W1zzard attempts to explain this anomaly.

HIS is counted amongst the leading ATI add in board partners. They already have a vast lineup of products based on the Radeon HD 4800. Like every other board partner, HIS sells reference design design cards, as well as, its own IceQ4 series Radeon HD 4850 cards. HIS decided to make a simplistic design, this time around, with the Radeon HD 4850 "Fan", that's what it's called.

The card uses a blue PCB which looks similar to the reference PCB. The card has a circular GPU cooler with aluminum fins projecting radially. The fan at its center lights up blue, during operation. Memory chips can be seen to be cooled passively. Memory amounts to 512 MB. The VRM area gets some cooling however. The card ships with reference ATI speeds of 625/1998 MHz (core/memory). The Radeon HD 4850 Fan should reach stores soon.