Intel denied having changed the product plans it had in place however the dual-core laptop units seem to be the exception. More precisely, due to the large supply of Sandy Bridge central processors, the Santa Clara, California-based company is putting off the release of dual-core mobile units.

That means that all the desktop components will be up for sale as planned, and the same goes for most of the notebook platforms.

Nevertheless, both standard voltage and ULV (ultra-low voltage) dual-cores are subject to the delay, while the Core i3 chips have been pushed back even further, all the way to August or September instead of May/June.

The supply of Sandy Bridge CPUs is said to be so high that not only are vendors overstocked, but also even Intel's own warehouses still have shipments that, had sales been better, would have been sent out quite a while ago.

For those that know about the different sorts of notebooks out there, this all means that strong consumer and business PCs will be updated soon enough, but ultrabooks won't be so lucky.

This puts a damper on the hopes that the new, super-thin machines would drop in price. While they will, eventually, become cheaper, this will happen at a slow enough rate that only in 2013 will they be considered affordable.

With faster decoding on multi-core, GPU, and mobile hardware and the ability to open more formats, notably professional, HD and 10bits codecs, 2.0 is a major upgrade for VLC. Twoflower has a new rendering pipeline for video, with higher quality subtitles, and new video filters to enhance your videos.

It supports many new devices and BluRay Discs (experimental). Completely reworked Mac and Web interfaces and improvements in the other interfaces make VLC easier than ever to use. Twoflower fixes several hundreds of bugs, in more than 7000 commits from 160 volunteers.

VLC 2.0.0 is available here for Windows and Mac OS X (or just OS X).

Two models from Intel's Desktop Board Executive series of motherboards for office PCs got pictured and detailed by VR-Zone:

These are Intel's motherboards for office computers as far as the chipsets are concerned, but at least one of the new models should be more than suitable for home users too.

Starting at the bottom of the executive series we have the DB75EN

Chinese motherboard manufacturer that specializes in high cost-performance motherboard, ONDA, is working on a micro-ATX motherboard based on the Z77 chipset. Its pictures made it to the press as TPU reports:

The board mostly sticks to the chipset's feature set, except using an additional PCIe-PCI bridge that gives out two legacy PCI slots. As a Z77-based motherboard, it should support both overclocking and Smart Response SSD caching. The LGA1155 socket, which supports today's Sandy Bridge and tomorrow's Ivy Bridge processors, is powered by a simple 4+1 phase VRM. It is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting dual-channel DDR3 memory.

All of the chipset's SATA ports are wired internally, including two SATA 6 Gb/s and four SATA 3 Gb/s. The board provides four USB 3.0 ports, two on the rear panel, two via header, all four are wired to the PCH. Apart from the two legacy PCI slots, we have one PCI-Express 3.0 x16 and one PCIe 2.0 x1. Display outputs include DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI. 6-channel HD audio and gigabit Ethernet make for the rest of the connectivity.

Details about Lynx Point, the new chipset that will accompany Intel's Haswell architecture in the first half of 2013, have surfaced.

First, we see some of the display port features have been transferred over to the CPU under the new architecture for Haswell. As discussed here, the Lynx Point chipset will only handle analog displays, while the CPU will be handling the digital displays. In theory, this makes the Lynx Point not as advanced as Panther Point in that regard but it does still have its advancements.

Lynx Point marks Intel's switch to full SATA 6.0 Gb/s support for all native SATA ports (no more native SATA 3.0 Gb/s SATA ports). Intel has added two additional USB 3.0 ports for a total six ports, which is two more than Panther Point. Intel is introducing I/O port flexibility feature with Lynx Point. As the feature suggests, it should give users the ability to allocate which ports are USB 3.0 and which are USB 2.0. Additional features for Lynx Point include: SSD performance/power optimization, new Rapid Storage Technology driver & Intel vPro Technology enhancements, lower TDP and power usage, a smaller package (22x23mm FCBGA), and support for quad-read SPI devices. Based on the slide, it looks like Intel has still not moved to a faster DMI interface, as the chipset's PCIe ports are still running at PCIe 2.0.

The NZXT Switch 810 is a new chassis from NZXT. It is a large tower case with enough room on the inside for most motherboards and CPUs. Likewise, it is possible to install even the biggest CPU coolers, thanks to a large cutout on the motherboard tray that lets such things be installed without removing the platform. Moving on, up to seven HDDs or SSDs can be held by the internal HDD pull-out cages.

Furthermore, the various 5.25-inch and 2.5-inch drive bays permit tool-free installation of storage devices.

One of the so-called

There are three new processors, well APUs. from Advanced Micro Devices closing in on retail stores, according to Donim Haber.

They are called FX-8140, FX-6120 and FX-4150 and will probably be launched in March, 2012 (next month).

FX-4150, as the weakest of the trio, features four cores, each working at a base frequency of 3.9 GHz and a Turbo Core rating of 4.1 GHz. The second unit, FX-6120, can reach the same Turbo Core level as above, even though its six cores function at 3.5 GHz normally.

As for the FX-8140, it is a strong, 8-core central processor (4 modules) whose base frequency is of 3.2 GHz and whose maximum Turbo Core performance is of, again, 4.1 GHz.

All three newcomers draw 95W of energy, though it may be possible for the 8-core to come in a 125W variant as well.

If anything, this shows that AMD is not about to back out of the processor segment, even if it has stopped bothering with trying to outmatch Intel on the high-end front.

Finally, the FX-4150 boasts 12 MB of cache memory, while the FX-6120 comes with 14 MB and the FX-8140 has 16 MB.

In three weeks, the FBI could knock millions of infected systems offline by disabling some DNS servers as techspot reported. In November, Estonian authorities arrested six men suspected of using "DNSChanger Trojan" malware to redirect victims to malicious websites and block them from genuine security sites that might've removed the infection. According to a report by Brian Krebs, the Trojan was on over four million computers in more than 100 countries, including 500,000 in the US -- and not just home users, either. The malware is reportedly still present on computers at half of the Fortune 500 companies and at approximately half of all federal agencies.

Come March 8, the court order allowing the feds to replace the bogus DNS servers will expire. Unless that's extended, the surrogate servers will be unplugged and millions still plagued by DNSChanger will lose Web access. Even the order is prolonged, experts worry the cleanup will take years as with Conficker.

Checking your system for DNSChanger is relatively simple. You can use ipconfig /all in the Windows command prompt to get your DNS information, which can be compared against the numbers here. The DNSChanger Working Group also provides a list of free resources that'll help you clean your machine(s).

ASRock worked together with Creative to introduce the Game Blaster, a new audio card with Broadcom Gigabit LAN. It's a proprietary product though, it's only supported by ASRock's X79 based motherboards. Pricing and availability is unknown.
World's top 3 motherboard manufacturer, ASRock Inc., specially partners with Creative Technology Ltd, the worldwide leader in digital entertainment products for the personal computer, to introduce the most trusted sound card in mobo industry - Game Blaster!

Gamers need so much more from their rigs. ASRock Game Blaster was designed to exceed the expectations of even the most dedicated gamer. It is the first sound card coming with both Creative 7.1 CH HD Sound Core3D Audio and Broadcom Gigabit LAN in the world.

Creative Sound Core3D 7.1 CH HD Audio
Powered by Sound Core3D

Roccat announced its Kulo gaming headsets will now ship with a new set of earpads. We do have news for you: From now on the award-winning Kulo gaming headsets will be shipped with a new set of earpads

The ASUS Essence 1 is easily one of the most anticipated products to come along in the PC audio community in quite some time as many seen it as ASUS moving out of the general audio market and taking a shot at entry into the true high end audio marketplace. Can this new product offer excellent sound quality, features demanded by the external audio market and all for a reasonable price?

So, let

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang told investors during yesterday's earnings call that TSMC is doing fabulously with its 28nm ramp. Yields on 28nm wafers are higher at the same point in the cycle than they were for the 40nm node, but unfortunately not as good as the company was anticipating three months ago.

Huang calmly explained that TSCM is "doing fabulously" with the 28 nanometer ramp, particularly compared to the 40 nanometer processes that were used on its prior "Fermi" generation of GPUs. The yields on 28 nanometer wafers are actually higher at the same point in the cycle than they were at TSMC for the 40 nanometer node, which had its share of issues, but the yields for 28 nanometer are nonetheless not as good as the company was anticipating three months ago.

Equally significantly for Nvidia, the number of design wins it has for its "Kepler" series of embedded and discrete GPUs is higher than the design wins for the previous generation Fermi chips, so there is larger demand bumping up against constrained supply.

"We're ramping our Kepler GPUs very hard, but we could use more wafers," Huang said on the call. "Our expectation is that yields will improve, and as output increases, our costs will go down.

NVIDIA is planning to release a GeForce GTX 560 SE based on a GF114 GPU with two disabled SMs. This card would offer performance similar to the GeForce GTX 555 (OEM edition) and is aimed at derailing AMD's Radeon HD 7770. The card is anticipated to be available within weeks.

As the branding suggest, GTX 560 SE is a salvaged GF114 derivative with 2 SMs disabled for a total of 288 SP and 48 TMU. The core is clocked at 776 MHz and shaders at 1552 MHz. 1 MC is disabled, so the memory interface is 192-bit mated to 3828 MHz 1GB GDDR5 for a total bandwidth of 92 GB/s.

GTX 560 SE will offer similar performance to GTX 555 OEM and is squarely aimed at AMD's latest Radeon HD 7770. While the aging GF114 is never going to match the performance/watt ratio offered by AMD's latest 28nm GPUs, the GTX 560 SE will offer excellent performance/price value if priced around the $150 mark - much like the GTX 460 SE did towards the end of GF104's relatively short life cycle.

Sources at graphics card makers told DigiTimes that AMD plans to release its Radeon HD 7870 and Radeon HD 7850 in the first half of March, while NVIDIA is set to introduce its Kepler GPUS in April:

Although AMD is also set to launch its highest-end Radeon HD 7990 (New Zealand), there is still no firm launch schedule.

Nvidia is expected to have at least eight models of graphics cards in April including GTX690, GTX660 and GTX640 with GK110, GK104 and GK106 cores.

Antec released three EarthWatts Platinum power supplies, including a 450W, 550W and 650W model that will be sold for $109.95, $119.95 and $129.95, respectively. As the product name suggests, all three units have 80Plus Platinum certification.

Antec, Inc., the global leader in high-performance computer components, announces EarthWatts Platinum, the latest in its series of power supplies. With the addition of EarthWatts Platinum, Antec has effectively upgraded the EarthWatts family of energy-conscious power supplies to the highest standard of efficiency.

With 450W, 550W and 650W models in its desktop lineup, EarthWatts Platinum ensures that environmentally-conscious corporations and energy-savvy end users alike can take advantage of the benefits of 80 PLUS

Ever wanted to go to the largest computer show in the world? You can in 2012