Last Week's Hot News: Oct. Week 3

AMD Launches Radeon HD 4830

This week AMD released its new Radeon HD 4830, which is a slightly crippled version of the Radeon HD 4850. However, the new 4830 sells for much cheaper than the 4850, giving gamers a more economical but excellent performing option.

Retailers are already selling cards for as low as $109 to $145 and in this price range, it’s certainly a very attractive option. AMD is putting more pressure on Nvidia as of late, which is good for the company and for consumers.

The new card comes with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, 575 MHz core and 1800 MHz memory speed, and 32 stream processors (the 4850 has 40). Check out the full story on AMD’s new cheaper Radeon HD 4830 here.

Comcast Offers 50 Mbps Service

Comcast this week launched it’s new 50mbit/sec. Internet service to a tune of $139 per month. Called the Extreme 50 tier, the package will offer 50mbit/sec. download stream and a nice 10mbit/sec. upload stream.

According to the company, that would allow someone to download 6 gigabytes of data in just 16 minutes — provided that the serving end of that pipe has the bandwidth to do so as well. Unfortunately, Comcast is infamous for putting caps on its customers. Currently, Comcast subscribers are limited to downloading a maximum of 250GB of data per month — which Comcast just recently announced as well.

Many ISPs today leave their cap limitations in the user agreements given to customers when they sign up. Small print that’s difficult to catch, the days of unlimited downloading is about to evaporate.

Check out the report here.

Thinnest LCD Screen at 7.9mm

Samsung this week announced that it holds the record for the world’s thinnest LCD screen. Running in at just 7.9 mm, the new Samsung display really looks impressive, especially from the side — the place you usually don’t look.

The new display comes in at 40 inches big but Samsung also demonstrated a 50 inch display that’s slightly thicker at 9.9 mm. The goal here obviously, is to stay under 10 mm.

LCD screens are becoming increasingly thinner, but prices for ultra thin displays are still quite high.

Windows 7 is Vista but Improved

Windows Vista hasn’t been having much of a good time being accepted in the industry. Since the operating system’s launch, it’s suffered many complained from both analysts and consumers alike. Although the system’s getting better, Microsoft has focused much of its recent efforts into Windows 7, the next major release of Windows.

According to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Windows 7 will be an improved version of Windows Vista — what Vista should have been when launched. Initially, Windows Vista was suppose to contain many more cutting edge features than it did when it was finally released.

Hopefully Microsoft will get back to its game plan with the release of Windows 7.

Check out the full report here.

Microsoft Sued Over RROD

This week, a lawsuit was filed against Microsoft, alleging that Microsoft failed to support consumers and admit it had problems with its Xbox 360 console. Many Xbox 360 owners know how famous the red ring of death (rrod) problem is, and many have experienced the problem first hand.

Microsoft has since released several new revisions of its popular console, and try to contain the situation. We have experienced the RROD in our own units here at the lab. Even when Microsoft attempted to replace or repair our unit, it still exhibited the problem.

"The real numbers were between 30 to 33 percent. We had 35 Xbox 360s at launch. I know more than half of them broke within the first six months (red lights or making circles under the game discs). Two of them were dead on arrival." said a former EB Games employee.

Read the full report on the Xbox 360 RROD lawsuit here.

'Nehalem' Belongs to AMD?

By now everyone’s heard of Nehalem, or what Intel now calls Core i7. The new processor is highly anticipated, as it marks a significant architecture change for Intel. The issue here however, is that people have been saying that Intel is simply taking technology from AMD.

For example, moving the memory controller onto the CPU, was something introduced by AMD. Replacing the front-side bus with HyperTransport, is another technology pioneered by AMD. But does it mean that Intel has copied AMD and left innovation standing out the door ?

We have samples of Nehalem in house, and from what we can tell, Intel has a big winner on its hand, which will widen the performance gap between it and AMD even further. Check out our in-depth article on just what makes Nehalem so good.