According to the latest issue of Official Xbox Magazine, AMD’s director of ISV relationships Neal Robison said that the next-generation Xbox will offer graphics that will be on a par with the type of effects viewers saw in the movie Avatar. AMD hasn’t publicly been named as a partner on console, which is currently being dubbed the Xbox 720, but the chip maker did provide the hardware inside the current Xbox 360 system. Avatar-style graphics would certainly be a pretty big leap from the offering cu...

Sony announced its brand new VAIO Z laptop on Thursday, an ultralight device that weighs just 2.6 pounds. The Windows 7 Professional-powered notebook is equipped with a 13.1-inch 1600 x 900-pixel display, a 2.7GHz Intel Core i7 processor, a 256GB solid state drive, AMD Radeon HD graphics, and can be purchased with an optional battery sheet that provides up to 14 hours of battery life. Similarly, its optional Power Media Dock accessory supports up to four displays at once, has its own 1GB graphics card, can be...

On Tuesday Toshiba took the wraps off of its new Satellite P700 series laptops. The models include the P745, P755/P755 3D, and P775, which sport 14-inch, 15.6-inch, and 17.3-inch displays, respectively. Buyers will have the option to configure their P700-series notebook with an Intel Core i3, Core i5, or Core i7 processor, and models sport either an NVIDIA GeForce GT540M GPU or an AMD A6-3400M chip with discrete Radeon graphics. Other features include HDMI-out, USB 3.0, up to 750GB of storage space, Harman Ka...

According to Reuters, Apple is poised to refresh its popular thin and light MacBook Air family later this month. The news outlet cited a report from Taiwan’s Economic Daily, which suggested that Apple’s first shipment will include 380,000 of the new Air units. The report is in line with earlier rumors suggesting supplies of the MacBook Air were drying up nearing a possible refresh; one analyst with Concord Securities recently suggested that Apple will upgrade its MacBook Air family in June, too. T...

During the Computex tradeshow in Tapei, NVIDIA’s CEO Huang Jen-hsun said that sales of tablet PCs will surpass notebook sales in five years, Taiwan Economic News reported on Tuesday. It’s certainly no secret that NVIDIA hopes to profit off of that market shift — the firm already has its dual-core Tegra 2 chip in a number of tablets and phones from Motorola, LG, Samsung, Acer, and ASUS — and NVIDIA’s chief said that 14 of the top 20 global wireless carriers currently sell devices powered ...

Apple could begin manufacturing the next generation MacBook Air laptops in May, AppleInsider is reporting. Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst with Concord Securities, said recent supplier checks have suggested that Apple will soon upgrade its MacBook Air family to include improved Intel graphics, Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPUs, and the new Thunderbolt I/O tech that made its debut in Apple’s recently refreshed MacBook Pro line. Apple will begin “mass production in late May,” Kuo said, adding that Appl...

Reports are beginning to mount from iPod touch owners who are experiencing an odd graphics issue on their devices after updating to iOS 4.3. Screen sections of affected iPods seem to flicker and distort, almost as if the device is having a refresh rate or redraw issue. Some users are reporting that their screens appear “snowy” or “fuzzy.” There is a thread on the company’s discussion board where affected users are airing out their concerns; Apple has yes to publicly acknowledg...

Apple made a lot of beige boxes back in the 1980′s, but for some reason, if you ask someone about their first computer, the Apple IIgs often comes up. The IIgs was originally released on September 15, 1986, and was one of the first Apple computers to use a 16-bit microprocessor. Running at a blistering 2.8 MHz, the “g” and “s” stood for “graphics” and “sound” respectively. The IIgs packed an 8-bit Ensoniq wavetable sound chip that offered 32 separate c...

Samsung sure has been making a lot of mobile news lately. With their Galaxy Tab release, screen factory announcement, and various Galaxy S handset releases, Sammy is making their fair share of headlines. Today, Samsung announced that they are testing the Cortex A9 Orion processor for netbooks, tablets, and smartphones. The new processor is a 1 GHz, dual-core chip that supports 1080p video recording and playback at 30 frames per second. Samsung also boasts that the new silicon will have five times the graphi...

HTC EVO 4G owners disappointed that the graphics on their premiere handset were deliberately capped at 30 FPS by HTC should head over to xda-developers and give the folks over there a hearty thank you. With some clever coding, this software cap has been lifted and select EVO 4G handsets can achieve up to 60 FPS performance in games and other graphic intensive applications. This fix needs some tweaking as tearing, v-sync issues, and other graphics anomalies are present after uncapping. The fix is also limite...

Palm’s brain drain shows no signs of letting up, as it was revealed today that Rich Dellinger, the man responsible for many of the icons in webOS and the creation of the “non-intrusive banner notification system used in webOS”, has left the company after 3 years and 11 months. Now a senior UI designer at Apple, it appears that Dellinger left Palm immediately after it was announced that HP was purchasing Palm for $1.2 billion. Many are speculating that Dellinger was hired in an effort to hel...

Those sleuthing Apple informants seem to have struck gold once again. After noticing a continuous stream of AMD bosses and representatives travelling to and from Apple’s Cupertino campus, they’re now reporting that Apple is seriously considering the #2 chipmaker as a replacement for its current Intel offerings. Apple is thought to be unhappy with Intel, whose prolonged chip development cycle has slowed the pace of Apple’s hardware refresh and whose incompatibility with Nvidia has forced Appl...

Ars has a great technical article up about exactly how, when, and why Apple’s automatic graphics switching process occurs in its line of Macbook Pro laptops. For those not familiar with the automatic graphics switching technology, “the main goal…is to balance graphics performance with long battery life.” This battery saving, number-crunching goal is accomplished by toggling graphics processing tasks between two processors; a dedicated GPU, which consumes more power and provides high pe...

It has been a rocky road for Apple’s over-sized 27-inch iMac. Back in November, customers filled Apple’s forums with complaints — brand new iMacs were received by happy customers who proceeded to discover that their shiny, new Apple hardware was either DOA or horribly damaged in transit. Apple was reportedly helpful to affected customers and quickly addressed the issue. It would be nice for Apple if that was the end of the story. Unfortunately, Apple’s happy ending is not yet in sight....