Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industrys leading research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, today announced estimated graphics shipments and supplier market share for the fourth calendar quarter of 2007. Traditionally, the fourth quarter is a period of growth for the computer industry as retailers and OEMs sell in the holiday season. This year, the industry saw biggest quarter-to-quarter jump in the last six years.

Total shipments for the quarter were 106 million units, up 17% over last quarter. Shipments were up 27% compared to the same quarter last year. Overall, Intel held its first place position claiming 41.1% against Nvidias 31.8%, while AMD moved up to 22.8%

Giving photo enthusiasts the freedom to take more pictures and shoot more video, SanDisk Corporation today increased both capacities and speeds in its SanDisk Ultra II line with the introduction of 32- and 16-gigabyte (GB) SDHC cards and an 8GB SDHC Plus card. The announcement was made at the photo industrys PMA 08 International Convention.

The 32GB Ultra II SDHC card, which is the industry-leading capacity and will be the highest capacity consumer flash memory card that SanDisk produces, will be able to store more than 8,000 high-resolution pictures or up to 40 hours of video3. A SanDisk MicroMate USB 2.0 Reader a $20 value is packaged with the 32GB and 16GB cards, giving users a one-stop solution for capturing, storing and transferring their images. Beyond speed and capacity, the 8GB SanDisk Ultra II SDHC Plus offers both SD and USB functionality in one card. Designed with SanDisks unique, patented Hinge Lock technology, the card may be inserted into a USB port on any computer. This two-in-one SD-plus-USB feature eliminates the need to carry cables or card readers to transfer photos and videos from cameras.

The time has come for Futuremark to finally show something official from the next 3DMark – 3DMark Vantage. Futuremark released the first three screen shots from 3DMark Vantage this morning and of course Legit Reviews has them for you to see. Read on to see what the upcoming version of Futuremark will look like!

VIA Technologies today announced that the VIA EPIA EK1000G Mini-ITX mainboard had been selected by Tranax for its latest TK1000 non-cash dispensing transactional kiosks. Stability is crucial in always-on systems, so the VIA EPIA EK maximum power consumption of just 19 watts means the Tranax TK1000 can be trusted to run continuously using less power and with fewer instability problems associated with less efficient platforms.

We are delighted that Tranax selected the VIA EPIA EK board for their latest generation transactional kiosk, said Daniel Wu, Vice President, VIA Embedded Platform Division, VIA Technologies, Inc. Kiosks like the Tranax TK1000 must be available to serve the public every hour of the day, every day of the year, requiring the sort of stable, reliable and low heat producing embedded platforms provided by our VIA EPIA board family.

Cisco Systems has introduced a new data center switch, to go with the new Fiber Channel Over Ethernet standard networking platform, that is mind-bogglingly powerful and fast. With the increasing demand placed on networks by high bandwith applications like video, and the amount of just plain data that any business generates, data centers are constantly struggling to increase capacity. Cisco’s new Nexus 7000 will allow greater consolidation of data centers because even enormous amounts of information can be moved

Video: HD 3870 in Crossfire vs. HD 3870 X2 @ TweaktownDesktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide @ TechARPAsus EAH3870 TOP/G/HTDI/512M and EAH3850 TOP/G/HTDI/256M @ X-bit labs Motherboards & Chipsets: Asus BLITZ Formula Intel P35 Express Motherboard Review @ PCStatsJ&W RS780UVD-AM2+ AMD 780G Mainboard Review @ OCWorkbenchGigabyte 6Quad GA-P35-DQ6 Review @ Motherboards.orgMemory & Storage: Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus 750GB @ t-breakHighPoint RocketRAID 3520 SATA Raid Controller Review @ TechwareLabs Power:

Dell XPS M1730 Laptop Continues To Rule Mobile Gaming ArenaAddition Of NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX With Dual SLI Technology Delivers 49 Percent Increase In Benchmark Performance Over Previous Generation Video Graphics  Award-winning  XPS M1730 and XPS M1730 World of Warcraft edition gaming laptops now support dual NVIDIA® GeForce®  8800M GTX graphics(2x512MB) with NVIDIA SLI™ Technology Delivers cinematic video experience with DX10 games like Crysis, and BioShock playing at high details

In their biggest reduction in employee base since the dot com bust, Yahoo is planning to cut 1000 jobs in an effort to streamline their operations.“The Sunnyvale-based company announced the upcoming 7 percent reduction in its 14,300-employee work force during a Tuesday conference call to review a 23 percent decline in its fourth-quarter profit.”There’s no word on exactly which area(s) of the company might be losing employees, but we’ll keep you posted as we receive more information.

Still waiting on the HD format war to come to an end? Wait no longer. Gateway has introduced a series of AMD Quad-Core powered desktops that will enable customers to play both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD Movies via its Hybrid-Supermulti Drive. Starting at a bit under $1200, the Gateway GM5664 and GT5662 up the anti on those looking for an extreme multimedia rig.

The new Hybrid-SuperMulti drive lets customers watch both Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs, and features burning capability on any type of DVD or CD disc. Rounding out this media supercenter is an integrated TV tuner with remote control, so consumers can watch, pause and record their favorite live programming. The overall system performance of both new PCs is enhanced with the addition of DirectX(R) 10 support with ATI Radeon(TM) HD 2400XT graphics featuring 256MB video memory and HDMI output.

Yes, we know you may not think LEGO relates to tech – but without LEGO we’d have no LEGO Star Wars games, right?  Or MINDSTORMS.  Monday was the 50th anniversary of the patenting of the LEGO.The Lego company plans to celebrate the anniversary with, among other things, a worldwide contest to discover the best kid Lego builder. Each country will have its own national champion, Lego promises, and these lucky kids will get the right to come to headquarters in Denmark to fight it out for the world title.Even