Really, Microsoft? Has it come to this? During last night’s highly watched NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament, Microsoft decided to buy pretty much every single ad slot from the first tip to the final basket in order to grab Apple by the collar, slap it around a time or two and then spit on it as it walked away. We’ve seen the Mac vs. PC ads getting more and more heated over the years, but this just sets a new bar. And we’re not talking about said bar being “raised.”For those who haven’t seen it, here’s the overview.

NVIDIA Corporation recently announced NVIDIA APEX, a dramatic new capability to its PhysX technology development software development kit (SDK), that provides artists, level designers, and game developers with a set of easy-to-use tools that streamline the process of implementing scalable physics across multiple platforms for next-generation titles.

With NVIDIA PhysX technology, game developers can design worlds that literally come to life: walls can be torn down, glass can be shattered, trees bend in the wind, and water flows with body and force. Designed as a modular framework that works in concert with existing PhysX SDKs, NVIDIA APEX makes it easy for developers to add detailed physics effects to their games and helps them optimize the gaming experience across multiple platforms with a simple author once cross platform content creation feature. This enables APEX to not only help developers accelerate the time it takes to author new games, but will also help them reduce overall development costs in the process. The APEX toolset will be available free of charge for licensed NVIDIA PhysX developers and is already being integrated into some of the worlds most popular development libraries and game engines, including Emergent Game Technologies Gamebryo LightSpeed.

AMD and Havok are presenting new, optimized executions of Havoks physics middleware on AMD platforms at the 2009 Game Developers Conference. The demonstrations include the first OpenCL supported execution of Havok Cloth. Havok has several videos of the demo on their site, so check them out here if you want to see motion rather than the still image below.

Havok is committed to delivering highly optimized cross-platform solutions to our game customers and we are pleased to be working with AMD to ensure that gamers enjoy a great user experience when running Havok-powered games on AMD platforms, said David Coghlan, vice president of development for Havok. Unlocking the parallel processing capability of AMDs hardware provides real advantages to our customers, and the greater the total computing resources available, the better the gaming experience developers can deliver.

AMD today announced the availability of the ATI FirePro V7750 graphics accelerator for the high-end market, ideally suited for graphics professionals working in engineering, digital content creation and scientific fields. These professionals need a 3D graphics accelerator that can quickly handle large models and shader-intensive applications, while delivering accurate color reproduction and superior visual quality. The ATI FirePro V7750 delivers features that matter most to these users at $899 MSRP.

Based on a new generation GPU with 320 unified stream processing units, the ATI FirePro V7750s ultra parallel processing architecture maximizes throughput by automatically directing graphics horsepower where its needed. Intelligent management of computational resources enables enhanced utilization of the GPU to enable real-time rendering of complex, large models and scenes while increasing interactivity when animating. In addition, the card accelerates ATI Stream applications, utilizing the GPU to offload the CPU for specific compute-intensive workloads.

VIA Technologies will showcase the VIA EITX-3000 Em-ITX board at ESC Silicon Valley 2009. Designed for ultra-thin, high-performance, fanless embedded systems at temperatures ranging from -10 to 70 Celsius, the VIA EITX-3000 uses unique processor placement to deliver leading performance in remarkably hot and cold environments.

Designed to facilitate hassle-free ultra-thin design of high performance, fanless systems, the VIA EITX-3000 is the first VIA product to use the recently announced Em-ITX form factor specification. Using a choice of either 1.3GHz or 1.0GHz VIA Nano Ultra Low Voltage processor, the VIA EITX-3000 couples industry leading performance-per-watt with a thin, fanless design courtesy of its extensive I/O coastline. The added horsepower of the VIA Nano processor is supplemented by a full array of features including dual gigabit networking, multi-configurable dual on-board LVDS and a VGA port.

Slotted just between the existing ATI FirePro V5700 and the high-end FirePro V8700, the all new FirePro V7750 is positioned to bring creative professionals loads of horsepower for under a grand. AMD asserts that its latest pro-level graphics accelerator is ideally suited for graphics professionals working in engineering, digital content creation and scientific fields by giving users the ability to handle “large models and shader-intensive applications, while delivering accurate color reproduction and superior

NVIDIA Quadro CX Review @ motherboards.org and other reviews from around the web can be found by visiting our forums!

Workstation video cards are a totally different market from the consumer gaming cards. What is unacceptable in price to the average consumer is considered a bargain for workstation video cards. Quadro cards are the number one workstation graphics card on the market today, according to Jon Peddie Research. If you want a workstation class video card and use Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 4 or programs like it, the Quadro CX is the card for you. Note that you can use GPUs like the FireGL series or ATI's Radeon series, or GeForce cards on NVIDIA's side to accelerate features in Photoshop CS4, but they are going to perform slower in encoding videos due to the lack of the RapiHD encoder.

Sun Microsystems announced that the Internet Archive, one of the fastest growing digital libraries in the world, has migrated its digital archival service onto Sun’s open hardware and software platforms and established a new primary datacenter that will be housed at Sun’s Santa Clara, California, campus. The Archive chose Sun to help move away from its customized storage architecture into a flexible and open Sun Modular Datacenter (Sun MD) or “Black Box” comprised of 60 Sun Fire X4500 (Thumper) Open Storage

The Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 has four processing cores running at 2.66GHz, 6MB of shared L2 cache, and a 1333MHz Front Side Bus (FSB). If you are thinking of building an Intel LGA775 platform this processor should be at the top of your list. Read on to see how the Intel Core 2 Quad 9400 does against the other 25 processors it was benchmarked against.

A minor (?) oops on Microsoft’s end has revealed the (current) date of the Release Candidate (RC) for Windows 7. A Technet web page indicates the RC build will be coming in May, not April as was previously rumored. The RC build will expire June 1, 2010, and the testing program will be available through at least June 2009. Here’s the text from the site in case it gets pulled. Windows 7 Release Candidate Published: May 2009 Download instructions Welcome to Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) testing. We’re on