In a normal class certification hearing, the plaintiffs revealed an email between Nvidia senior VP of marketing, Dan Vivoli, and ATI’s president and COO, Dave Orton, which points to inflated prices and collusion. It reads: “I really think we should work harder together on the marketing front. As you and I have talked about, even though we are competitors, we have the common goal of making our category a well positioned, respected playing field. $5 and $8 stocks are a result of no respect.”
While Nvidia’s supremacy has been clear over the last year, this email-gone-public is a huge blow to both videocard companies. Presiding judge Aslup stated the class certification will be further investigated.
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VoodooPC, longtime hardcore gaming company renowned for high-end desktops and laptops was recently shifted by parent company HP into a more refined role. The Envy 133 laptop is thinner than the Apple Airbook at its thickest point and is meant to be elegant yet powerful, and has a wide range of features to support it. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Omen is a powerful to the point of absurdity.
The radical change from simply a gaming PC manufacturer to a mixture of super-hardcore desktops and expensively capable laptops was remarkable at the time, but understandable. Compared to its competition, VoodooPC was not performing well enough. Yet merging it with HP’s current consumer PC unit seems to be the end of VoodooPC as it were, and a reintroduction to HP’s gaming PC besides the Blackbird 002.
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One of the later adopters to gaming PC’s, Gateway has ended its brief run of customisable PC’s, gaming and otherwise. One of the first PC manufacturer’s to use online customisation, Gateway’s recent purchase by Acer, who relies heavily on selling products through resellers, will now only offer their designed platforms and will not allow for customisation.
While most users will not have a problem with this, gaming aficionados interested in Gateway’s machines may be unsatisfied with the parts given. Even the higher-end FX541XT uses the 8800GT in SLI, and there is no option to upgrade to a 9000 series card.



NVIDIA’s new video cards are set to receive a much-needed price drop in order to compete more effectively with AMD’s 4800 series. As we reported last week, the G200 cards were not selling as quickly as anticipated for a new GeForce release. Whilst this might attract new buyers, we can’t help but feel sorry for those who just shelled out up to £400 for their 280 only to see its price plummet by as much as £100!

Intel has now officially launched its Montevina platform which is set to make up the Centrino 2 architecture for high spec notebooks. Centrino branding has been a real hit for Intel, though with the new graphics subset scoring a ‘rip roaring’ 3DMark score of just 429, you will still want to make sure the words GeForce or Radeon are in your gaming notebook’s spec.
“In San Francisco on July 14, the Intel Montevina project morphed into the Intel® Centrino® 2 platform. Beyond jacking up performance and improving battery life, this beauty spread its wireless wings with the latest in Wireless-N (Draft-N) technology.”
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In a move that could see the UK move into the broadband fast lane for the first time, BT has pledged to lay enough fibre optic cabling to allow ten million customers access to ultra high speed broadband. Virgin customers in digital cable areas can of course already access the technology, which the media giant intends to crank up to 50Mbps before the end of the year.
“We will deliver a sea of fast broadband, with islands of super-fast broadband…[but] We need to be able to demonstrate that we can make a better return for shareholders than putting the money in the bank”
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Small Form Factor experts Shuttle have today announced the release of a brand new AMD AM2+ based bare-bones system featuring a new ‘H7′ housing design said to ‘lay the foundation for coming generations of mini-PCs’.

The Shuttle XPC Barebone SN78SH7 is powered by a 300 watt 80 PLUS power supply and comes complete with an automatic fan speed control system with heat-pipe technology designed to consistently maintain a stable and safe temperature.

Shuttle said: “Audiophiles will enjoy the high quality 8-channel sound chip with DTS Connect and Dolby Digital Live! certification,” and added that sound can be digitally transmitted via an optical SPDIF socket.
Integrated DX10-compatible graphics are powered by NVIDIAs GeForce 8200 GPU and a HDMI (1.3) connector on the rear means full HD can be enjoyd without putting too much pressure on an installed Phenom processor.

The Shuttle XPC Barebone SN78SH7 is available now at all good stockists or you can search www.totalpcgaming.com/shop over the coming days to find the best price.

That’s right. Not only can you get the best prices on PC games direct from the pages of www.totalpcgaming.com,  you can also save a fortune on the latest graphics card, CPU or an entire gaming PC courtesy of our shiny partners PriceGrabber.com!

www.totalpcgaming.com/shop will find you the cheapest online prices on tens of thousands of computer components and those that click through will not only save hours of mucking about and money - they’ll be supporting Total PC Gaming while they’re at it.

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Despite holding a significant lead in the enthusiast market, Intel has actually lost a small portion of its market share to rival AMD in the first quarter of 2008. Statistics released by research firm iSuppli show that Intel lost 0.7% whilst AMD gained 2.2% of the market at the expense of its bigger rival and other smaller chip manufacturers. Between the two of them, the AMD and Intel control a massive 92.7% of the microprocessor market worldwide.

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Get yourself over to the Total PC Gaming forum here, sign up (its free) and log in either at 1:30pm or 8pm on Monday 14th July to be in with a chance of winning big courtesy of the mag.

In case you don’t already know the TPCG forum is the place to be if you want to discuss you’re favourite hobby, ask and answer gaming and hardware related questions and talk directly to the magazine team about whatever’s on your mind.

So what’s on offer? 4GB of Corsair’s awesome DHX DDR2 RAM for the top prize and a bundle of PC games and the Gamer Edition of Guinness World Records 2008 for two lucky runners up.

Tell your friends and family, rope in your neighbours and call the cops! Actually, scrap the last one, that would just be silly.

Full details can be found here!