Bargain-priced graphics card released for holiday season

Windows users in search of a gaming speed upgrade for a reasonable price can look no farther than Nvidia's new GeForce GT 240 graphics card, which packs a number of high-end features into a package with an unusually low sticker price. The GT 240 is available with a number of options, and buyers will have to choose between 512 and 1024 MB of RAM, as well as the data rate at which that RAM works (either 2000 MHz DDR3 or 3400 MHz DDR5). The central processor of the GT 240 is a 550 MHz, 40 nm-scale graphics processing unit (GPU). The GT 240 could inject new life into older PCs with dated graphics hardware. The device promises significant video performance boosts as well, due to much-improved Blu-Ray performance and support for Flash 10.1, which will soon be the dominant format for streaming video services like Hulu. Competition between the big two graphics card makers - Nvidia and ATI - has helped keep prices reasonable in recent years, according to analysts. Nvidia's products tend to be seen as more widely compatible with other hardware, while ATI holds a perceived advantage in value for performance.

AMD, Intel settle five-year lawsuit for $1.25 billion

The world's top two makers of microprocessors yesterday announced that they had come to a settlement of a long-running antitrust suit, with AMD agreeing to drop all litigation against Intel in exchange for a $1.25 billion payout. Some experts say that the settlement will likely mean little to the end-user of the products manufactured by the company. Erica Ogg, writing for CNET, says that observant shoppers may notice a slight increase in the use of AMD chipsets in new computer models this holiday season as Intel stops punishing manufacturers for using AMD products. Ogg also writes that computer prices in general could rise slightly as a result of the settlement, as competition between the two microchip makers cools from its previous incendiary levels, but that AMD will likely remain the budget option while Intel retains its role as the maker of premium CPUs. Suits against Intel filed by EU regulators and the state of New York are unaffected by the settlement, although AMD's original suit was the impetus for the EU filing in 2004.

Solid-state hard drives coming into their own

Flash storage has been in use for years in portable devices and thumb drives, but not until recently has it been implemented effectively for the full-scale PC. The basic technology, according to Ars Technica, has existed for decades, but technical issues - such as the whole device burning out after a few days of use - have understandably delayed widespread adoption of the technology. The enormous gulf in price between flash storage and traditional models has also helped delay the solid-state drive. However, the day of the SSD may be near. More and more PC models offer SSDs in their laptop and desktop PCs, and the price is dropping rapidly. The SSD has numerous advantages over traditional hard drives, as well: It has no moving parts to get damaged in a fall, it uses far less energy than a standard drive, and it can access data much faster. In the long term, Ars Technica predicts that SSDs will soon supplant traditional models in personal computers, but also that standard hard drives could remain the solution of choice for low-cost mass storage where access speed is less important.

Asus rolls out new motherboards supporting USB 3.0 protocol

Microchip maker Asus earlier this week revealed that it will begin selling a motherboard with built-in support for the new USB 3.0 data transmission framework next month. USB 3.0 is said to be able to transfer data up to 10 times faster than the current USB 2.0 standard.

The Asus Xtreme Design P7P55D-E Premium also has a pair of SATA 6 GB per second ports, and will support the use of Intel's latest line of processors, the Core i7, i5, and i3. The new motherboard could be an improvement for all manner of performance benchmarks, from data transfer to internet speed. Information Week says that a 20 GB high-def movie could be transferred between devices in about 70 seconds with USB 3.0 technology.

The P7P55D-E Premium will also support the latest DDR3 class of system memory, further boosting performance in Windows. In addition to the new super-fast USB ports, the motherboard will sport a total of 10 of the older USB 2.0 ports.

PC users looking for a speed boost should also perform a computer check to make sure that their PC is running at its best possible speed.

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