Nvidia have been at a war of words with Intel for a while now. Fudzilla have uncovered a website called "Intel's Insides" which features a collection of somewhat humourous comics parodying Intel.

Right below the comics, there's a small Nvidia logo, which has can lead people to believe that it is indeed Nvidia, the visual computing company, getting into a war of images with Intel.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, says the clock. A clock called "Larrabee" attached to what looks like a bomb. So, are images like these really Nvidia's work?


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Intel has once again found itself in the middle of legal troubles. Following the mammoth $1.45 billion EU fine earlier in the year, an FTC complaint to be made soon, New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo has sued Intel for similar antitrust violations.

Cuomo accuses Intel of "abusing its dominant position in the chip market to keep its main rival, Advanced Micro Devices, at bay". Fair enough, considering this very accusation has been proven and penalized by EU, South Korea and Japanese authorities.

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The most successful and longest selling Nehalem CPU, the Core i7 920, will finally be replaced in Q1 2010 by Intel. 

Nvidia's nifty pico-ITX motherboard platform, Ion, is set to get a refresh within the next two months. The first generation ion was a promising platform for netbooks and nettops, featuring the Geforce 9400M chipset, which is about 10 times faster than the pathetic 945 graphics that normally ship with Intel chipsets for Atom. The big advantage is it does make HD playback possible.

We can expect Ion 2 to support Pinetrail CPUs and provide a faster IGP, though current details are obscure.

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Jon Peddie Research have revealed GPU Shipment figures for Q3 '09, and the results are quite amazing. Total GPU shipments grew an immense 21.2% over Q2 '09. This is the highest quarter-to-quarter to growth in nine years!

The big gainers were AMD and Intel, experiencing 30.2% and 25.2% growth over Q2, respectively. Nvidia trailed behind, but still chalked up an increase of 3.3%.

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Although Core i5/i7 Lynnfield CPUs are out in the wild, it must be noted that Intel have so far refused to cut prices of previous-gen Core 2 processors. The Core ix line will be further advanced come January 2010 with the introduction of dual-core Clarkdale CPUs, branded Core i3/i5. However, Fudzilla reports that there are no signs of price cuts even in January.

The last official Core 2 price adjustment was way back in late Q2, in response to the Phenom II threat. Since then, however, the prices have remained the same.

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Intel has once again found themselves in trouble with Antitrust authorities. Following closely after Intel's unprecedented $1.45 billion fine by the EU, it is the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) who are set to file an official complaint.

Intel responded by saying "Our business practices are lawful and (work) to the benefit of consumers."

Nevertheless, Intel has already been fined by three major trade authorities - Japan, South Korea and EU - for anti-competitive practices.

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The base model of Intel's upcoming Core i5 600 series based on Clarkdale, the Core i5 650, clocked at 3.2 Ghz and priced at $176, has been overclocked to a dizzying 4.7 GHz on air.

The test was done on a Gigabyte P55 motherboard, cooled by Noctua NH-U12P in tandem with Coolink 120mm fan. The final result stood at 4.70 GHz (25x188). It is worth noting that the CPU overclocked was an engineering sample which had an unlocked multiplier. The actual multiplier is 24 - but even this would return 4.5 GHz, not a shabby result by any means.

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Expreview reports the rather quiet introduction of Intel's fastest non-Extreme CPU - the Core i7 960. It is a direct replacement for the Core i7 950, and takes over the $562 price point, shared with the Core i7 870.

The Core i7 960 is clocked at 3.2 GHz, the same as the previous flagship Core i7 965 Extreme. The Intel flagship is of course the Core i7 975 Extreme, clocked at 3.33 GHz, retailing for $999.

If you are in the market for an enthusiast CPU around the $562, do you choose the Core i7 960 or the Core i7 870?

Fudzilla confirms that the cheaper Clarkdale-based Core i3 and Pentium G6950 CPUs will also release on January 3rd, the same day as the Core i5 series. The biggest difference between the Core i3 and the Core i5 series is that Core i3 lacks Turbo mode. The two models are Core i3 530 and Core i3 540 respectively, clocking in at 2.93 GHz and 3.06 GHz and priced $123 and $143. This puts it right in the middle of Phenom II X3 and Phenom II X4 CPUs. It will be interesting to see how the Westmere dual cores compete with AMD's aging tri/quad cores.

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