Following the launch of their budget range of LCDs, HP has now launched some more premium models for those in need of better specifications. There are four new models ranging from 20” to 27” featuring integrated speakers and HP’s BrightView displays, and three of the models include HDMI connectivity. The 27” model in particular boasts a 92% color gamut and 400 nits CCFL backlighting. They are available now from HP with pricing starting at $179.99 for the 20” model up to $459.99 for the 27” model.

At the start of Computex ASUS unveiled its two tiered approach to an iPad competitor: the 12" Eee Pad running Windows 7 Home Premium on an Intel CULV Core 2 Duo, and the 10" model running Windows Embedded Compact 7 on NVIDIA's Tegra 2. Yesterday ASUS answered some additional questions we had about the models:

- Both Eee Pads have a 1366 x 768 resolution

- Both support 802.11 b/g/n with optional 3G

- 1080p H.264 decode acceleration is supported on both platforms.

- The 10" Eee Pad will not support MKVs at this time

I also got clarification on the minimum focus distance for the camera on the Eee Pad. It's 10cm, not 10mm as ASUS originally told us.

There's nothing terribly surprising about these details, but the lack of MKV support out of the box for the 10" Eee Pad is disappointing. There's enough ambiguity in ASUS' statement to not give up all hope, but I'm not sure this will be the play anything iPad alternative that many were hoping for from the first Tegra 2 tablets.

Tagging along with the launch of the Eee Pad and Eee Tablet at Computex 2010, ASUS has also unveiled a range of new notebooks. Amongst the new releases are fourth generation Eee PC netbooks, G series gaming monsters, eco-friendly U series notebooks, and the latest from the co-branded Lamborghini performance line. With these new notebooks, ASUS is covering all the major categories with an emphasis on improved audio performance as well as the latest graphics technology and connectivity.

ARM gained a lot of confidence thanks to its success in smartphones, and as such it’s looking up in the food chain a bit at netbooks. The Cortex A9 is an out of order architecture that can work well in a power constrained environment like a smartphone. The beauty of a well designed OOO architecture is that it has more room to scale up than an in-order core. ARM has been working on pushing higher clocked, higher wattage A9 parts (1 - 2W) up into the netbook space with what’s now called a smartbook. Take a netbook, put some form of Linux on there, and make it even thinner/lighter and you’ve got a smartbook.

While not totally sold on the idea of smartbooks, Intel does recognize the potential need for something even thinner than a netbook with even better battery life. Intel is also unwilling to give cede this market to ARM. Moorestown would be perfect, however Intel wants to offer an advantage, not just an alternative. That advantage is x86, or more specifically, Windows support.

Moorestown can’t run Windows. It has no PCI bus, and without one you can’t run Windows. Oaktrail solves this problem.

Take Lincroft (Atom Z6xx series SoC) and pair it with a new PCH, codenamed Whitney Point and you get Oaktrail. Whitney Point is effectively Langwell plus SATA, HD Audio, HDMI and a bunch of legacy I/O (HPET, GPIO, RTC, DMA). Oaktrail is roughly the same footprint as Moorestown and although it’ll consume more power it’ll use less than Pine Trail.

It fixes the smartbook problem and you have the option of running Windows 7 on it if you’d like, something an ARM based smartbook can’t do.

Oaktrail is particularly impressive in how quickly Intel decided to execute the project. The whole thing will have taken Intel less than 12 months, which shows an unusual amount of flexibility for such a large company. With Oaktrail (and if you remember, with Atom), Intel acted more like a startup than a mature company.

Oaktrail will be ready in Q1 2011.

Only a year has passed since AMD officially spun off its manufacturing division with the help of ATIC. The resulting GlobalFoundries have been busy getting its ducks in a row in preparation for inevitable battle with TSMC. It started with construction of Fab 8 (formerly GF Fab 2) in Saratoga County, NY due for revenue production in 2012. Today GF is announcing plans to expand Fab 8 before its completion and an expansion to Fab 1 (formerly AMD Fab 30/36) in Dresden. 

Last week Intel announced the scrapping of its plans to bring Larrabee to a discrete graphics card. While the announcement was open ended enough to allow for the restart of the discrete GPU program, from what I’ve heard the bulk of Larrabee GPU folks have been transitioned to work on Intel’s integrated graphics as it becomes a major focus of the company.

PCIe based SSDs have been reserved for enterprise use ever since their introduction. Generally limited by pricing, even OCZ's own forays into the PCIe SSD market have been targeted at enterprise customers. That may all change with today's announcement. Meet the RevoDrive:

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This PCIe x4 card takes a pair of SF-1200 controllers and RAIDs them together, giving you roughly the performance of two SF-1200 SSDs but on a single card. Through some unique component selection OCZ aims to keep costs around 10 - 20% more than a single drive. Obviously you lose TRIM support and the overall performance should be no different than a pair of SF-1200s in RAID (on a good controller/chipset), but if you need PCIe this may be an option.

Aside from wanting to be the 3rd largest notebook manufacturer in the next 2 years, ASUS also wants to be the more open alternative to Apple. That means no closed platforms, no limiting functionality in order to preserve an ideal user experience, but it also means that we should expect some Apple-alternative products from the Taiwanese company. That's where today's Eee Pad announcement comes in to play.

There are two versions of the Eee Pad, a 12" and a 10" model. I'll start with the 10" first as it is the closest competitor to the iPad. The EP101TC runs Windows Embedded Compact 7 (Windows CE based) and uses NVIDIA's Tegra 2. 1080p playback is supported but I'm waiting to hear from ASUS exactly how open the platform will be. The iPad is great for video playback but everything needs to be in an iPhone/iPad friendly format. Hopefully the 10" Eee Pad will let you play all of your H.264 content on your network regardless of format/container. In my mind that would give the Eee Pad the edge it needs over the iPad to be a great video consumption device.

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It's Computex time, and what better way to kick off our coverage than with some ASUS info. The Eee Tablet is ASUS' combination eReader and digital note taker, not an iPad alternative (that would be the Eee Pad). The Eee Tablet has a " reflective LCD. The use of a reflective LCD instead of an e-ink display means you get super quick page turns, ASUS claims just 0.1 seconds for a page of text.

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For note taking ASUS uses a Wacom based stylus interface. It doesn't appear to have any handwriting recognition but you can tag notes so you can quickly find what you're looking for. There's a micro SD slot and the Eee Tablet is slated to offer up to 10 hours of battery life. That's hardly Kindle/Nook territory but if it's a good note taker it may not matter. There's also a built in 2MP webcam with a focus range from 10mm to about 1 meter. 

The platform is ARM based but no word on what SoC is being used. The Eee Tablet will be available in Q4 2010 for $299 

Our inbox quickly lit up this morning when we received notice about this NGOHQ article, discussing how NVIDIA had removed the heterogeneous GPU restriction on PhysX in their latest beta drivers. This struck us as a bit of an odd reversal of positions from NVIDIA, and now that we've had a chance to chat with them we finally know what's going on.

As a quick matter of background, starting with the Forceware 186 series NVIDIA blocked GPU/PPU-accelerated PhysX from working on NVIDIA GPUs and AGEIA PPUs whenever a non-NVIDIA GPU was detected as being in the system. It's been a polarizing matter for the GPU community for nearly a year now, with a tug-of-war going on between projects editing the drivers to remove the block, and NVIDIA adding further checks in to their drivers to stop those efforts. In any case, there has been no sign that NVIDIA would be changing their position any time soon.

This brings us to this week's Forceware 257.15 beta drivers and today's clarification from NVIDIA. NGOHQ was correct in that the 257.15 drivers lacked the heterogeneous GPU restriction; however there has been a question of intentions. As we stated previously NVIDIA has held steady to their desire to keep PhysX on pure NVIDIA systems, so to make this change without publically announcing it odd - if only because it deprives them of the chance to sell cards as PhysX accelerators.

We just got done talking with NVIDIA about the matter and they clarified the issue for us. In what we expect is going to be a disappointment for many of you, the lack of a PhysX restriction on the current 257.15 beta drivers is a bug, not a feature - the restriction should have been in those drivers and it was not. NVIDIA will be reinstating the restriction in new downloads of the beta driver and in the WHQL build of these drivers.

Update: NVIDIA tells us that they will also be "fixing" the 257.15 beta driver on their site, so new downloads of that driver will have the restriction in place

Yes, this is a bug in the latest build of PhysX that was packaged with the driver. We'll be fixing this issue ASAP - the WHQL driver launching in early June won't have this issue. -NVIDIA

For those of you heterogeneous GPU users out there looking to use PhysX, there is some good news that can be salvaged from this however: this won't change the fact that previously downloaded copies of beta drivers lack this restriction. With these drivers you can still have heterogeneous GPUs with PhysX without modifying NVIDIA’s drivers, but you’ll be stuck on these drivers for the time being.

This past weekend, HP unveiled three new LCD monitors aiming to be an affordable companion to your computing needs. Available starting May 16, these monitors range in size from 20” to 23” and start at $150 for the 20" model.

All three LCDs offer good contrast ratios (1000:1 typical) and anti-glare (matted) panels, but they trim extras like height-adjustable stands, USB ports, and HDMI in order to keep prices low. There's plenty of competition in the entry-level LCD market, but if the price is right the HP displays are worth a look.