Two weeks ago, CPU manufacturer AMD bought GPU-maker ATI for a couple of billion dollars, but it seems like it wasn't for the latter's brand recognition at all. They're dropping the ATi brand, so no more ATI Radeons but perhaps AMD Radeons.

A publication called PCPro asked AMD-employee Richard Baker if the popular product is on the verge of biting the dust (Radeon). He said answered "we haven't made any final decisions yet, but I'd personally be very surprised if we dropped any of those product names. The ATI company name is definitely going, though."

Baker surprisingly said that the buyout will not really be a merger but more of a takeover, which basically means that AMD is boss. He said the name ATi should go, as AMD owns that brand and company now. "The company is being bought, so it's fairly standard that the name should go, as it's becoming a part of AMD."

A worker from ATI (well, it's AMD now), Chris Hook, said he doesn't have any attachment to the ATI brand anyway, but it's more about the products themselves. He said they're still discussing this though. More about this as we get it.

Today Capcom has finally released Super Puzzle Fighter 2: Network Battle for mobile phones. The game has been released at arcades and consoles, the classic puzzle lets two players compete head-to-head versus battles against each other via cellular network. Super Puzzle Fighter 2: Network Battle characters are from two of Capcom's fighting games Street Fighter and Darkstalkers.

When you start a game, you will get the option to choose from one of eight different characters including Ryu and Felicia, each with unique statistics that effect gameplay such as the type and combinations of blocks that fall. Additionally, players can see how their skills stack up with the rest of the pack via the game's online leaderboard showcasing wins and losses.

The game takes place over the course of three 3-minute matches in which players have to maneuver their pairs of gems by combining enough of one color to remove the blocks from play with a breaker block. When a played removes gems from his side their opponents bin gets blasted with Counter Gems. This creates a back and forth gameplay experience as both players attempt to keep their bin from getting over filled while simultaneously trying to fill up their opponent's bin. Once one of the players or CPU gems fill over the top that player is K.O.'d with a finishing move animation.

This is one of the best multiplayer puzzle games to have been released while it was in arcades as well as the version that game out for Gameboy Advance. While it is still up in the air, how it will translate to mobile phones having an online leaderboard is good motivation to get to the top of the list.

It's not exactly Tom Clancy espionage material but MS Mobile News got some confidential pics (from anonymous sources, natch!) of what appears to be ORSiO's new PDA. Or it could a Pocket PC Phone Edition. Many people died to get this information out so the least you could do is to take a leak, err, look at the specs below:

• OS: Windows Mobile/PP CPE (Magneto AKU3)
• Quad-band GPRS/EDGE class 10
• CPU: Intel Bulverde 524 MHz
• Radio BB : ADI
• 262k color 2.7" QVGA
• Standby time : min. 250hrs
• Talk time : min. 6hrs
• Battery : Li-Polymer 1500mAh
• 2.0 M pixel CMOS camera W/LED torch
• Memory : 192MB Flash/64MB SDRAM
• Storage : External Mini-SD card supported
• MPEG4 Encode/Decode QVGA full screen
• KJAVA( CLDC 1.1/MIDP2.0) supported

Blogger Daniel Andrade (AKA Pastelero) claims that through a process called lapping, your CPU heatsink/cooler (or other cooler) can become more efficient, thereby adding to the lifespan and stability of your hardware. While not a simple process, the potential benefits to be gained from adding cooling efficiency to a critical system will be more than worth it for many detail conscious computer users.

Using several different abrasive levels of sand paper, along with metal polish and even scrubbing with various compounds (including alcohol and toothpaste), the do it yourself-er can turn the cheap coating used by the manufacturer (on the contact point of the cooler) into a smooth, shiny, mirror like surface.

Their are two main reasons for going through the trouble of polishing the contact points of your coolers. One reason is that the increased level of contact between the heat source and the cooler will allow the system to cool down faster, and cooler running components lead to computers that perform better and have fewer crashes.

A second reason is that the overall operational lifespan of the computer is increased in proportion with a lower operating temperature. The only things you'll need to get started are 500, 600, and 1200 sandpaper, polishing oil for metal, cleaning cloths, toothpaste, alcohol, and thermal paste.

Using a slow process of gradually increasing the level of abrasiveness in the sandpaper, topped off with some detail work done with some metal polish, elbow grease and a cloth you can turn a dull grey into a shiny mirror finish. The process can be done with a wide variety of cooling systems, including WaterBlocks and air coolers without fans.

With a little planning and an eye for detail you can have all your systems running with improved efficiency and lower temperatures in one work session.

Perhaps a 17-inch widescreen laptop is nothing special nowadays, but a 17-inch widescreen laptop that goes for less than $1,100 bucks is.

For just over $1,000 ($1,036 to be exact), you could be the proud and happy owner of the Sotec WinBook DN8000. This contraption brought by the said Japanese company, packs a heavy punch. Inside it is an Intel Celeron M 420 (1.60-GHz) or a 2.16-GHz Core Duo T2600 (optional) CPU, 512 MB of RAM, and 40 GB HDD.

This laptop also has four built-in speakers, a 17-inch WXGA+ display, and a DVD Super Multi Drive. Aside from that, you'll also find four USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and a 3-in-1 memory card reader. This thingamajig measures 394 x 287 x 39mm and weighs 8.2-pounds which is not exactly lightweight. It will start to be available in Japan this coming July 14, whereas it's availability outside the Land of the Rising Sun is yet to be divulged.

The newest kid on the PDA block is looking sleek! Korean electronics company, Blue Bird have announced the arrival of their newest contraption -- the BM-300 T-DMB. From a distance, it resembles one of LG's chocolate phones, but chocolate phone it is not. The PDA is housed in an elegant all-black finish and the 5-way D controller is amped with a red lining.

This one runs in Windows Mobile 5.0, but the biggest factor that this baby boasts is that it supports T-DMB or Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting which lets TV addicts-cum-executives watch their favorite shows when they are out and about. The only problem is that you'll be able to watch in a really small and somewhat beyond satisfactory screen - the 2.8 inch touchscreen TFT-LCD (QVGA) display can only support a 240 x 320 pixel resolution, a bit disappointing for a promising PDA/TV.

The BM-330 is powered by a Bulverde CPU, which comes along the lines of 520 MHz with 64MB RAM and 128MB ROM onboard memory. Memory can be further expanded via an SD SDIO card slot. As for connectivity, it has WLAN 802.11b/g, Bluetooth (v1.2 Class2), USB, IR. Blessed with a 110 x 60 x 13.8 (mm) figure, it is pretty handy. The price tag will follow and as for availability, it will be out in Korea this coming October, as always, there is no word about a worldwide release.

Powerful video cards are becoming more and more necessary as games continue to push hardware to the limits. All PC gamers and even many general PC users already have some type of graphics accelerator in their machine, whether integrated or stand-alone.

With the coming release of Vista, the number of computers with graphics cards will continue to increase until all PC's come with powerful on board graphics solutions. The main issues, aside from increased cost, holding back widespread adoption of powerful graphics cards is heat, power consumption, noise and space.

While most computers have a CPU fan and a hard drive constantly spinning and whining, creating noise and heat, not everyone has to listen to a graphics cards fan on top of all the rest.

Hopefully, the new NVIDIA based ASUS EN7600GS Top Silent graphics card (with "reversecool") will go a long way towards mitigating the negatives involved with powerful graphics cards. On the outside, the entire system looks radically different from other similar cards.

Underneath it is essentially a highly modified version of the basic 7600GS that is 25% more powerful. Using a proprietary system known as "reversecool" the card does away with the usual dedicated fan all together. In its place there is a system of heat sinks and a repositioned GPU that takes advantage of the cool air coming from the CPU fan.

The system uses DDR2 512M memory and its dual link feature supports resolutions up to 2500 x 1600. It is currently available in various configurations making it compatible with a variety of set ups.

It looks like a busy week for Intel. The Godfather of Chips is expected to ship its new Core Duo T2700, a 2.33GHz dual-core 65nm Yonah-based CPU for high end notebooks and desktop replacement (DTR) devices sometime this week. The processor should start showing up in high-end notebooks in the near future.

Intel's new, dual-core Yonah processor has been voted most likely to be the CPU found in the first Intel-based Macs. Early test-drives showed it was a fairly strong candidate to replace the single core Pentium M offering performance equal to that of AMD's Athlon 64 X2 without an on-die memory controller.

The company will also comically release its Core Duo U2500 ultra-low voltage (ULV) CPU. The U2500 is a 1.2GHz Yonah processor with 2MB L2 cache and a 533MHz FSB consumes only about 0.75 W during normal operation.