Radeon HD 6790 sneaks in at under $150, leaves reviewers wanting more for the money

As sure as snow in winter or sun in summer, AMD has yet another refresh to its graphics card portfolio this spring. The Radeon HD 6790 is only a couple of misplaced digits away from the far more illustrious HD 6970, but you should be able to tell the two apart by another, altogether more significant spec: the new mid-tier card retails at $149. Predictably, its performance offers no threat to AMD's single-GPU flagship, but the 6790's 840MHz graphics and shader clock speeds plus 1GB of GDDR5 running at an effective 4.2GHz data rate don't seem like anything to sniff at either. Reviewers agreed that it's AMD's slightly delayed answer to NVIDIA's GTX 460, and with the latter card exiting retail availability to make room for the (oddly enough) less powerful GTX 550 Ti, AMD's new solution looks set to be the better choice at the shared $149 price point. Alas, being limited to 800 Stream processors and 16 ROPs does expose the HD 6790 to being cannibalized by AMD's own Radeon HD 6850 (which can be had for sub-$150 if you're tolerant of rebates) and that turns out to be exactly what happens. A solid card, then, but one that would require an even lower price dip to make economic sense. Benchmarks await below.

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Scientist cooks up adjustable strength metals

As you may know, crafting a katana is a delicate process that involves carefully constructing a razor-sharp high-carbon edge around a soft shock-absorbent core. One day though, smiths and forging fires could be replaced by electrode-wielding mad-scientists, with the technology to selectively harden and soften metal at will. At least that's what we envisioned when we read about Jörg Weißmüller's breakthrough research in the field of nanomaterials. The German scientist discovered that by placing precious metals in acid he could create tiny ducts through corrosion. Once those channels are flooded with a conductive liquid, electrical currents can be used to harden the material and, if you change your mind about the brittle results, the effect can easily be reversed to make it soft again. The tech could eventually lead to self-healing vehicle armor or scratch-resistant cellphones -- but, really, we just want to zap our way to a high-quality samurai sword. Physorg

Google announces new ways to discover apps on Android Market, more tools for developers

Android Market may have a lot going for it, but most would surely agree that it could use some improvement when it comes to discovering apps that you aren't specifically looking for. Thankfully, it seems Google has indeed been aware of those concerns, and it's now announced five new features that should go so some way towards improving things. Those include some newly revamped top app charts that promise to be "fresher" and country specific, a brand new Editors' Choice section that highlights apps chosen by Google, a new Top Developers feature that places a special icon next to the name of developers that make the grade (currently more than 150), improved related apps on individual app pages and, last but not least, a new trending apps section that shows the apps growing fastest in terms of daily installs. What's more, while all of those features are currently exclusive to the web-based version, Google says they're also "coming soon" to the Andr...

Compal's 'Ultra Mobile' Ultrabook eyes-on

Intel's already teased Compal's "Ultra Mobile" Ultrabook from afar, but when this Ivy Bridge laptop popped up on the show floor after the Computex keynote, we decided to give it a closer look. While this prototype isn't quite in the same league as ASUS' gorgeous UX21, do bear in mind that we're still looking at a relatively slim package for a 14- to 15-inch Core i7 rig. Also visible around the machine are a couple of USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI-out port, a LAN socket, and an SD card reader. Until we hear more about this Ultra Mobile, enjoy our eyes-on photos below. Compal's 'Ultra Mobile' Ultrabook eyes-on omment

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