NYC

Gigabyte's no stranger in the field of dockable computing devices, and its M2432 laptop shown off atComputex is yet another example proving just this. Let's focus on the actual machine first: here we have a Core i5-2410M (2.3GHz to 2.9GHz) rig packing a 14-inch 1,366 x 768 LCD, Intel HD Graphics 3000, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 500GB 7200rpm hard drive, and a DVD burner that can be swapped with a secondary battery. You'll also find 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, HDMI-out, VGA-out, 1.3 megapixel webcam, an eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port, and two USB 3.0 ports on this Windows 7 Home Premium laptop. All of this weigh 1.8kg (3.97lbs). There's a bit of a surprise inside the expansion dock: by laying the M2432 on top of it, not only are you adding six extra USB 2.0 ports plus DVI-out and another HDMI-out, but you're also kicking up its graphics power with the built-in desktop-class NVIDIA GeForce GT 440 with 1GB video RAM. So essentially, the dock doubles as an external graphics ca...

If you thought the original Mars graphics card from ASUS was a little bit ridiculous, get ready to see what  a lot  of ridiculous looks like. The company's Mars II that was recently teased alongside a fresh new Matrix GTX580 Platinum card, squeezes  two  GeForce GTX 580 chips on the same board and overclocks them for good measure. In order to achieve such great feats, the card requires no less than three 8-pin auxiliary power connectors and takes up the space of three (2.6, to be precise) PCI slots with its ginormous dual-fan cooler. Heatpipes are also employed to keep the raging fires within in check, and -- for situations where all else fails -- ASUS has installed a special red button that sends the fan into full speed when depressed. ASUS hasn't yet finalized how far above the default engine clock speeds the Mars II will reach, but it has a bit of time to figure that out as this extremely limited edition card is coming...

NVIDIA may be kicking all kinds of tail on the mobile front with its ubiquitous Tegra 2 chipset, but back on its home turf of laptop and desktop graphics, things aren't looking so hot. The latest figures from Jon Peddie Research show that the GPU giant has lost 2.5 percentage points of its market share and now accounts for exactly a fifth of graphics chips sold on x86 devices. That's a hefty drop from last year's 28.4 percent slice, and looks to have been driven primarily by sales of cheaper integrated GPUs, such as those found inside Intel's Clarkdale, Arrandale, and most recently, Sandy Bridge processors. AMD's introduction of Fusion APUs that combine general and graphics processing into one has also boosted its fortunes, resulting in 13.3 percent growth in sales relative to the previous quarter and a 15.4 percent increase year-on-year. Of course, the real profits are to be made in the discrete graphics card market, where NVIDIA remains highly competitive, but lo...

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 cannibalize...