The Catalyst 9.6 drivers are available! On the menu of innovations, we note mainly performance improvement in the case of “CPU Limited” in Company Of Heroes, Crysis, Crysis Warhead and World In Conflict, which is linked to multi-threading optimisation by the drivers. Downloads here. You can also consult the full list of changes.

	Kingston has launched the DataTraveler 200 (DT200), the first USB key with a 128 GB capacity. How much will it cost? $546! It is also available in 64 and 32 GB versions at the cost of $213 and $120 respectively.

	NVIDIA has just pre-announced some new mobile GPUs. This is a way of preparing us for their actual release, which will probably be in September, but also a way of deflecting criticism from the technological ground lost by the GeForce range. The GPUs, GT215, GT216 and GT218 will be engraved at 40 nm by TSMC and will support GDDR5 and DirectX 10.1. NVIDIA has therefore finally consented to modify its architecture. We still don’t know if this will be based on a derivative of the GT200 or GeForce 8s as NVIDIA has not given much detail on these GPUs which have been designed to replace the current entry and mid levels of the range for mobiles. The GT215 and its 96 processing units. It remains to be seen if they will be set up as 4x24 (like the GT200) or 6x16 (GeForce 8 architecture). Moving over to 40 nm has pushed NVIDIA to support GDDR5 as the chips were too small for a large memory bus. Even for the largest of these chips, the GT215, NVIDIA has had to go for a 128 bit memory bus. They therefore had to go with the latest memory technology so as to compensate for this as AMD has done for the Radeon HD 4770. Here are the specs for the 5 new mobile GPUs: As we don’t know what architecture will be used yet we cannot compare them precisely with current solutions compared to which for example they may have less texturing power relative to their processing power. Basing our calculations on this however as well as the memory bandwidth, we can say for example that the GeForce GTS 250M corresponds to the GeForce 9800M GT. The main innovation will not therefore be to increase performance, which will probably remain the same as on the old range, but rather to give much lower energy consumption. So, while the GeForce 9800M GT had a TDP of 65W, it is 28W for the GeForce GTS 250M. Desktop versions of these GPUs should be launched in September, NVIDIA’s partners having told us that they are starting to develop their PCBs now and that they should be ready within a couple of months.

	Although the organisers of the fair were prudent at the opening given the difficult economic context, Computex 2009 was a great success with almost 100,000 visitors over the first four days and more than 32,000 buyers from 214 different countries. The stats are up on last year over these four days (Computex lasts for 5 days, the last day attracting mainly local visitors). AMD, Intel, Nvidia and even Microsoft were all pretty active during this Computex, bearing witness to the importance of the fair for these American players who aim to attract as much attention to themselves as they can on the occasion. It also allows them to make contact with their Taiwanese partners and to keep up what are very important relationships for both sides. TAITRA, the organiser, has been playing up the speed with which Taiwanese industry develops products based on new technologies or trends, all in own brands. Several years ago Taiwan was mostly known for making products that were sold as foreign brands. Things have changed and manufacturers such as Acer, Asus, Gigabyte and MSI are now outselling traditional brands in laptop markets by bringing out new products first, whether for netbooks or CULV notebooks. This is a development that has made Computex larger and larger each year. 2010 is hardly likely to be an exception to the rule, especially as it will mark the 30th anniversary of the show.

	Arctic Cooling were showing a new group of GPU coolers at Computex which is now complete with: The Accelero L2 Pro, a relatively compact entry level cooler with a single fan. It has been designed for the Radeon HD 4850, 4830, 4770, 4730 and 4760 as well as the GeForce 9800 GT, 9600 GT and 9500 GT. The Accelero Twin Turbo Pro which is replacing the Accelero Twin Turbo in the Radeon HD 4890, 4870 and 4850 as well as the GeForce GTS 250. It uses more effective fans and its heatpipes now pass over the top, which gives a more effective, cleaner design according to the manufacturer. Lastly the Accelero XTREME GTX 280 and XTREME 4870X2 make up the top of the range with their 3 fans. The first is compatible with the GeForce GTX 285, 280, 275 and 260. The second has been designed for the Raeon HD 4870 X2, as you may have guessed. All these fans are or will soon be available for retail but will also be used by manufacturers to improve the stock cards that they sell, as is the case with Twintech who are offering a GeForce GTX 285 equipped with the Accelero XTREME GTX 285.

	A-Data has been carrying out a demo of a system with 8 SSDs in raid. Enough to exceed read speeds of 780 MB/s and write speeds of 1100 MB/s! For that the manufacturer has used 4 of its 3.5” converters, each connecting two 2.5” S592 SSDs based on Indilinx controllers. Note that A-Data also presented a similar converter except for the fact that it is equipped directly with a RAID chip to combine a pair of 2.5” SSDs or hard drives so as to be transparent for the system, which means for example that you can easily move it from one machine to another. A-Data is typical of many SSD manufacturers with a range that covers almost all the variants of available products, with this range becoming, as far as we can see, difficult for the consumer to understand. In its “classic” range, for example, A-Data is offering entry level SSDs, mid-range SSDs based on the Indilinx controller and Intel’s X25-M at the top end. In its “hardcore users” XPG range however you’ll find simple JMicron controllers in raid at the high end. While you do find the best memory modules in the XPG range, this isn’t really the case for SSDs. It is therefore difficult to understand the logic in terms of homogeneity of the range. The problem is that, like many manufacturers, A-Data is trying to distribute all available SSDs on the market. In terms of commercial rationale this is understandable but it makes for uneven placement of the various products in its range.