ATI has posted the latest version of its Catalyst drivers. Release 6.4 incorporates Linux support for the chip maker's Radeon X1300, X1600, X1800 and X1900 GPUs, and tweaks video quality on Windows systems courtesy of a few adjustments to the Avivo engine.

Do AMD and Intel have something to tell us? Is their cutthroat rivalry a sham? Are they really in business together? If online retailer Ebuyer.com's website is anything to go by, the two chip makers must be in cahoots.

Intel's as-yet-unannounced Celeron M 4xx series - the first budget-priced processors derived from the chip maker's 'Yonah' core - have gone on sale in Japan, according to local news sources.

ATI is preparing to release a cut-down version of its Radeon X1900 XT and XTX GPUs, reducing the chip's pixel shader complement from 48 to 36 and knocking back its clock speed. The part will ship as the Radeon X1900 GT, it has been claimed.

ATI has formally renamed its Radeon Xpress 200 chipset to CrossFire Xpress 1600, the company's website reveals. Such a move had been anticipated - a number of motherboard makers have already begun cutting and pasting the new name into existing product documentation.

BenQ is to sell its optical drive operation to fellow Taiwanese manufacturer LiteOn IT. This gets it closer to shedding the last of its component businesses and focus entirely on end-user products, including phones, notebooks and consumer electronics equipment.

Intel is set to stop shipping motherboards based on third-party chipsets, or at the very least significantly reduce its dependency on other companies' products, investment bank Friedman Billings, Ramsey Group (FBRG) has claimed.

Transmeta is once again working for Sony and Microsoft. The processor power-reduction technology specialist said it would once again provide design and engineering services to Sony, which licensed Transmeta's LongRun 2 anti-leakage process in January 2005, leading to a two-year services deal being signed in March 2005.

ATI will unveil its long-awaited SB600 South Bridge chip next month, a senior company executive has revealed. The product is set to help the company limit its dependency on its South Bridge-chip partner ULi, now owned by ATI's arch-rival, Nvidia.

AMD appears to be playing down the availability of its Opteron 1xx series, at least for now. The chip maker today unveiled Opteron price adjustments which relegate the 1xx CPUs' presence on its public price list to mere 'call for details' status.

Today also saw the debut of Opteron x56 two-way and four-way server chips, as forecast, while AMD raised the prices of its Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 X2 processor lines slightly.

Don't expect AMD to offer a 65nm Mobile Athlon 64 X2 processor. According to alleged Turion roadmap details, the dual-core Mobile Athlon 64s will only be fabricated using a 90nm process, for the foreseeable future at least. AMD's 65nm mobile parts are due Q1 2007.

Nvidia has launched a PC add-in TV tuner card with two tuners, both of them ready to receive and record analogue broadcasts around the world. Nvidia has two versions: the NTSC-supporting part unveiled this week and a PAL/SECAM model.

Hard disk drive makers Seagate and Cornice have ended their feud and granted themselves 20 months' breathing space before they're allowed to start fighting again. The two companies this week said they had dismissed their lawsuits and countersuits and "agreed not to sue each other for patent infringement through the end of 2007".

Intel is to update its Core Duo processor line, the chip maker has told customers, with samples of new T2400, T2500 and T2600 65nm dual-core processors shipping by early May. Some may go out the door before the end of April, we understand.

VIA today said it will begin shipping its first single-chip chipset for its C7 and Eden CPUs later this quarter, the better to pitch the low-power x86 processors at embedded applications. Cramming North Bridge and South Bridge components into one chip reduces the motherboard area requirement by 34 per cent, VIA said.

Hitachi will ship its latest 3.5in desktop hard disk drives in Q3, the company said yesterday. The new units will feature the company's latest, 160GB-plus, 1.2bn bits per square inch density platters allowing it to deliver 500GB of storage capacity using just three disks, reducing drive complexity and power consumption.

Freshly leaked Pentium D pricing information has added weight to claims that Intel will ship the next model in the series, the 960, at the end of this month before slashing prices in Q3 when its next-generation architecture 'Conroe' processor debuts.

AMD's Fab 36 has begun making the company money, the chip maker announced today. Processors rolling off the plant's production lines last month became the first parts to be shipped to paying customers, the company said.

Roadmap AMD's next-generation AMD64 core, codenamed 'K8L', has begun appearing on the company's roadmap under that name, kicking off with a H1 2007 appearance, according to documentation leaked on the web. So has upcoming CPUs' support for 800MHz DDR 2 SDRAM.

ATI's upcoming Theatre 650 Pro digital TV chip has achieved PCI Express certification, Reg Hardware can reveal, paving the way for the part's formal introduction. The graphics specialist's RS600 chipset has also passed the PCI-E test.