According to DigiTimes, we'll see boards based on the new IGP chipset by the end of next month. The 690G sounds like it holds some promise for HTPC builds...

"At least two IGP versions are planned which promise to offer higher visual performance than current IGP solutions, noted the sources. Additionally, the higher-end variant, the AMD 690G, will offer extra support for features including DVI, HDMI, and HDCP, added the motherboard makers."

DigiTimes has posted the new prices in a handy table. The chip with the biggest cut is the 5200+, which you can now pickup for less than $300, a drop of $108.

"AMD has announced price cuts for its mid- and low-end Athlon 64 X2 processors amid earlier reports that Intel plans to slash prices for its older Pentium D CPUs."

Sun's in the news with a couple of items today: not only have they taped out their next generationSparc processor, the "Rock," they're also designing a 10G ethernet chip (Neptune) for use in their next generation of servers.

"Neptune will be used broadly in Sun's Sparc and X86 systems. The chip is also being built into its next-generation multi-core processors, including the Niagara-2 announced at last year's Hot Chip's conference."

The PCI-SIG has finalized the specifications. We should likely expect to see chipsets by Q3 (Intel's "Bearlake").

"Doubling the interconnect bit rate increases the aggregate bandwidth of a single PCI Express x16 slot to 16 GB/s. PCI Express 2.0 is also backwards compatible with older versions of the standard, meaning that consumers will still be able to use their older hardware in slots based on the revised standard."