Microsoft says it has incentives ready to retain its employees and Yahoo employees if the takeover goes through

"Microsoft and Yahoo have been rivals in Internet search for years. While Microsoft has grown and maintained its profitability, Yahoo has seen a drop in stock prices and a loss in market share.

DailyTech reported in February 2008 that Microsoft made an unsolicited offer of $44.6 billion to purchase Yahoo. The $44.6 billion offer placed a premium of 62% on Yahoo stock breaking down to about $31 per share.

Yahoo’s board rejected the Microsoft offer saying that it undervalued the company. After Yahoo rejected the offer, Microsoft moved ahead with plans of a hostile takeover of Yahoo. The takeover made some employees within both Microsoft and Yahoo fearful for their jobs since an overlap of positions would be expected if the merger happens.

Reuters is reporting that Microsoft president of platforms and services division, Kevin Johnson, sent an email to employees in his unit saying that Microsoft will dedicate “significant rewards and compensation” to retain both Microsoft and Yahoo employees. According to Johnson, “While some overlap is expected in any combination of this size, we should remember that Microsoft ... has hired over 20,000 people since 2005, and we would look to place talented employees throughout the company as a whole. We have no shortage of business and technical opportunities, and we need great people to focus on them."

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The Tech Report

"Buyouts are all the rage in the tech world lately, it seems. After Microsoft's bid on Yahoo and Nvidia's purchase of Ageia, Electronic Arts now has its wallet out and its eyes set on a competing games publisher. Shacknews reports that EA has made a $2 billion takeover offer for Take-Two Interactive, the company behind titles like BioShock, the Civilization series, the Grand Theft Auto series, and the apparently still-upcoming Duke Nukem Forever.

EA's $2 billion offer amounts to $26 for every Take-Two share—a 64% premium over the firm's share price of around $16 last week. In an attempt to sell the deal, EA CEO John Riccitiello claimed, "There can be no certainty that in the future EA or any other buyer would pay the same high premium we are offering today." He also put pressure on Take-Two by saying EA wanted to close the transaction quickly in order to "positively impact the . . . sales of GTA IV" through its "strong publishing and distribution network."

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Montevina will account for around 18% of Intel's notebook shipments after it launches in the second quarter. In the third quarter, the percentage will increase to around 50% and grow to around 90% by the end of 2008.

Napa Refresh with Merom processors will account for around 6% of shipments by the end of March, while Napa and Celeron M processors will only account for around 3%. The platform will be completely phased out by the end of the second quarter, said the sources.

Santa Rosa, in the first quarter, will occupy around 60% of shipments, but the ratio will be reduced to 35% in the second quarter. In the fourth quarter, Core 2 Duo processor versions of the platform will be phased out of the market, while Celeron processor versions will account for around 10%, serving the entry-level market.

The Santa Rosa Refresh platform with 45nm Penryn processors will account for around 31% of shipments in the first quarter, and will grow to 45% in the second quarter. In the third quarter, the ratio will drop to around 20%, and by year-end the platform will account for only 4%."

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CPU3D Review: Sapphire Radeon HD3870x2 (1Gb DDR3)

AMD/ATI's Radeon HD3870x2 has been making has been making a lot of headlines lately. And thanks to our CPU3D review team we take a look at the Sapphire Radeon HD3870x2. It features 2 x RV670 GPUs onboard and a massive 1Gb of DDR3 memory with built-in Crossfire integration.  It's aimed at the enthusiast gamer, and we put it through the test with some DX10 games.

"... The Sapphire Radeon HD3870x2 beats a single HD3870 by miles and comes very close to matching two HD3870s in Crossfire mode."

Read the rest of the review .. HERE.

Digitimes

"In order to promote a smooth platform transition, Intel plans to start dropping shipment ratios of Napa Refresh and Santa Rosa notebook platforms in the second quarter of 2008 to let the upcoming Centrino 2 (Montevina) platform become its major player, according to sources at notebooks makers.

Montevina will account for around 18% of Intel's notebook shipments after it launches in the second quarter. In the third quarter, the percentage will increase to around 50% and grow to around 90% by the end of 2008.

Napa Refresh with Merom processors will account for around 6% of shipments by the end of March, while Napa and Celeron M processors will only account for around 3%. The platform will be completely phased out by the end of the second quarter, said the sources.

Santa Rosa, in the first quarter, will occupy around 60% of shipments, but the ratio will be reduced to 35% in the second quarter. In the fourth quarter, Core 2 Duo processor versions of the platform will be phased out of the market, while Celeron processor versions will account for around 10%, serving the entry-level market."

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CPU3D Exclusive: Competition Prize Draw for February 2008

REMINDER: Yes it's another Exclusive Competition Prize Draw ... right here at CPU3D. To celebrate our continual growth of our website, we at CPU3D is pleased to announce our Competition Prize Draw for February 2008. All we ask of you ... is to visit our forums, sign up and post regularly. Make it your new home. Here's what's up for grabs ...

	Asus EN8600GTS TOP 256MB DDR3 More and more manufacturers are producing graphic cards using Nvidia's latest Geforce 8600GTS (G84-400) GPU. We take a look at Asus's EN8600GTS TOP and see what it has to offer in terms of performance and features. The card is equipped with 256Mb of DDR3 ram and supports DX10.
	Enzotech Ultra-X Universal CPU Cooler If you want unbeatable cooling performance from an active cooler ... then the Enzotech Ultra-X is what you're looking for. It features four extra thick copper heat pipes and a huge array of aluminum fins, cooled by a big 120mm fan. This cooler looks mighty impressive to say the least. And thanks to Specialtech, we'll be tesing this cooler on our toasty Q6600 processor.
	VIZO Luxon Advanced ED - USB/eSATA Enclosure In this review we'll be taking a look at the VIZO Luxon Advanced ED - USB/eSATA enclosure. It features USB2.0 and eSATA 3.0G connectors, and you can install any 3.5" SATA hard drive of any size. We look at the build quailty, ease of installation and package contents.

Thanks to our sponsors Specialtech.co.uk, Enzotechology, Asus and VIZO for the prizes. The competition is OPEN to all registered forum members (even international members). If you are not a member ... please register HERE. Registration is completely FREE. For competition RULES, Terms & Conditions ...

BBC

"Pakistan's attempts to block access to YouTube have been blamed for a near global blackout of the site on Sunday. Google, the owner of YouTube, blamed the outage on "erroneous internet protocols", sourced in Pakistan

BBC News has learned that the nearly two-hour long blackout was almost certainly connected to Pakistan Telecom and internet service provider PCCW. The country ordered ISPs to block the video-sharing website because of content deemed offensive to Islam.

The BBC News website's technology editor, Darren Waters, says that to block Pakistan's citizens from accessing YouTube it is believed Pakistan Telecom "hijacked" the web server address of the popular video site. "

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CPU3D Preview: Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR2-800 4Gb Kit

Thanks to Crucial Technology, we just received some review samples of their latest addition to their Tracer series of memory modules. These Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR2-800 4Gb Kits (2Gb x 2) are rated to run at 400Mhz with a low CAS latency of 4-4-4-12. They now come with a distinctive RED heatspreader and features two rows of eight "chasing" red LEDs at the top of the modules ... it circulates in a random pattern based on memory utilization.

                 

Our CPU3D review team will be putting these modules to the test with some benchmarks and overclocking. In the meantime take a look at our photo gallery below.

Dailytech

"Sun confirms what Intel has been dying to tell us, at least off the record. Late last month in Austria, Intel presented Sun with roadmaps discussing details of its upcoming server platforms, including the fairly secret Xeon Dunnington and Nehalem architectures. Unfortunately for some, this presentation ended up on Sun's public web server over the weekend.

Dunnington, Intel's 45nm six-core Xeon processor from the Penryn family, will succeed the Xeon Tigerton processor.  Whereas Tigerton is essentially two 65nm Core 2 Duo processors fused on one package, Dunnington will be Intel's first Core 2 Duo processor with three dual-core banks. 

Dunnington includes 16MB of L3 cache shared by all six processors. Each pair of cores can also access 3MB of local L2 cache.  The end result is a design very similar to the AMD Barcelona quad-core processor; however, each Barcelona core contains 512KB L2 cache, whereas Dunnington cores share L2 cache in pairs.

To sweeten the deal, all Dunnington processors will be pin-compatible with Intel Tigerton processors, and work with the existing Clarksboro chipset.  Intel's slide claims this processor will launch in the second half of 2008 -- a figure consistent with previous roadmaps from the company.

The leaked slide deck also includes more information about Intel's Penryn successor, codenamed Nehalem.  Nehalem is everything Penryn is -- 45nm, SSE4, quad-core -- and then some.  For starters, Intel will abandon the front-side bus model in favor of QuickPath Interconnect; a serial bus similar to HyperTransport. "

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HardOCP

"The ASUS "TOP" branding represents ASUS' best line of overclocked out-of-box video cards, and TOP is coming to the ATI Radeon HD 3870! We'll test the new ASUS EAH3870 TOP with today's most demanding games and find out if overclocking makes a real difference in gameplay!

... The ASUS EAH3870 TOP is an add-in-board partner overclocked video card featuring an ATI Radeon HD 3870 GPU, accompanied by 512 MB of GDDR4 memory. The GPU is overclocked from the ATI specification of 775 MHz to 851 MHz, which is a 76 MHz increase, resulting in a 9.8 percent increase in clock speed. The memory is also overclocked, though to a lesser degree. ATI's recommended memory speed is 2.25 GHz DDR (or 1.125 GHz actual), and the memory on the ASUS EAH3870 TOP is overclocked by 28 MHz to 2.286 GHz DDR (or about 1.143 GHz actual). That is a small increase, and it only amounts to about 2.5 percent. It increases memory bandwidth a small amount to 73 GB per second, from 72 GB per second per ATI's reference specification."

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