With the Haswell refresh CPUs (Devil’s Canyon) coming out and Broadwell planned for later this year, the latest Intel motherboards for them are slowly being leaked through official and unofficial channels. The most notable feature of the new Z97 chipset is that it supports the latest SATA express interface natively, which features transfer speeds of 10-16 Gb/s and enables much faster transfer speeds for SSDs. While motherboard manufacturers aren't releasing official specs just yet, pictures of these upcoming boards have been released and from them we can find out some details.

MSI, ASUS, ASRock, Gigabyte, and EVGA have all posted photos and teaser specs of their Z97 motherboards. In this Z97 Broadwell / Devil’s Canyon motherboard specs round-up, we look at the next generation’s Intel board selection specs and features.

Let’s dive into this.

In this weekend's hardware sales round-up, we picked out an unlocked i5-4670K for $210, a GTX 760 for $240, a high-end Z87 board for $150, and a price-slashed mechanical keyboard. As always, keep eyes on our twitter and facebook pages for deals throughout the week days.

It’s no secret that AMD recently has been posting losses. In fact, just two years ago, AMD reported massive losses of about $1 billion in an earnings report. This was the catalyst for layoffs and organizational “restructuring.”  AMD’s (NASDAQ: AMD) large losses were not unique, though -- both Intel and AMD saw their stock price plummet in 4Q12. Rumors of PC death abounded, but the story wasn’t over quite yet.

In 2013, AMD had much lower losses of about $83 million. AMD may have overall losses this quarter (and already predicted them) but their $1.4B revenue for this quarter is a 28% increase over last year. Losses are down 86% from this time last year and the company even beat out analysts’ predictions; much of this can be attributed to the growth of APUs and console deals, though the largest portion of AMD’s profit comes from its GPU division. Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) also recently reported that they had a revenue of $1.9B for 1Q14 that, when compared to the 4Q13 revenue of $2.6B, seems numerically bad, though it still beat out analyst predictions for revenue and is above par for this part of the year.

After offering reddit's computer hardware & buildapc sub-reddits the opportunity to ask us about our nVidia GTC keynote coverage, an astute reader ("asome132") noticed that the new Pascal roadmap had a key change: Maxwell's "unified virtual memory" line-item had been replaced with a very simple, vague "DirectX 12" item. We investigated the change while at GTC, speaking to a couple of CUDA programmers and Maxwell architecture experts; I sent GN's own CUDA programmer and 30+ year programming veteran, Jim Vincent, to ask nVidia engineers about the change in the slide deck. Below includes the official stance along with our between-the-lines interpretation and analysis.

In this article, we'll look at the disappearance of "Unified Virtual Memory" from nVidia's roadmap, discuss an ARM/nVidia future that challenges existing platforms, and look at NVLink's intentions and compatible platforms.

(This article has significant contributions from GN Staff Writer & CUDA programmer Jim Vincent).

At Intel’s press conference today near GDC’s bustling convention center, new details were spoiled pertaining to the Haswell revamp and its target market. We don’t yet have full specifications on the processors nor do we know if it is related to the recently-leaked prices for the i7-4790 and i5-4690 CPUs (and Intel exited the conversation when we pressed), but it is potentially of interest to enthusiasts.

Intel's 4th Generation of Core processors in the i-prefixed family launched around this time last year; Haswell has been out for a while now and sees regular inclusion in our mid-range and high-end PC build lists, but wasn't initially recommended as an upgrade for owners of Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge CPUs. This remains true, and while awaiting the launch of 14nm Haswell Successor "Broadwell," it looks like Intel is putting out a second SKU listing of Haswell processors.

From what a reader spotted on retailer ShopBLT, the new Intel SKUs are listed as:

This weekend's hardware sales round-up focuses on CPU and motherboard sales, with Intel's mainstream flagship i7-4770K on sale alongside AMD's 220W FX-9370; motherboards were also located on sale, ensuring you'll be able to put these powerful CPUs to use immediately.

It seems like this is the year of mini-ITX form factors -- between the obsession over small cases at CES and the impending Steam Machine launches (and Kaveri), small form factor systems are being driven hard by the industry. This hardware sales round-up includes deals on mini-ITX boards, a Kaveri bundle, an Intel SSD, and a cheap full-tower case.

With CES coming to a close (though content is still being posted), we've got a ton of new gaming hardware in mind for sales round-ups. In this sales round-up, we look at Antec's new Nineteen Hundred gaming case (nearly $100 off MSRP), AMD's FX-9590 highest-end CPU for $300, and more.

We bring you good news from the Intel booth at CES – except instead of pure Intel content, it’s actually an update from Gigabyte in relation to Steam machines. Exhibited at Intel’s booth at CES 2014, Gigabyte’s new Steam machine is the next step in the evolution of what Intel references as the NUC (Next Unit of Computing) – which we first broke news on at PAX East 2012. Intel Product Marketing Engineer Mark Chang explained the relationship between Intel and its partners like this: Intel builds reference board designs like the NUC and then the manufacturers take the models and get creative. While this Gigabyte product, dubbed the “Brix Pro,” isn’t brand new, seeing it running SteamOS and DotA2 flawlessly was new to us.