AMD Radeon HD 6950 can be turned into an HD 6970 using a BIOS hack

Ah, the joy of getting something for nothing -- that's what this time of year is all about, right? The techPowerUp! guys seem to think so, and they've got the perfect gift for all you thrifty PC gaming enthusiasts: a BIOS flash for the Radeon HD 6950 that unlocks the full potential of its hardware (in other words, it turns it into an HD 6970). We already knew the two retail SKUs were built on the same Cayman core, but this hack confirms that all the 6950's performance handicaps have been enacted in software rather than hardware, leaving you all to flip a switch, click a few confirmatory dialogs, and get your game on. You should be aware that the retail 6970 card uses an 8-pin and a 6-pin connector for its auxiliary power whereas the 6950 only has a pair of 6-pin intakes, which might cause trouble under extreme loads, and there's also the fact that you'll most likely be hacking your warranty away together with your GPU's limitations. But hey, you can't make eggnog without cracking a few eggs.

Shogun Bros. Chameleon X-1 review: the mouse that's a gamepad, too

Peanut butter and jelly. Gin and tonic. Peaches and cream. Some strange combinations make perfect sense paired, but how about the mouse and the PC gamepad? Those two items are what a Hong Kong peripheral manufacturer decided to combine, and the result was the Shogun Bros. Chameleon X-1 -- a gaming mouse you can flip to find twelve buttons and two miniature analog sticks on the bottom. It works as a gamepad, sure enough, and functions as a one-handed multimedia remote too. But is it any good? We've used it as our primary peripheral for over a week, and after the break, we'll tell you.

Microsoft Touch Mouse (Video Demo)

Microsoft announced its new Touch Mouse, a multitouch device designed for Windows 7 that lets people click, flick, scroll and swipe, making it easy and fun to interact with their PCs. The Touch Mouse has a capacitive touch area that for users to do everything they are used to doing with a mouse, such as point and click. It also adds gestures with one, two or three fingers for people to quickly scroll and pan, navigate, and manipulate content, manage windows such as maximize, minimize, and navigate their whole desktop easily.

Samsung BD-D7000 Ultra Compact 3D Blu-ray Player

While the BD-D7500 is the world’s slimmest 3D Blu-ray player, its brother BD-D7000 is a compact 3D Blu-ray player with a unique minimalist design. The player looks like an external disc writer and comes with a stylish silver metal casing. It has a hidden slot for disc loading that pops up from the center.

The BD-D7000 3D Blu-ray player includes many of the features of the BD-D7500including 2D-to-3D conversion, full HD up-conversion, Ultra Fast Play, One Foot Connection, DLNA support, integrated Wi-Fi, Smart Blu-ray features. It has a single HDMI output.

Micron RealSSD C400 25nm Solid State Drives

Micron introduces its new RealSSD C400 series solid state drives (SSD) for flash-based notebooks. The new C400 SSD ncorporate Micron’s 25-nanometer (nm) NAND flash technology, creating a broad portfolio of capacities ranging from 64GB to 512GB.

The RealSSD C400 family will be available in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch form factors and use SATA 6Gb/s interface. The new drive is expected to deliver read speeds up to 415MB/s, 17 percent faster than C300, and up to 260MB/s write speeds. The C400 is designed mainly for notebook makers. The company will bring the line to business customers and consumers under the name, Crucial m4 SSD.

Samsung USB 3.0 External Hard Drives

Samsung announced it new lines of external hard drives utilizing the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface for data transfer rates of up to 5 gigabits per second. Two portable hard drives and a desktop drive will be released.

Both portable hard drives offer up to 1TB capacity. One of them has curved sides for a comfortable grip and sleek, Scandinavia-inspired styling and wave-like matte finish. It comes in Brown black, Noble beige, Clay orange and Mist gray colors.