Hot on the heels of AMD's Radeon HD 3000 graphics card receiving its oh-so-coveted DisplayPort certification badge comes the firm's first DisplayPort-equipped card for the professionals in attendance. Hailed as the "first commercially available 3D workstation graphics card with DisplayPort support," the ATI FireGL V7700 sports a PCI Express 2.0 interface, 10-bit display engine, 512MB of onboard memory, dual-link DVI connector and a promise to handle CAD / DCC projects with ease. 'Course, we don't see you picking this one up just for kicks at $1,099, but those actually in need can place a gaping hole in their wallet in exchange for one next month.

So you like the looks of Dell's 14.1-inch Latitude E6400 do ya? Well what if we told you that Dell plans a semi-rugged E6400 ATG version? While it won't replace Dell's fully-rugged XFR D630 when the ATG launches in June, we can't help but be intrigued at the prospect of a dust-proof, shock-proof, and spill-proof, humidity and altitude resistant Centrino 2 laptop with super bright 750cd/m2 (or 650cd/m2 touchscreen) display, GPS, UWB, DisplayPort and more. It can get pretty rugged working unwashed in our robes and slippers, you know. Full features listed after the break as our Week o' Dell scoops continues.

Ultra-portables are by the far the sexiest class of laptops. Especially when they start at just 2.2-pounds (1kg) like Dell's upcoming 12.1-inch E4200 or 3-pounds for the 13.3-inch E4300. Both pack LED backlit displays; Centrino 2 chipsets; Firewire, eSATA, 2x audio, ExpressCard 34, and at least 2x USB ports; integrated UMA graphics; DDR3 800MHz with Intel Turbo Memory 2.0; DisplayPort; and a host of security features to keep corporate IT types happy. The E4300 differs with a higher WXGA+ resolution, modular optical bay, peppier CPU options, and a choice of beefier hard disk drives instead of the 32GB or 64GB SSD restriction of the E4200. Plenty more in the gallery including a head-to-head comparison's of each new model with the D430 they'll replace. Stay tuned as our exclusive Week o' Dell Scoops continues.

After this morning's whispered layoffs, we're digging deep to bring you a bit of good news about AMD. VESA just announced that AMD's ATI Radeon HD 3000 series (and the 780G integrated graphics chipset) are the first graphics cards in the Industry granted DisplayPort certification. About time since Dell's 30-inch 3008WFP monitor has been shipping since December. Way to go Paula AMD, way to go!

[Via tgdaily]

It's here. Dell's 24-inch, Ultrasharp 2408WFP monitor is up and dancing on Dell's US page. $748 buys into a 1,900 x 1,200 resolution, 178-degree viewing angle, 1,300:1 contrast ratio, 400 cd/m2 brightness, 6-ms response, and 102% color gamut. Standard stuff until you get to the vast suite of jacks: HDMI, 2x DVI, DisplayPort, VGA, Composite, S-Video, Component, a single USB upstream, and 2x USB downstream. Just another reason why Round Rock, Tejas is the world's focal point for computer monitors. Who'd have thunk?

[Thanks, Brad]

Read -- Order page
Read -- User guide

Exhilarating, we know, but it is somewhat notable that Belkin has introduced a DisplayPort cable for the emerging connector. From what we can tell, there's nothing exceptionally special about it outside of its early release, but you will be paying a pretty penny for it when it actually lands. Depending on cable length (3-, 6- or 10-feet), you'll be asked to drop $59.99 to $109.99, and you can make said purchase this April in the US or later in 2008 in Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia.

DisplayPort is the most fun when you snag it on the cheap, and according to some leaked specs over on Madbox PC, AMD has a $50 Radeon in the works that'll have you running that 30-incher off of USB for a pittance. The Radeon HD 3450 card is based on the RV620 core, running at 525MHz, with 256MB of RAM and just a VGA plug to accompany the DisplayPort. The HD 3470 ($60) hits 600MHz and 512MB of RAM, and does DVI, while the HD 3650 ($100) maxes out the trio at 800MHz, with 512MB of RAM as well and the RV635 core to back it up. You might not be thrashing around in Crysis, but HD video and perhaps some last-gen shooters should be totally within your grasp whenever AMD gets these to market.

[Via Gadget Lab]

So, Flight of the Conchords never made it quite clear what's so special about New Zealand anyways, but Dell has heaped mystery upon mystery by leaking its upcoming 3008WFP UltraSharp onto its NZ online store. We knew the 30-incher was coming, with DisplayPort as its primary claim to fame, but there's plenty else to like. The screen packs a 2560 x 1600 resolution, 370 nits of brightness, 8ms response times, a 3000:1 contrast ratio, and DVI-D (with HDCP), HDMI, S-Video, component and composite plugs just in case. Hopefully we're looking at some sort of silly exchange rate silliness for the price, since NZ$2,699 (about $2,050 US) is roughly double what Dell is charging for its existing 30-inch 3007WFP display. Obviously, no word on when this will hit the States, but all signs point to soon.

Update: Ha! It's now on the US site for $2,034 with a shiny green "Buy Now" button and 2 day shipping. Anyone want to purchase and tempt our envy? Also available in Japan starting tomorrow according to official Dell press release. Now, you do have a DisplayPort video card, right?

[Thanks, JoseQ and dshankar]

Ugh, is DRM coming to shackle USB too? You betcha. The USB Implementer's Forum is planning to rollout a variant of tethered USB in 2008 to carry compressed high-def video between TVs and mobile devices. It appears unrelated to USB 3.0 and targets both laptops and personal media players -- however you might choose to define that. A spokesman for the organization said that developers "could layer HDMI's HDCP encryption on top." So it's not definite. But with the studios fighting hard to "protect" their content, well, it's a given that some form of DRM will be there. The new USB linkage is meant to complement HDMI which primarily carries uncompressed video between living room A/V equipment... and an increasing number of media-centric laptops. Thing is, DisplayPort, expected to make a big showing at CES in January, already comes with a slathering of HDCP and is the purported VESA standard for moving HDTV from your laptop to a digital television. To confuse matters more, Kleer Corp is also working on a mid-2008 wireless and wired technology for carrying SD video based on its existing wireless audio technology. Proof that the best part about having standards is that there are so many to choose from.

Now that monitors with DisplayPorts are starting to hit the market, you're going to need a compatible graphics card to get in on all that high-bandwidth action, and it looks like ATI is first of the mark with the RV635 XT board that Hot Hardware recently got a chance to test. Sadly, they're not giving up any hard numbers just yet, calling it more of a "show and tell," but we're definitely intrigued by the claims of daisy-chained display support and the ability to run four displays off one card.

Samsung's already claimed the title of first announced display to sport a DisplayPort connector, but it looks like Dell's about to enter the game with an upcoming 30-inch panel, the 3008WFP. The update to the much-loved 3007WFP will apparently feature the same 2560 x 1600 resolution, but input options are vastly improved: in addition to that DisplayPort, you're getting HDMI, VGA, component video, two DVI, S-Video, and composite. No word on any other improvements, but with that many inputs, we're pretty certain you can find something to plug into this thing and be happy. Now if only Dell would hurry up and ship that sweet-looking 30-inch DisplayPort concept we saw a while back, we'd be all set.

Egads, the industry's move to DisplayPort is hotting up with AMD announcing ATI Radeon graphics processors supporting DisplayPort 1.1 in the "early 2008 timeframe." Just in time to support Samsung's new 30-inch panel scheduled to see production in Q2 2008. In fact, AMD just completed successful interoperability testing of their presumably "next-generation graphics processor" toting a native DisplayPort 1.1 transmitter. Taking a deeper look then into those analyst notes issued last week, we can expect the new interface to appear in ATI's Shanghai-class, R700 FireGL graphics cards. Now all we need is an official announcement from some of the PC boys are we're good to go. Yeah, we're looking at you Dell.

[Via I4U News]

It's on HDMI fans, the first LCD panel sporting a VESA-approved DisplayPort 1.1 jack was just announced by Samsung -- a world's first. The 30-inch LCD pumps a 2,560 x 1,600 pixels with a 10-bit color depth at a smokin' data rate of 10.8Gbps over a single port. In other words, kiss your DVI (and VGA ultimately) spec goodbye as their days are numbered. In addition to the port, we're talking about a Sammy S-PVA panel with 180-degree viewing angle, 1,000:1 contrast, 6-ms response, and 300cd/m2 brightness. Surprisingly, it's not scheduled for production delivery until Q2 of 2008. Later than we expected especially if it's truly the first to ship. Nevertheless, January's CES is set to be a regular DisplayPort free-for-all with plenty of laptop support provided by Dell, HP, and Lenovo among others.

[Via Akihabara News]

Remember that super swanky Dell monitor concept we went ga ga over back at January's CES? Yeah, we still find it hard to believe it's a Dell design. Well, it'll apparently be up for sale later in the year. What's more, it features the new VESA approved DisplayPort 1.1 interface which allows Dell to keep the panel depth to a crazy thin 0.5-inches. Although DisplayPort is said to support a resolution 4x that of today's HDTV resolutions, the panel on this pup was only pumping an estimated 1920 x 1200 when we saw it. No specs or price but we expect good things given Dell's past performance in delivering top-notch displays on the cheap.

AMD just let loose a few details on their upcoming "Griffin" and "Puma" mobile platform technologies due out in 2008. The Griffin codename denotes 65nm processors bent on increasing performance and battery life of our beloved laptops and mobile devices. These third generation Turion 64 X2 dual-core 64-bit processors also bring support for DDR2-800 memory. Puma then, is the name given to the overall platform built initially around an RS780 chipset featuring a DX-10 class graphics core, Blu-ray and HD DVD acceleration support, and output options for DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort. According to AMD, the combination of Griffin with the RS780 chipset will provide "significantly better" performance-per-watt-per-dollar than their existing platform. Be sure to click through to Hot Hardware for the detailed techno-gore.

[Thanks, Dave A.]