OCZ Technology fans have had cause for concern lately. Earlier this month, the former memory maker turned solid state drive player sacked 28 percent of its staff and discontinued 150 product variations. The restructuring effort was put into place by OCZ's recently appointed chief, Ralph Schmitt, who was appointed to replace former CEO and founder Ryan Petersen. At the time, Schmitt admitted OCZ had "lost credibility," but going forward, he seems to have a plan to turn things around.

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) have fallen below $2, dropping more than 3 percent to $1.86 by the end of the trading day on Thursday. That's not only a 52-week low for the Sunnyvale chip designer, but it's the first time the company's stock has dipped below $2 since 2008. A recent report indicating AMD had hired J.P. Morgan Chase to "explore options," including an outright sale of the company, sparked the downward spiral, and though AMD has denied claims it's shopping itself around, investors are understandably skittish.

PC gaming is alive and well, as evidenced by strong Kepler GPU sales that helped steer Nvidia towards record revenue of $1.20 billion for the third quarter of its fiscal 2013 period ended October 28, 2012. That's a gain of 15.3 percent compared to the previous quarter, and a 12.9 percent improvement versus last year, Nvidia said, adding that its energy efficient Kepler GPU architecture continued to make excellent headway in the market place.

Much to the chagrin of Acer, Microsoft is making a run at hardware with its Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets, and those might be only the first of many more products to come. Microsoft's dancing a fine line with hardware in trying to set the bar for Windows 8 devices without completely ticking off its OEM partners, but it's also taken a big step towards an Apple-like business model. If Microsoft decides to go further, a major acquisition starts to make sense, and two names that have been thrown out there are Nokia and Nvidia.