AMD's next-generation accelerated processing unit (APU), codenamed "Trinity", was demonstrated at CES. Trinity will make up AMD's 2012 A-Series APU lineup, and will be designed for mainstream-thru-performance notebooks, and mainstream desktops (different standards for different form-factors). Pictured below is what its notebook-specific BGA package looks like. The package has an exposed rectangular die, with a stabilizer frame around it (like with GPUs). Notebooks' cooling assembly heat pipes make direct contact with the die. Trinity packs two Piledriver modules (an evolution of Bulldozer), and DirectX 11.1 AMD Radeon HD 7000M graphics (notebook APU) or HD 7000D (desktop APU).

Shown to the CES crowd was a mind-boggling demo. The public were first shown what appeared to be an ATX desktop connected to two monitors, one monitor running a DIRT 3 DirectX 11 game demo at high-quality settings, and another screeen revealing the APU to be running GPU-accelerated video transcoding. No discrete graphics was used, it's just the embedded HD 7000 at play/work. If that alone didn't raise a few eyebrows, the AMD representative removed the lid of the ATX desktop case to which those two monitors were connected, to reveal a 14-inch laptop inside doing all the work. And there's more - the laptop's main screen wasn't idle, it was running a high-definition video playback. Whatever synthetic benchmarks end up telling about Trinity, its real world performance does impress!You have got to watch the video after the break!

Gigabyte hopped into the Radeon HD 7970 launch bandwagon with a base-model graphics card, the GV-R797D5-3GD-B. The custom-design GV-R797OC-3GD isn't launched so far, doesn't feature on the company website, and will probably join its ranks a little later, since it appeared to be using a custom-design PCB, something no card launched so far has. The GV-R797D5-3GD-B sticks to AMD-reference PCB and cooler designs, with red-colored PCB.

We have seen cases where cards with red PCB in their press-shots ended up having black PCBs in the store inventories (and vice-versa), so it looks like the only way you can be sure about the PCB color by looking at what color PCB the online store of your choice is using in its item page when you're placing your order (and return the card if it doesn't match). PCB color has gained importance with enthusiasts that like to peak into the belly of their beasts through case windows. Gigabyte's GV-R797D5-3GD-B also sticks to AMD reference clock speeds of 925 MHz core, and 1375 MHz (5.50 GHz effective) memory. The HD 7970 is DirectX 11.1 compliant, packs 2,048 stream processors, and is wired to 3 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 384-bit wide memory interface. Expect standard pricing of around $550.

MAINGEAR, an award-winning PC system builder of custom desktops, notebooks, and workstations, gives PC enthusiasts a reason to grin by offering the new AMD Radeon HD 7950 and AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics solutions on their award-winning desktop systems.

Although AMD's Radeon add-in board partners (AIBs) are still "under oath" (read: NDA) not to disclose their products before the 9th of January, Club3D's Radeon HD 7970 press-shots still made it to the web. Pictured below are the Club3D Radeon HD 7970 graphics card and its box-art. The box art is typical Club3D, nothing exceptionally new there. The card, too, sticks to AMD's reference board design, till the point where it uses a red-colored PCB instead of a black one (found on AMD's HD 7970 press samples).

Based on the 28 nm "Tahiti" silicon, Radeon HD 7970 is the first DirectX 11.1 compliant graphics card, it packs 2048 GCN cores, and 3 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 384-bit wide memory interface. The core is clocked at 925 MHz, and the memory at 1375 MHz (5.50 GHz). It is expected that this card will stick to the price AMD disclosed, around US $550.

2012-13 promises to be a period of big graphics product launches, centric to a new DirectX version, DirectX 11.1, which will ship with Microsoft's next major Windows version (currently referred to as Windows 8). Information compiled by ExpertsPC.com and 4Gamer.net tables what NVIDIA's next-generation graphics family could look like, and around what time it could be released to market. With its next-generation GeForce Kepler family of GPUs, NVIDIA will follow a sensible bottom-up product release model, to ensure that it isn't met with any technical hurdles with TSMC's new 28 nm manufacturing process, and so it could launch GPUs with increasingly higher transistor counts, till its top-of-the-line GPU is outed.

The first GPU in NVIDIA's pipeline is the GeForce Kepler 107 (GK107), on which will be based entry thru lower-mainstream SKUs. The data doesn't reveal things like core counts, but points out that GK107 will have a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, will use the current-generation PCI-Express 2.0 bus, will be built on the 28 nm process, and will support DirectX 11.1. This will be followed by the GK106, on which "sweet-spot" SKUs could be based. This will be NVIDIA's first PCI-Express 3.0 compliant GPU, it will have a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface.