ATI has just released this year's final version of its Catalyst driver package. As you might already know from our previous BETA release post, with the release of ATI Catalyst 8.12 users can now unlock the potential of accelerated applications enabling ATI Stream technology for various ATI Radeon graphics processors. This release also adds Stream technology to ATI's AVIVO Video Converter and many performance improvements.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 8.12

Earlier today, AMD announced the release of its much anticipated enterprise quad-core processor, the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron, codenamed "Shanghai". A regular feature with AMD press releases, is that the PR team details about the products' availability. In this particular release, AMD went a step further and revealed the brand name the company's desktop 45nm processors would carry: Phenom II, when getting into details about the AMD Dragon enthusiast platform. Dragon succeeds Spider, and consists of a Phenom II processor, running on AMD 7-series core logic, along with ATI Radeon HD 4000 series graphics accelerators.

The Phenom II processors will consist of a whole range of quad-core, triple-core and dual-core processors, with the products segregated on the basis of their core count, clock-speed and cache arrangement. Several models are lined-up for launch. The platform itself, as AMD asserts, would release in Q1, 2009. There are signs of the company launching some models of the Phenom II X4 sooner, for which motherboard vendors have already started releasing lists of their existing motherboards that are ready for the processors.

AMD today announced the introduction of the ATI Radeon HD 4550 and ATI Radeon HD 4350 graphics cards, the latest additions to the award-winning ATI Radeon HD 4000 series graphics line up. These feature-rich graphics cards deliver exceptional gaming and HD multimedia performance at value prices. Both cards are based on the same technology found in the celebrated ATI Radeon HD 4800 series, including support for the latest DirectX 10.1 games and superior HD multimedia capabilities. Delivering mainstream-class performance at a value price, the ATI Radeon HD 4550 graphics card plays demanding game titles previously unplayable by cards in this price segment, and for less than USD $59 for a 512MB memory configuration. An even more incredible value, the ATI Radeon HD 4350 graphics card is the ideal introduction to the ATI Radeon HD 4000 series, priced for less than USD $39 for a 256 MB memory configuration, giving gamers and multimedia enthusiasts more features than products available from the competition today.

The functionality of CUDA and its implementation of GPU-accelerated PhysX processing has benefited many a GeForce user. Users of ATI accelerators lacking this incentive either use Ageia PhysX card or avoid it altogether. It has been verified by Hardspell that in an environment where Radeon accelerator(s) do graphics processing, a GeForce accelerator can be used standalone to process PhysX. Hardspell used a Radeon HD 3850 along with a GeForce 9600 GT on the same system with the display connected to the Radeon, though no form of multi-GPU graphics connection existed, the GeForce card partnered the Radeon well in processing physics, while the Radeon did graphics. Results of the oZone 3D FluidMark, a benchmark that includes routines to evaluate the machine's capability in processing physics, showed a greater than 350% increase in scores, showing that the GeForce accelerator is doing its job.

Force3D are excited to introduce the Force3D Radeon HD4870 with the high performance Freezer DHT cooler that is equipped with DHT (Direct Heatpipe Touch) technology. The heatpipes touch the GPU directly and transfers the heat hence cooling performance is maximized. The fan is silent and its durability is excellent by hydromantic bearing method.

The guys over at Hexus.net have got hold of a photo showing a passively cooled PowerColor Radeon HD 4850.

The card...utilizes 54 aluminium fins, an all-copper base and four heatpipes to help keep it cool. The high-rise design, however, rules out users with low-profile HTPC chassis.

Considering the temperatures the actively cooled HD 4850 reaches, I cannot imagine a passive cooler is wise. However, this cooler is considerably larger than the reference cooler and it will be interesting to see how it performs, if and when it is released.

Pictures of an engineering sample of the RV730 based reference design card that will be branded as the Radeon HD 4760 have come to surface, the pictures show this low-mid range offering from ATI, the sample features 512 MB of GDDR3 memory at 900 MHz that shares a 128-bit wide memory bus to churn out a bandwidth of 28.8 GB/s. The card is Crossfire X capable.

Following the NGOHQ episode with devising software that lets users accelerate GPU-based NVIDIA PhysX API on Radeon accelerators, and with NVIDIA coming in support of such an effort, a general opinion was made that NVIDIA sought an industry-wide domination of CUDA as the de-facto general purporse graphics processing (GPGPU) architecture, with putting their investment of acquiring Ageia Technologies to good use by pushing the PhysX API. Although it comes as a good news for AMD that their graphics cards that are already optimized for Havoc physics could now support PhysX acceleration, it's not in the best interests of the company that they allow the growth of CUDA and components based on it to this extent, since AMD has its own FireStream line of products and a GPGPU architecture in the making.

TG Daily spoke with Richard Huddy, Manager of Worldwide Developer Relations, and Godfrey Cheng, Director of Product Marketing, two key individuals with AMD. When it comes to the most interesting question of PhysX implementation on Radeon, Mr. Cheng says that AMD has no problems encouraging the use of feature-enhancing 'middleware', and that they have no arguments in NVIDIA going ahead with propogating their PhysX middleware as long as they don't put Radeon accelerators into a unfair disadvantage.

With the advent of the Radeon HD 4000 series, AMD is regaining lost ground in the consumer PC graphics industry. They have been 'third time lucky' in their DirectX 10(.1) conquest after HD 2000 and HD 3000 series didn't quite make a mark against the might of NVIDIA. Apparently AMD is through with preparing the RV710 and RV730 graphics processors (GPUs) which will drive video-cards with several different configurations of memory and GPU parameters. AMD looks to compete in the sub-US $150 market with these cards for which it will phase-out the HD 3000 series cards within this quarter (Q3 2008). The products will reach End-Of-Life (EOL).

The ATI Radeon HD 4850 has been a success so far and Sapphire decides to expand their product range with Sapphire Radeon HD4850 1GB. Chinese website ITOCP released fresh pictures of this new card. It looks promising. This follows the release of pictures of the Toxic Radeon HD4850 we covered here.

The pictures show the card in the usual blue Sapphire PCB, and a heatsink covering in a similar fashion to that of some NVIDIA cards.

Fudzilla released the first pictures of an upcoming ATI Radeon HD4850 model from Sapphire, the Toxic Radeon HD4850. This card looks very familiar. It reminds us of the successful Radeon X1950 Pro custom-design by Sapphire using the familiar Zalman VF900-Cu cooler. It uses small aluminum heatsinks over the memory chips, a copper heatsink is used to cool the card's VRM. Expect this card to come with overclocked parameters.

A picture of the ATI RV730-based Radeon HD 4650 floated at ChipHell. This picture was edited to protect source. A colour picture of the cooler was already revealed earlier. The Radeon HD 4650 will succeed the HD 3600 series and will come in a variety of memory configurations, we covered here. It will support up to 1 GB of GDDR3 memory on a 256-bit wide memory bus.

Although it's known that the HD 4870 X2 (R700) is slated for a July thru August launch, reports from GPU Café suggest that AMD could subject the R700 to an early launch, and that's as early as four days from now, July 14. That's more than two weeks ahead of its launch schedule. It's not clear as to what's the nature of the launch, presumably a 'paper-launch', since there already is concrete information from industry observers in Taiwan as to the time-line of the R700 launch we covered here. Some high-profile overclockers are already to have their sample of the R700. Unreliable sources already point at the possibility of a HD 4850 X2 which comes with 2 GB of GDDR3 memory.

Update by W1zzard: Sorry guys but my sources tell me "middle of August" launch.

Presenting the fastest IGP to date. The upcoming AMD 790GX chipset, unlike preliminary reports suggesting it was going to be an extreme performance competitor to the GeForce 8200 IGP incorporated NForce 780a, is a high-end chipset armed to compete with the likes of NForce 750a, Intel G35. It supports ATI Crossfire multi-GPU technology.

In two new company slides published by the Chilean website CHW.net, early performance evaluations of the 790GX IGP were conducted, where the AMD chip beat the GeForce 8200 IGP by a very significant margin. It outperformed the Intel G35 by nearly 300 per cent margins in some tests. Apart from this ferocious little IGP, the 790GX supports ATI Crossfire with the energy-saving Hybrid-Crossfire feature. When not gaming, the display is handled by the IGP, depending on the load, the graphics card(s) are powered and speeds are adjusted. So when playing a game that the graphics card(s) can churn out 300 fps from, the GPU parameters can be lowered so you still get say, 100 fps while the GPU power is reduced significantly.

Amidst this whole 'nGOHQ' saga, and us getting astonished at the way things turned out, here's what we missed:

NVIDIA is in talks with AMD over a possible technology-transfer agreement over PhysX, say industry sources in Hong Kong. In a not-so-recent article by HKEPC, it is said:

Intel Nehalem Posts Impressive CPU Scores with 3D Benchmarks

The rather lucky Taiwanese team of Tom's Hardware got their hands on an Intel Bloomfield engineering sample that has a clock-speed of 2.93 GHz, running on a Intel X58 chipset based motherboard made by Foxconn called Renaissance to evaluate a Gainward Radeon HD4850 sample. System details are provided below.

DigiTimes reports that with AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4800-series graphics cards successfully cutting into the US$200-300 mainstream market forcing Nvidia to cut the price of its previous generation GeForce 9800 GTX down to US$199, sources at graphics card makers see AMD's discrete graphics card market share as having a chance to increase to 40% in the third quarter this year from around 30% at the beginning of 2008.

Since Nvidia's GeForce 9800 GTX does not provide advantages in power consumption or performance over the same priced Radeon HD 4850, graphics card makers are more optimistic over AMD's upcoming performance.

I'm sure all of you guys know all the goodies that will be coming with the launch of the next series of high-end cards from AMD. In case you need a recap of the awesomeness headed our way, please check out the source link. Anyways, enough propoganda. For those of you who are interested in buying the latest high-end offerings from AMD, the current rumor says that we should see new cards in August 2008 for a price far below the current rumored prices of the high-end NVIDIA cards. NVIDIA cards have traditionally been more expensive, and the GTX280 is supposedly going to cost nerds somewhere in the ballpark of $500USD. There is no confirmed pricepoint for the new cards from AMD. However, we can be fairly confident that it will be quite a bit less than $500USD. Another interesting rumor to note is that there will be a much larger difference between the HD4870 and the HD4850, as opposed to the comparatively small difference between the HD3870 and the HD3850.

With the launch of the GeForce 9 series getting closer and closer, AMD is hard pressed to find something to keep themselves competitive. While the RV670 and R680 are regaining some much needed market share, they will both pale when the GeForce 9 series is released to the public. Thankfully, AMD is not going down without a fight. About the same time as the GeForce 9 series is released, AMD is releasing a little something called the RV770. At this point, it appears that the RV770 is about 50% faster than the current HD3870, which is certainly respectable. How this compares to the GeForce 9 series is still a mystery. The release of CrossFire X technology ought to really help benchmark numbers, assuming AMD can make buying four AMD GPUs cost about as much as two from NVIDIA.

Towards the end of 2007, GECUBE launched the HD3850 and HD3870 to popular market acclaim. For spring 2008, GECUBE is releasing the HD3600 and HD3400 graphics cards to offer gamers a whole new level of performance and set the market alight once more. Designed for the value and general gaming market, the HD3600 and HD3400 series are equipped with the latest AMD 55nm chip technology and support the PCI-Express 2.0 interface for optimal graphics performance. HD3600 and HD3400 also support the enhanced DirextX10.1/SM4.1 standard to deliver more realistic, high-resolution video.

GECUBE's HD3600 series uses the ATI Radeon RV635 chip built on the 55nm process running and supports the latest PCI-Express 2.0 interface. In addition to versions equipped with 512MB or 1.0GB of high-speed DDR2 memory, GECUBE is also offering a special edition equipped with 256MB or 512MB of high-speed GDDR3 memory and ATI's next-generation CrossFireX technology that allows for up to four graphics card to run in parallel. For gamers, this offers a complete solution to their performance needs and expands their upgrade options.

Thanks to Asian website ITOCP, we can get an idea of how fast the first ATI Radeon 3 series dual GPU graphics card will be. Benching on Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 processor at 2.4GHz and 2GB of RAM, the system managed to score 9573 marks (SM2.0: 4494, SM3.0/HDR: 4476) on Futuremark 3D Mark 2006 set to 2560x1600 resolution. The GPU Core/Memory of this card is rated at 770MHz / 2250MHz (2x512MB). Lower resolution benchmark numbers are not mentioned in the original article.

The beta version of the 8.1 Catalyst driver for Windows Vista has found its way onto the internet, although very few details are available so you'll have to try it yourself to find the improvements. The driver works on both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the OS and should be compatible with all Radeon 9550 and newer cards. The driver can be downloaded here.

After taking the market by storm with the launch of the HD2900XT in mid-May, GECUBE launched today this year's heavyweight graphics card - the HD3800 Series. The product that reviewers and gamers have all been waiting for is now finally here. Equipped with the latest RV670 (55nm) graphics chip from AMD, the HD3800 series marks the first time that the PCI-Express 2.0 interface has been used on a graphics card and incorporates the latest ATI CrossFireX technology. With support for DirectX 10.1, it delivers next-generation 3D graphics performance for ultimate realism. You can now enjoy both high resolution and superior image processing technology at the same time!

Graphics card manufacturer Diamond has quite conveniently leaked the specs for AMD/ATI's upcoming HD 3800 series of cards, giving the technical details of both the HD 3850 and the HD 3870. These do conflict a little with the earlier leaked specs, although they're still quite similar. According to the Diamond site, the HD 3850 will feature a core speed of 668MHz and 256MB of 256-bit GDDR3 memory at 828MHz (1656MHz DDR) and the HD 3870 will have a core speed of 775MHz and 512MB GDDR4 memory at 1.2GHz (2.4GHz DDR). Both will be manufactured using a 55nm process, and both will support DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1. Interestingly the cards are also said to feature up to four GPU support using an AMD 790FX based motherboard. The full specs are shown in the screenshots below, as Diamond has now removed the cards from its website.

When gamers heard that the original R600 had a TDP of over 200W, gamers who wanted to play at respectable resolutions and settings went out and bought new power supplies capable of handling such a load, and dealt with the noise that comes with dissipating such a high TDP. Fortunately, these problems are not going to be associated with the RV670, AMD's next high-end graphics card. The RV670XT has a TDP of 132W, and the RV670Pro boasts a modest 104W TDP. Hopefully, these lower heat yields will allow for a quieter cooling solution for these cards. AMD attributes these lower TDPs to a 55nm manufacturing process.