AMD sent out a press release earlier today confirming that Rick Bergman has rejoined the company after eight years as president and CEO of Synaptics. He was, as the grizzled veterans of TechPowerUp may recall, with the AMD/ATI conglomeration for a decade before then. Rick, in AMD's own words, "brings extensive semiconductor experience, a deep technology understanding from a platform and product perspective, and extensive general management experience" and will take over as the external VP of Computing and Graphics from Sandeep Chennakeshu, who leaves AMD at the end of August after a short stint with the company for unnamed reasons.

AMD finally posted Catalyst 12.2 WHQL driver suite, the one package that installs drivers and system software for AMD/ATI Radeon GPUs, AMD APU graphics, AMD chipset-integrated graphics, etc. Catalyst 12.2 WHQL brings official support for Radeon HD 7700 series, and Radeon HD 7900 series (for Windows 7/Vista only, for Windows XP it will be added with Catalyst 12.4). Super-sampling AA (SSAA) is now available for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications, supported on the Radeon HD 7700 series and HD 7900 series. It must be enabled through Catalyst Control Center, and application profiles, and games should support in-game AA modes.

AMD also introduced enhancements for Eyefinity 2.1, including custom-resolutions, dynamic configuration changes (switching between different display configurations will occur automatically by loading the appropriate profile, when plugging/unplugging displays); Windows Taskbar re-positioning, and improvements with the Eyefinity Profile Manager. For more information, please refer to the Release Notes document.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 12.2 WHQL

AMD today released the final installment of its monthly Catalyst Software Suite updates for this year, Catalyst 11.12 WHQL. The software provides device drivers for AMD/ATI Radeon GPUs, AMD Chipset-integrated graphics, AMD Fusion APU-integrated graphics, AMD HDMI audio, and related software such as AMD Catalyst Control Center for discrete Radeon GPUs, and Vision Control Center for integrated ones; and HydraVision.

Key Features:

• AMD OpenGL 4.2 production support
  o AMD Catalyst 11.12 delivers official support for the OpenGL 4.2 specification
• AMD Eyefinity technology enhancements
  o Enables support for AMD HD3D technology when using a 3x1 Landscape Eyefinity display group, on supported DisplayPort 3D monitors.
• AMD Vision Engine Control Center enhancements for Dual Graphics
  o Improvements have been implemented to better facilitate the enabling and control of the Dual Graphics within the Vision Engine Control Center

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.12 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

For more information about resolved issues, refer to the Release Notes.

AMD today released its latest official version of Catalyst, a software suite that provides drivers for AMD/ATI Radeon graphics processors, A-Series APUs, 7-series and 8-series integrated graphics, and related system software. Catalyst 11.10 WHQL launched today has essentially the same change log as the 11.10 Preview 3 driver, except that it's WHQL-signed. Catalyst 11.10 WHQL is the driver to have when playing some of the latest titles such as Battlefield 3 and Rage.

Catalyst 11.10 WHQL brings in a few new features, too, such as support for 5x1 Eyefinity, with maximum resolution increased to 16000 x 16000 pixels on Radeon HD 6000 series GPUs, and in DirectX 11 applications, and improved Vision Engine Control Center / Catalyst Control Center applications (VECC is installed for A-Series APUs and Chipset IGPs, CCC is installed for discrete Radeon GPUs).

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.10 WHQL for Windows 7 and Vista 64-bit | Windows 7 and Vista 32-bit

AMD released a timely update to its Catalyst software suite, the package that provides display drivers for AMD/ATI Radeon GPUs, AMD chipset video, APUs, HDMI audio, and related software. The AMD Catalyst 11.3 WHQL release itself packs very little changes. At least the communication sent to us by AMD only mentioned one significant change: that the Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) OpenCL runtime is enabled by default within Catalyst.

Other than that, AMD advertised its next Catalyst release, which is now just a "Preview" driver (not WHQL-signed, use isn't covered under warranties). The Catalyst 11.4 Preview comes with a much larger changelog, which is listed below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.3 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

TechPowerUp today released version 0.5.2 of GPU-Z, our popular graphics hardware information and diagnostic utility that gives you information about the installed graphics hardware in your computer, and lets you monitor various parameters such as clock speeds, temperatures, fan speeds, and voltages, all in real-time. GPU-Z is also backed by our overclock validation system and video card BIOS database. Version 0.5.2 adds support for new GPUs, improved support for known GPUs, and a timely dose of stability improvements.

To begin with, GPU-Z 0.5.2 can now detect AMD Radeon HD 6990, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590, GTX 550 Ti, GTX 560 Ti; improved support for GTX 570, and Intel "Sandy Bridge" processor-embedded graphics. The CHL8228 VRM controller found on some Radeon HD 6900 series cards is supported. There's improved OpenCL support detection for AMD/ATI GPUs, and improved driver-based monitoring support for AMD/ATI GPUs in general. A number of stability/reliability fixes were introduced.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.5.2

The changelog for GPU-Z 0.5.2 follows:

Market research firm Jon Peddie Research gave out PC graphics shipments figures for Q4 2010. PC and related products sales overall were lower than usual in 2010 as the industry saw propagation of ULPCs, netbooks, and tablets propagate, hence PC graphics sales, too, were lower by as much as 7.8% down compared to the same period in 2009. Sales of GPUs and processor-embedded GPUs in Q4 stood at 113 million units, 432.2 million in all of 2010. Intel continues to be the dominant player, though its market share was lowered by competitors AMD and NVIDIA. Intel's market share was lowered in 2010, to 52.5%, from 55.2% in Q3 2010. AMD/ATI is at the second spot with a market share of 24.2% (up, from 23% in Q3); and NVIDIA at the third spot at 22.5% (21% in Q3). Other smaller GPU vendors, VIA and Matrox, stood at 0.8%, and 0.1%, respectively.

TechPowerUp Radeon BIOS Editor (RBE), has been updated to version 1.27. RBE is our popular AMD/ATI Radeon graphics cards BIOS manipulation utility. This version of RBE refines support for new kinds of voltage controllers, such as the ones found on Radeon HD 6800 series and Radeon HD 6900 series graphics cards; improved device ID table of Radeon HD 6900 series, an improved BIOS extraction component, and a better hex-editor UI, among other changes that enhance the application's functionality and stability.

DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp Radeon BIOS Editor v1.27A complete list of changes follows.

AMD today sneaked in the latest version of its ATI Catalyst driver suite that provides support to several AMD/ATI components such as ATI Radeon series GPUs, AMD desktop chipsets, AMD FireStream GPGPU, and ATI Theater multimedia products. As revealed by the release notes document, AMD introduced several performance and feature-set changes, along with timely bug-fixes. Highlights include:

• Crysis performance at very high quality preset increases by up to 8% on Radeon HD 4800 series
• Lost Planet Colonies - performance increases by 7-11% when 8x Anti-Aliasing is used on the HD 4800 series products
• Introduces support for the ATI Video converter under Windows 7 32-bit and Windows 7 64-bit
• A newly designed Desktops & Displays Manager
• Added support for new OpenGL extensions: EXT_provoking_vertex and EXT_vertex_array_bgra

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 9.7 Driver Suite for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit | Windows 7/Vista 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit | Windows XP 32-bit

SAPPHIRE Technology, the leading manufacturer and world-wide supplier of AMD/ATI based graphics products is aware of the increasing awareness of the impact of excess packaging on the environment, and has an ongoing programme to play its part in conservation. In another industry first for SAPPHIRE, the company is now introducing paper pulp trays as the inner packaging for graphics cards. SAPPHIRE already offers its customers the option of 'Lite Retail' packaging - in which cards are shipped in a smaller display box with a basic bundle of essential cables and driver disc. This smaller size and weight reduces shipping costs for the customer and material waste both in manufacture and for the end user.

Less than a year ago, Palit-owned Gainward, a premium graphics card manufacturer, signed a contract with AMD/ATI and began to manufacture graphic accelerators with AMD/ATI Radeon chips. However, it now seems that Gainward will end its relationship with AMD/ATI and return to being an NVIDIA-only board partner. This is further backed by the fact that Gainward has not released any Radeon HD 4890 or HD 4770 cards and apparently it has already notified some distributors about ending its AMD/ATI line-up.

ATI's CrossFire multi-GPU technology started off on the Intel platform with ATI's own brand of chipset before AMD acquired the company. AMD/ATI then allowed CrossFire and the succeeding CrossFireX standards to be supported by Intel chipsets. The only current chipset platform that doesn't support CrossFire is the NVIDIA nForce series, which as ASRock demonstrated during the ongoing CeBIT event, breaks the dogma.

ASRock devised a BIOS for its nForce 740i based N7AD-SLI motherboard that enables support for CrossFire. AMD's Catalyst drivers were able to detect the motherboard as a qualified platform and enable CrossFire between two installed ATI Radeon accelerators. The setup was able to show performance increments during a 3DMark06 session. ASRock is reportedly working out similar BIOS firmware for several other motherboards made by it, and wants to enable CrossFire, CrossFireX for all its nForce motherboards.

January 8 saw NVIDIA reclaim the performance crown from arch-rival AMD/ATI with the introduction of its dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295 graphics accelerator. The company used two of its 55nm G200 graphics cores is building this accelerator. Maintaining a dual-slot construction with its reference design, the card provides a fair bit of overclocking on its stock cooler. EVGA and Zotac, two of NVIDIA's largest add-in card partners, are reportedly planning water-cooled versions of this accelerator.

It is not clear at this point if the accelerators come in the form of merely cards with factory-fitted water-blocks, or if they come equipped with dedicated water-cooling loops. The two manufacturers will take advantage of the superior cooling system to provide high, non-reference clock-speeds to the cards' GPUs and memory. The new SKUs are likely to surface at the upcoming CeBIT event held in Hannover, Germany.

ATI programmers have released a hotfix that corrects the black screen and boot OS failure when Catalyst 8.12 is installed on Windows Vista, and two or more ATI Radeon HD 4850 video cards are working in CrossFire X mode. This issue only occurs when two or more ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphic cards are installed in the system with ATI CrossFireX technology. One single ATI Radeon HD 4850 card will not encounter this issue. To download the hotfix for both Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit, please click here.

UK based HEXUS.net has learned that XFX, one of NVIDIA's main AIB partners, is about to start producing AMD/ATI based video cards in the very near future. HEXUS has learned that a formal announcement, detailing the exact relationship between XFX and AMD/ATI, is expected next Tuesday. The AMD/ATI deal won't reflect on XFX's NVIDIA series cards, the company will continue to sell them as it is doing now. Expect more information, when available.

Industry watcher DigiTimes has some good news today. Apparently, disturbed by the rising presence of ATI in the discrete graphics card market, NVIDIA is planning a counter attack with the easiest way possible - cut the prices of its products. If the information is right, NVIDIA is going to slash the prices across its entire high-end GeForce GTX 200 line-up, as well as the mainstream GeForce 9800 GT and GeForce 9600 GT series. Unfortunately, the other piece of information as of when and by how much the prices will go down is unknown.

With AMD making gains in the discrete graphics card market - rising to around 40% in third-quarter 2008 according to a recent report from Jon Peddie Research (JPR) - Nvidia is planning to cut its graphics card prices in an attempt to curb further loss of market share, according to sources at graphics card makers.
AMD anticipates taking 50% of the market after reducing prices for its ATI Radeon HD 4000 series products, but to counter Nvidia has also made moves to cut prices for its GeForce GTX 200, 9800 GT and 9600 GT series.

World economy may be at risk, but industry experts report that the graphics chip market is literally on fire. According to Jon Peddie Research (JPR), AMD's newly released credible video cards in both its desktop and laptop segments, led to the biggest increase in third-quarter shipments in six years. In the third quarter of 2008, more than 111 million GPUs were shipped, the market researcher said. During the same quarter last year, 91 million GPUs shipped, and 94 million units shipped in the previous quarter. That's an annual increase of 22.5 percent and a quarter-to-quarter increase of almost 18 percent, according to JPR. In the overall market AMD saw a good year-to-year growth of 22.8%, while NVIDIA lost 6.4% year-to-year. For desktop GPUs, AMD/ATI is also on the bright side claiming to 20.3%, while NVIDIA slipped to 32.6%, the other 43.9% of the portion are for Intel. On the laptop front, Intel GPU shipments dropped one point to 56.2 percent, while NVIDIA GPU shipments declined to 21.8 percent, and AMD jumped to 20.9 percent, JPR reported. It was about time and AMD desperately needed this good results, congratulations. ATI's graphics cards are temperately rising their share in the fight with rival NVIDIA.

By some coincidence, right after NVIDIA's 178.24 WHQL driver release, ATI also published new Catalyst version 8.10. There're two major features that come with the new Catalyst 8.10 and they are:

• Catalyst Control Center Fan speed control - this release of the ATI software driver introduces the ability for users to control the speed of the GPU fan when running in accelerated graphics.
• Force Component Video Detection - this feature allows users the option in Catalyst Control Center to force Component Video detection in the Display Options aspect. By selecting this option user are able to adjust the Component Video property settings (without a device being physically attached) allowing user to change format and frequency to a desired value. The selected values will be applied to the display once a component video display device get connected. The feature is applicable for all AMD products supporting Component Video.

There are no indications of any performance improvements with Catalyst 8.10.


DOWNLOAD: Catalyst 8.10

Following the legal class action case filled in December of 2006 in California (if I remember right) which alleged that "Nvidia and ATI conspired to fix, raise, maintain and stabilize prices of graphics processing chips and cards.", NVIDIA yesterday offered a settlement agreement detailed in an 8-K form that was filed on September 24th. The Agreement calls for NVIDIA to pay $850,000 into a $1.7 million fund, AMD/ATI must pay the remaining $850,000. The class includes anyone who bought a graphics card directly from either ATI or NVIDIA's websites in the US between 4th December 2002 and 7th November 2007. Purchases of both ATI and NVIDIA cards from other retailers or online vendors does not count. NVIDIA will also pay $112,500 to the plaintiffs who brought the case to court, in exchange for a dismissal of all claims and appeals they made. Read the full 8-K form here. There's still no official response from AMD/ATI.

AMD/ATI's graphics partner Sapphire has released today Radeon HD 4870 TOXIC, an overclocked Radeon HD 4870 card with a custom cooling on it. What makes this card so special is the patented Vapor-X cooling system and its clock speeds higher than the reference boards. The cooling itself takes up two slots, makes use of a Vapour Chamber technology and features a thermally-controlled fan supported by three copper heatpipes. The new TOXIC model is also factory-overclocked to 780MHz GPU from 750MHz stock speed and 4000MHz memory from 3600MHz stock respectively. The card is equipped with 512MB GDDR5 memory. It offers 800 Stream Processors, has DirectX 10.1 and CrossFireX support, a PCI-Express 2.0 interface and two DVI connectors. Except that and maybe the fancy retail box it ships with, there's nothing else about this card that could interest you more. Pricing and availability are still unknown.

NVIDIA suffered its first red-quarter in five years. There are several contributors to this, namely an up to US $200M write-off to cover expenses in recalling and restoring faulty mobile graphics processors.

Another factor has been a replenished product lineup from competitor AMD/ATI that is taking on NVIDIA products at mid thru high and enthusiast segments of the market, in essence ATI now has products to counter NVIDIA at every possible segment, with more dressing up to go to office.

Seeking Alpha spoke with CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, he was quoted saying:

We underestimated the price performance of our competitor's most recent GPU, which led us to mis-position our fall lineup. The first step of our response was to reset our price to reflect competitive realities. Our action put us again in a strong competitive position but we took hard hits with respect to our overall GPU ASPs and ultimately to our gross margins. The price action was particularly difficult since we are just ramping 55-nanometer and the weak market resulted in taking longer than expected to work through our 65-nanometer inventory.

Huang says that with their transit to the 55nm silicon fabrication process, they hope to do better.

The mighty dual GPU ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 monster was spotted today during the QuakeCon 2008 Tournament finals in Dallas. This post comes to bring to your attention that AMD/ATI has finalized the work on the card, and it will hopefully be released sometime next week after the NDA content is over. Enjoy the two pics until then.

Following the introduction of the highly acclaimed HD 4800 series, SAPPHIRE Technology, the leading manufacturer and worldwide supplier of AMD/ATI based graphics solutions is now shipping two new models of HD 4850 providing a further choice of price:performance points for the enthusiast.

The new SAPPHIRE HD 4850 1GB is a new version of the HD 4850 designed by SAPPHIRE for the user who demands more memory for specific applications like rendering. It offers similar overall performance to the standard model, with clock speeds of 625MHz (core) and 993MHz (memory).

With the launch of AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2 flagship knocking at the front door, a couple of hardware sites have managed to get their hands on early engineering samples of the card and post preliminary results, dropping a hint at what's coming next month. From what I saw today, AnandTech and [H]ard|OCP are the first two web sites to drop unofficial benchmark results. PC Perspective and The Tech Report are also among these sites. To make their previews even more interesting they have added performance results from GeForce GTX 280 in SLI and other popular cards that can work in pairs.

Please let us know what you think about ATI's fastest single card.

We are barely into experiencing DirectX 10 / 10.1 games with proper levels of detail with upcoming titles demanding hardware, and Microsoft already has plans for DirectX 11, the next big version of this API set. Microsoft will show off DirectX 11 at the XNA Gamefest which is scheduled to take place on July 22 and 23 in Seattle, United States. This year's Gamefest is to be centered by DirectX 11 and the advancements that are proposed to be brought about.

Thankfully Microsoft isn't doing a 'Vista' this time around, this new multimedia and gaming API will be built for both Windows Vista and the upcoming Windows 7 operating systems. The API could be released to public anytime in late 2009.

There are several implications of this: