Following North American retail availability of the AMD Memory branded desktop system memory modules, AMD (NYSE: AMD) is pleased to announce European retail availability debuting with technology partner Patriot Memory LLC. Key launch partners of AMD Memory in Europe include: Alternate (Germany), ASBIS (East Europe), Avnet Technology Solutions Ltd (EMEA), Pixmania (EMEA) and VIP Computers (UK & Benelux). AMD Memory branded products provide an easy and straightforward experience when looking for the ideal match for gaming or multimedia PC needs.

AMD Memory is available at three different levels - 2GB, 4GB and 8GB sizes - in a range of price points and speeds. The Entertainment category will feature 1333 MHz and 1600 MHz speed RAM, designed for quiet Home Theater PC applications. The Performance version supports speed up to 1600 MHz with enhanced latency and comes in matched pairs. Finally, Radeon Edition DRAM will run at 1866 MHz, and is tuned, tested and certified for specific AMD platforms to enable maximum performance utilizing the AMD OverDrive tuning utility.

In its latest round of pre-launch testing of the Radeon HD 7950, DonanimHaber overclocked the GPU to match the clock speeds of the HD 7970, that's 925 MHz core, 1375 MHz (5.50 GHz effective) memory, from its reference clock speed of 800 MHz core, 1250 MHz (5.00 GHz effective), and pitted it against a Radeon HD 7970 reference and GeForce GTX 580 reference. Tests included 3DMark 11 Extreme Preset, and 3DMark Vantage Performance. At the outset these figures establish the HD 7950 to be faster than GTX 580 in the two tests. When overclocked to match the clock speeds of the HD 7970, the HD 7950 on average is 4% slower than it. In related news, DonanimHaber reports that AMD could also be working on affordable variants of the HD 7950 that come with 1536 MB of memory, on the same 384-bit GDDR5 memory interface. That would probably depend on how NVIDIA's lineup stacks up against it.

According to dell-lab.posterous.com (a site known for accurate tips on future Dell products), a trio of updated Alienware laptops are currently in plan, the M14x R2 (14-inch), M17x R4 (17.3-inch) and M18x R2 (18.4-inch).

There's not much info on the M18x R2 except for the fact that it will be available in both red and black, while the M14x R2 is said to come with the same colors and have 1 GB and 2 GB graphics options.

The M17x R4 is claimed to feature at least three new GPU choices, including the yet-unannounced AMD Radeon HD 7970M, Nvidia GeForce GTX 660M and GTX 675M. All three laptops should also adopt Intel's upcoming 22 nm processors (Ivy Bridge). No word on when they'll be released.

AMD (NYSE:AMD) today announced revenue for the fourth quarter of 2011 of $1.69 billion, net loss of $177 million, or $0.24 per share, and operating income of $71 million. The company reported non-GAAP net income of $138 million, or $0.19 per share, and non-GAAP operating income of $172 million. Fourth quarter non-GAAP net income excludes an impairment of AMD's investment in GLOBALFOUNDRIES of $209 million, restructuring charges of $98 million, the loss from discontinued operations of $4 million, the amortization of acquired intangible assets of $3 million and a loss on debt repurchase of $1 million.

For the year ended December 31, 2011, AMD reported revenue of $6.57 billion, net income of $491 million, or $0.66 per share, and operating income of $368 million. Full year non-GAAP net income was $374 million, or $0.50 per share, and non-GAAP operating income was $524 million.

Remember PowerVR GPUs which last saw light when GeForce 3 and Radeon 8500 were around? The company behind it, Imagination Technologies, is working on a discrete PCI-Express GPGPU card for workstations targeting the media industry, which provides real-time ray-tracing acceleration. After its exile from PC graphics, Imagination Technologies worked on and achieved prevalence in embedded GPUs, GPUs embedded into ARM System-on-chips (SoCs), found in smartphones and tablets. This kept its GPU IP and R&D more than afloat.

In 2011, the company acquired Caustic Graphics, a smaller and much newer startup, which was working on dedicated ray-tracing accelerators, and had come up with a working FCPGA chip. Together the company is in the final stages of preparing a product that will bring Imagination Technologies back to the PC, only this time as a GPGPU (such as NVIDIA Tesla and AMD FireStream), and not a display-GPU. The product will be backed by OpenRL Brazil 3.0 SDK. This product will launch some time in 2012.

While its processor-integrated graphics solutions may not be a match for those from NVIDIA and AMD in terms of client applications such as gaming, Intel thinks it has a shot at the entry-level workstation graphics segment, dominated by the likes of NVIDIA Quadro FX 580 and AMD FirePro V3800 series. Workstation GPUs differ from consumer ones as they are accompanied by more API features, are certified by professional 3D modelling software, and are designed to minimize rendering errors since these renders go on to take shape as millions of dollars worth skyscrapers, for example.

Intel thinks that after the performance success of SNA, it has achieved an acceptable level of performance with its integrated graphics design to take it professional. It is doing so by creating workstation-variants of the "Sandy Bridge" and future "Ivy Bridge" silicons in the Xeon E3-1200 series, and giving their integrated graphics increased functionality. The result is a variant of Intel's HD graphics 3000 series, called Intel HD Graphics P3000 series (P denoting professional). Intel is applying for certification by 3D modeling software developers (it's important, because engineers look for these certifications before picking their hardware). The status of its certification with various vendors is detailed in the first slide below.

Two different sources have put the Radeon HD 7950 through 3DMark 11 benchmark. The first is DonanimHaber, which put an HD 7950 clocked at 880 MHz core with 1250 MHz (5.00 GHz effective) through Extreme preset against HD 7970 (stock) and GTX 580 (stock), where it outperformed the latter. The second is MyDrivers, which put HD 7950 stock (800/1250 MHz) and overclocked (1030/1250 MHz) through Performance preset, against HD 7970 stock, HD 6970 stock, GTX 570 (screenshots below are in the order HD 7950 stock, HD 7950 @ 1030 core 1250 mem MHz, HD 7970 stock, HD 6970 stock, and GTX 570 stock).3DMark 11 screenshots by MyDrivers follow.

Famed printer company Epson has now released in its home market (Japan) a nettop/mini PC based on AMD's Brazos platform. Known as the Endeavor NP30S, Epson's compact (20 x 154 x 173 mm) and light (760 g) system features a C-60 APU (two Bobcat cores @ 1.0 GHz, Radeon HD 6290 graphics), 2 GB of RAM, a 250 GB hard drive, Gigabit Ethernet, six USB 2.0 ports, and a DVI output.

The Endeavor NP30S costs 29,820 yen (~ $386) and can be found here.

Catering to the HTPC crowd, JEHE has developed and now launched (for starters in Japan), a Giada-branded Mini-ITX motherboard powered by AMD's A75 (aka Hudson D3) chipset, the MI-A75. This board supports FM1 processors (with a TDP of up to 65W) and features two DDR3-1600 memory slots (for up to 16 GB of RAM), four SATA 6.0 Gbps ports, one PCIe x16 slot (that's x8 electrical), one Mini PCIe port, and an mSATA connector.

The MI-A75 also has two USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1 channel audio, plus DVI and HDMI outputs, and is available for pre-order @ 10,300 yen (~ $133.7).

At the AMD & HardOCP Game Experience event held in Texas, gamers were asked to participate in a blind test. The test involved gaming on two sets of gaming PCs with two PCs each, in each set is an AMD-powered PC, and an Intel-powered one. Participants weren't disclosed which PC was driven by what, as they were assembled in identical-looking cases (no window), with identical monitors and other peripherals. The first set is of budget single-monitor HD gaming, while the second set is high-end three-monitor gaming.

After gaming on both rigs in each set, respondents were asked to tick on a sheet of paper, which rig gave them a better gaming experience, or if gaming both had no observable difference. AMD went into this exercise expecting that most respondents will select "no difference" as their option, and so that would bring good PR to AMD, but to their surprise, most respondents selected the rigs that was powered by AMD processors.

Here is the first GPU-Z screenshot of a Radeon HD 7950 graphics card. Although put into a screenshot with ASUS GPU Tweak tool and Republic of Gamers-themed GPU-Z, the card doesn't appear to be an ASUS-made one, and is more likely HIS or PowerColor. The device ID checks out with the one HD 7950 has been associated with. Most other features match expectations. The HD 7950 is carved out of the 28 nm "Tahiti" GPU, with 28 GCN compute units (CUs) active, totaling 1,792 stream processors and 112 TMUs. The ROP count is untouched at 32, so is the memory, that's 3 GB GDDR5 across a 384-bit wide memory interface. With a memory clock of 5.00 GHz effective, it's churning out 240 GB/s of memory bandwidth. It's just the core clock speed where we weren't on target (from the previously-expected 800 MHz), either 880 MHz is the reference core clock speed of HD 7950, or this particular card is a factory-OC variant (PowerColor HD 7950 PCS?).

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that its AMD Opteron 6200 Series processor family, based on the new "Bulldozer" architecture, was chosen as the winner of The Linley Group's first annual Analysts' Choice Awards. The awards recognize the top processor products of 2011 in several major categories including embedded, mobile, PC, server, design IP and related technology. To choose each winner, the Linley Group's team of technology analysts focused on merits of the leading products that began shipping between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2011.

"Our analysts are deeply familiar with processor products and technology, having conducted extensive research in order to deliver the firm's popular publications and reports," said Linley Gwennap, founder and principal analyst at The Linley Group. "We chose the winners on the basis of their performance, power, features and cost as appropriate for their target applications."

Without making much noise ASUS has made available, in Germany at least, a new, Fusion-flavored (or should we say heterogeneous-heavy?) Eee PC, the 10.1-inch R051BX. Available in black (but coming soon in white), this netbook weights 1.17 kg, and has an LED-backlit (1024 x 600) display, an AMD C-50 (dual x86 cores @ 1.0 GHz, Radeon HD 6250 graphics) APU, 1 GB of RAM, a 320 GB hard drive, and a 2,200 mAh battery.

The Eee PC R051BX has Windows 7 Starter pre-installed and costs 259 Euro.

While it may not be as high profile as the Windows 8/ARM pair, Android/ x86 is still a match with potential. It certainly has a long way to go but progress is being made, and proof of that progress was seen at CES 2012 where AMD showcased a MSI WindPad 110W tablet running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich).

The WindPad 110W packed a Z-01 APU (two x86 cores @ 1.0 GHz, Radeon HD 6250 graphics), 2 GB of RAM, and was available for some hands-on time, unlike the Tegra 3-powered Windows 8 tablet also seen at CES. Things weren't perfect with the 110W/Android 4.0 mix as the tablet did experience occasional freezes but keep in mind it's all a work in progress. People interested in converting their WindPad 110W from a Windows device to an (experimental) Android tablet can download the Android 4.0 for Brazos ISO via this page.

Making silicon chips is not easy, requiring hugely expensive fabs, with massive clean-room environments and at every process shrink, the complexity and difficulty of making the things goes up significantly. It looks like TSMC and GlobalFoundries are both having serious yield problems with their 28 nm process nodes, according to Mike Bryant, technology analyst at Future Horizons and this is causing a rash of non-working wafers - to the point of having nothing working with some chip designs submitted for production. It seems that the root cause of these problems are to do with the pressures of bringing products to market, rather than an inherent problem with the technology; it just takes time that they haven't got to iron out the kinks and they're getting stuck: "Foundries have come under pressure to release cell libraries too early - which end up with designs that don't work," Bryant said. In an effort to try and be seen to treat every customer equally, TSMC is attempting to launch ten 28 nm designs from seven companies, but it's not working out too well: "At 45-nm, only NVIDIA was affected. At 28-nm any problems for TSMC will be problems for many customers" said Bryant.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of GPU-Z, our popular video subsystem information and diagnostic utility that provides you with accurate information about the graphics hardware installed, and lets you monitor their clock speeds, fan speeds, voltages, VRAM consumption, etc., in real-time. Version 0.5.8 introduces two new features. The first one is a render test that applies sufficient load (not stress) on the GPU to pull it out of PCI-Express link-state power-management, to ensure the Bus information is accurate. If you find the PCI-Express bus link speed or PCIe version displayed incorrectly, simply click on the "?" button next to the field to launch the load test.

The next new feature is ASIC quality, designed for NVIDIA Fermi (GF10x and GF11x GPUs) and AMD Southern Islands (HD 7800 series and above), aimed at advanced users, hardware manufacturers, and the likes. We've found the ways in which AMD and NVIDIA segregate their freshly-made GPU ASICs based on the electrical leakages the chips produce (to increase yield by allotting them in different SKUs and performance bins), and we've found ways in which ASIC quality can be quantified and displayed. Find this feature in the context menu of GPU-Z. We're working on implementing this feature on older AMD Radeon GPUs.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.5.8, TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.5.8 ASUS ROG Themed

The full change-log follows.

Swiss company Arctic (formerly Arctic Cooling), has used the brand name "Fusion" on its PSU products well before AMD's so-called "Fusion" APU family came to be. Arctic was smart enough to register its trademark, and is now piling up ammo to take AMD to court over alleged trademark infringement. Arctic acquired the brand name "Fusion" from Boot Up International Ltd., and its Fusion trademark is valid in Europe. Still a sizable market for AMD.

The interesting part is, AMD doesn't use "Fusion" as a brand name anywhere, except maybe its company slogan "The future is fusion", where "fusion" is used as a verb (fusion of various computing technologies to give a homogenous computing experience), and the company internally referring to its APU architecture as "Fusion", on the outside though, AMD brands its APUs under its Vision processor family, with no "Fusion" branding anywhere, except the company slogan.

AMD might be a little sore that its "Zambezi" FX processor family based on its much-hyped "Bulldozer" architecture didn't quite meet the performance expectations of a ground-up new CPU architecture, but it doesn't want to take chances and build hype around the architecture that succeeds it. From various sources, some faintly-reliable, we have been hearing that the next-generation of high-performance desktop processors based on "Piledriver" architecture, codenamed "Vishera", will pack five modules or 10 cores, and will be structured essentially like Zambezi, since Piledriver is basically a refinement of Bulldozer architecture. The latest leak comes from the Software Optimization Guide for AMD 15h family (read here), which was picked up by CPU World while most of us were busy with CES.

CPU World compiled most of the features of what it suspected to be AMD referring to its future processors based on the Piledriver architecture, that's "Vishera" (desktop high-performance), "Terramar" (high-density server), and "Sepang" (small-medium business server) parts. The three are not the first chips to be based on Piledriver, AMD has a new mainstream desktop and notebook APU in the works codenamed "Trinity", which is en route for a little later this year. Trinity basically has an identical CPUID instruction-set as Vishera, Terramar, and Sepang, confirming their common lineage compared to today's "Bulldozer" architecture. The most catchy detail is of Vishera featuring 4 DDR3 channels.

This month-end, AMD will launch the second product in its high-end Radeon HD 7900 series, the HD 7950, which is based on the same "Tahiti" silicon as the HD 7970, but with a few components disabled. Reliable sources revealed to DonanimHaber the reference clock speeds of the HD 7950. The core of the HD 7950 will be clocked at 800 MHz, and the memory at 1250 MHz (actual), 5.00 GHz (GDDR5 effective). This, compared to the 925 MHz (core), 1375 MHz (memory actual)/ 5.50 GHz (memory effective) clock speeds of the HD 7970. The HD 7950 will hence be a good overclocker considering the speeds it comes with, there is scope for quite a few factory-OC models from AIBs. In related news, DonanimHaber notes that the HD 7950 on average will be US $100-150 cheaper than the HD 7970 (US $400-$450).

Introduced last summer at the Fusion11 Developer Summit, AMD's Fusion System Architecture (FSA) has now been renamed to Heterogeneous Systems Architecture (HSA). According to AMD corporate fellow Phil Rogers, the new name is (more) 'representative of the entire, technical community that is leading the way in this very important area of technology and programming development.'

Naming change aside, AMD's solution remains the same and promotes the use of CPU and GPU cores in a unified way, so as to deliver high application performance and low power consumption.

Aeolus Gamer Storm designed a variant of its Dracula GPU heatsink for AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics card. The heatsink is designed to handle thermal loads of up to 250W, when outfitted with fans. The heatsink design consists of a nickel-plated copper base (this particular variant has a circular bump where the GPU die makes contact), with the appropriate mount-hole spacing for HD 7970. Through this base, six 6 mm-thick nickel-plated copper heat-pipes pass, the opposite ends of these heat pipes pass through two aluminum fin stacks. Tests show that when fitted with two 80 mm fans spinning at 1,800 RPM, the Dracula keeps load temperatures of the HD 7970 about 35 degrees Celsius cooler than AMD reference fan-heatsink.

After showing to the world its Radeon HD 7970 PCB with all components placed, Yeston disclosed pictures of exactly what it's going to use to cool the beast. Yeston's cooling solution uses two big (probably 120 mm) fans inspired by the design of aircraft turbofans, with 18 blades on its impeller. Such impellers with PC cooling fans aren't new, and have been used in case fans designed by the likes of Cooler Master. However, this could be the first time such fans have been used in a VGA cooler.

Underneath the frame holding the two fans is a large aluminum fin stack-type heatsink that spans almost the entire area of the PCB. A copper base makes contact with the GPU, from it, six copper heat pipes originate, conveying heat to two aluminum fin stacks, which are then ventilated by the two fans. When fully assembled, the cooler is so large that it appears to span across almost four expansion slots. Yeston is reportedly still working on improving the design. Let's hope it gets a lot slimmer than that.

After releasing two versions based on Intel Atom processors, Sapphire is now preparing an Edge HD nettop/mini PC which is based around an AMD APU (accelerated processing unit). Showcased at CES 2012, the AMD-flavored Edge HD3 is equipped with an E-450 chip (boasting two 1.65 GHz Bobcat cores and Radeon HD 6320 graphics), 4 GB of RAM, a 320 GB hard drive, LAN, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, D-Sub and HDMI outputs, and USB 3.0 connectivity.

Reportedly, the Edge HD3 will become available on February 1st, priced at $300.

AMD today announced the first AMD Fusion Center of Innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, designed to focus on the innovative developer environment and software performance advancements enabled by heterogeneous computing. The center will fund, mentor and promote new commercial enterprises emerging from the vast intellectual property and research expertise in the University of Illinois community.

The University has been a hotbed of new start-ups since the creation of the first widespread web browser - Mosaic - developed by Marc Andreessen in 1992. Through access to AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) technology and platforms, the AMD Fusion Center of Innovation will help bridge access to new AMD heterogeneous computing technology with the innovative spirit stimulated and nurtured on campus.

AMD's Radeon HD 7970 seems to have ruffled a few feathers at NVIDIA and it looks like the green team doesn't want too much market exposure for it. A fairly-reliable source at ChipHell learned that NVIDIA's GeForce "GTX 680" part could be launched some time in February. The source says that this part could be competitive with the HD 7970, though not exactly NVIDIA's fastest next-generation GPU in the works. So it has to be something other than the GeForce Kepler 110, that's reportedly slated for March-April. At least the tiny pieces of specifications trickling out seem to reinforce this theory. Graphics cards based on this part apparently have 2 GB of memory, and its core clock speed is reported to be 780 MHz.