What happens when you pit Intel's "Visually Smart" Sandy Bridge processors against Radeon-enriched AMD Fusion A-Series accelerated processing units? They do terribly at gaming on integrated graphics. Surprise! That is notwithstanding the fact that AMD is pitching its A-Series Fusion APUs to be a lot more than CPUs with embedded GPUs, they're pitched to be processors that make lower-mainstream graphics pointless, and to alter the software ecosystem to be more GPGPU intensive, so applications could benefit from the over 500 GFLOPs of computation power the 400 stream processor DirectX 11 GPU brings to the table.

A leaked presentation slide shows AMD's performance projections for the A-Series GPU, tests included GPU-heavy DirectX 10 titles such as Crysis Warhead and Borderlands; as well as DirectX 11 ready titles such as Dirt 2. AMD's quad-core A8-3850, A8-3650 and A8-3450 were included alongside Intel's dual-core Sandy Bridge Core i3-2100, and quad-core Core i5-2300, Core i5-2500K. The Atom-competitive E350 Zacate dual-core was also in the comparision, perhaps to show that it is nearly as good as Intel's much higher segment Core series processors at graphics.

Internationally renowned mainboard and graphic card manufacturer MSI has officially launched the latest Intel-Z68 platforms for power users with uncompromising demands for both materials and performance. All Inte-Z68 mainboards from MSI are equipped with MSI-exclusive features: OC Genie II technology and Military Class II materials. The OC Genie II delivers a much more powerful OC performance than its previous generation: In simply one second, users can boost up to 145% system performance for 3D games and even up to 457% hard drive performance.

The industry-leading Military Class II electronics components, which meets the United States Department of Defense purchasing requirements to significantly enhance mainboard durability and lifespan, ensure optimal system stability in system OC. Integrating both features, the MSI Z68 mainboards enhance both system performance and system stability to fulfill the uncompromising demands of power users. Furthermore, they redefine the industry standards for high performance and premium quality.

Continuing its legacy of leadership, ASUS offers consumers a range of new motherboards based on the Intel Z68 Express chipset. The ASUS P8Z68 Series and ROG Maximus IV GENE-Z motherboards all have numerous powerful features that fully exploit the performance benefits of Sandy Bridge technology without compromise, packing more features and new innovations onto the Z68 platform while maintaining unmitigated performance and reliability.

ASUS is the only motherboard manufacturer able to integrate diverse new technologies in tandem on its Z68-based motherboards on launch. These include the universal implementation of LucidLogix Virtu switchable graphics to harness the capabilities of Intel Quick Sync Video for faster video transcoding and the extreme performance of the latest NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards, along with Intel Smart Response Technology to accelerate hard drive performance and reduce energy consumption.

ASUS announced the launch of the new self-designed HD 6770 DirectCU and HD 6750 Formula graphics cards. Both are equipped with the ASUS-exclusive Super Alloy Power technology that delivers a 15% performance boost along with a lifespan that is 2.5 times longer than conventional graphics cards.

The HD 6770 DirectCU features copper pipes that are in direct contact with the GPU to offer a 20% cooler performance than reference graphics cards, while the HD 6750 Formula's integrated aerodynamic cover and micro surface treatment technology achieves a cooling performance 13% better than references. With this combination of ultimate cooling and durability, the HD 6770 DirectCU and HD 6750 Formula graphics cards allow users to enjoy unprecedented levels of realistic PC gaming and multimedia entertainment.

It's not even 15th of the month, and AMD already released its monthly update of the Catalyst driver suite, which is normally reserved for the last week of the month. Catalyst 11.5 WHQL doesn't come with any performance enhancements as such, but apparently AMD found that a certain feature-enhancement in HydraVision was important enough to warrant a WHQL release. HydraGrid feature found in HydraVision is now aware of custom (user-created) Bezels. There's now also a "Automatic Grid" option that aligns to the user defined Eyefinity display layout.

The rather dull WHQL release is backed by a Hotfix release that comes with a lot more outstanding issues. Catalyst 11.5a Hotfix update includes fixes concerning quality of videos GPU-transcoded from H.264 clips to MPEG2 Blu-ray video, intermittent cursor lag, performance and quality enhancements for the upcoming game Brink, and flickering noted by Radeon HD 6600 series graphics cards with DDR3 memory running in DX9.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.5 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.5a Hotfix Update

With the obvious intention to clear out higher-end Phenom II series processors from the market, and to make room for the new upcoming FX-series "Bulldozer" CPUs, AMD introduced a chain of price-cuts affecting all price-points. This comes after the introduction of the new Phenom II X4 980 BE part, earlier this week. The X4 980 BE pushes down prices of nearly all Phenom II X4 and X2 parts, while pulling down six-core models with it.

The six-core X6 1090T Black Edition with unlocked multiplier is priced on par with it, while the 1075T, 1065T, and 1055T are below it. The Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition continues to be the fastest AMD has to offer, and it's just a little over $200, at $205, making it a heck of a deal against Intel Core i5-2500K. All the prices are tabled below.

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated graphics chip shipments and suppliers' market share for Q1'11. We found that shipments during the first quarter of 2011 behaved according to past years with regard to seasonality, and was nominal on a year-to-year comparison for the quarter. The situation changed over the course of the year and Q4'10 did not conform to the normal seasonal cycle, but was down a bit compared to previous years, so the growth in Q1 was a welcomed change. Our forecast for the coming years has been modified since the last report, and is less aggressive on both desktops and notebooks.

FinalWire today released the latest version of AIDA64, the industry's popular system diagnostic tool for IT administrators, engineers, and PC enthusiasts. Version 1.70 of AIDA64 includes mainly updated device support database. To begin with, AIDA64 features the ability to tell LGA1155 motherboards with B3 stepping Cougar Point chipsets from the older stepping; it features preliminary support for AMD's upcoming FX-Series CPUs, and A-Series APUs.

A host of new SATA SSDs are supported, including Intel 320 series, OCZ Vertex 3 series, and Samsung PM810. Support is added for AMD Mobility Radeon HD 6770M and Radeon HD 6790 GPUs. Support is also added for a scores of NVIDIA GeForce 500 series GPUs, including GT 520, GT 520M, GT 550M, GT 555M, GTX 550 Ti, GTX 590.DOWNLOAD: AIDA64 v1.70 EXE Installer, ZIP Portable Package

Here is the first picture of the M5A99X EVO, an upcoming socket AM3+ motherboard by ASUS based on the AMD 990X + SB950 chipset designed AMD's FX-Series "Zambezi" 8-core, 6-core, and 4-core procesors. The AMD 990X is designed for discrete graphics with up to two graphics cards in CrossFireX. It is likely that the final iteration has NVIDIA SLI support out of the box. The AM3+ Black socket is powered by 8-phase Digi+ VRM, cooled by a large heatsink that sits next to the northbridge heatsink. ASUS came up with a new heatsink design theme. While the P8P67 series uses heatsinks with curvy/wavy fins, the M5A series uses sharp edges.

The AMD 990X northbridge gives out 16 PCI-Express 2.1 lanes split between two x16 slots. When both slots are populated, the graphics cards run on x8 bandwidth. The third black x16 slot is wired to the SB950 southbridge, and is likely x4. Other slots include two PCI-Express x1 and a PCI. Storage connectivity includes six SATA 6 Gb/s ports from the SB950 southbridge that support RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, 10 modes; a third-party controller drives two additional SATA 6 Gb/s internal ports. We don't know if there's another such controller handling eSATA.

Here are the first performance projections of the AMD FX-series processors. FX-series is the market name of the latest line of 8-core, 6-core, and 4-core processors by AMD, based on its new Bulldozer architecture. The performance projections come from AMD's internal presentations to its industry partners, which was leaked to sections of the media.

In the performance projection, a compound bar graph, an AMD platform comprising of an 8-core FX series processor (unknown model, clock speed) with AMD Radeon HD 6670 discrete graphics, was pitted against its main competitor, Intel Core i7-2600K with its integrated Intel HD graphics. Perhaps AMD is suggesting that FX 8-core model used here along with a HD 6690 graphics card costs the same as a Core i7-2600K.

Apple today updated its signature all-in-one iMac with next generation quad-core processors, powerful new graphics, groundbreaking high-speed Thunderbolt I/O technology and a new FaceTime HD camera. Starting at $1,199, the new iMac is up to 70 percent faster and new graphics deliver up to three times the performance of the previous generation.

"Our customers love the iMac's aluminum enclosure, gorgeous display and all-in-one design," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "With next generation quad-core processors, powerful new graphics, Thunderbolt technology and a FaceTime HD camera, we've made the world's best desktop even better."

AMD charted out the launch itinerary of its two upcoming client product lines, the A-Series "Llano" accelerated processing unit (APU), and the FX-Series "Zambezi" processor, in a presentation slide to its launch partners. The series of product launches starts at the upcoming Computex 2011 event, on June 1, where AMD will launch its new 9-series chipset. This could include two branches: first being the 2-chip chipset that drives Zambezi FX-series processors; and a second single-chip chipset for APUs. The action then shifts to E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) a week after Computex. On June 7, AMD will unveil the AM3+ platform, and motherboard vendors across the board are expected to show off their AM3+ motherboards

On 12th June AMD's Llano APU and Sabine platform will be launched for the Asian markets. Around the same time, at the AMD Fusion Developer Summit, AMD will interact with developers to develop software that's tailor made for the Fusion architecture (x86 with increased use of serial computational loads over GPGPU). June 14 2011 is the most important date. Called the AMD 2011 Client Launch Event, this event will be the launchpad for AMD's FX-series processors and A-Series APUs. Sabine platform will launched to the rest of the world's markets.

Today AMD released to market its latest quad-core processor, the Pheonom II X4 980 Black Edition. The new, faster SKU was first reported to be taking shape back in March. Based on the 45 nm "Deneb" silicon and K10.5 architecture, the X4 980 BE is yet another speed-bump, clocked at 3.70 GHz (18.5 x 200 MHz), with room for some overclocking thanks to its unlocked BClk multiplier.

The Deneb die packs four x86-64 cores with 512 KB caches each, and a shared 6 MB L3 cache. Despite its high clock speed, the processor maintains TDP of 125W. Its IMC supports dual-channel DDR3/DDR2 memory, and is backwards compatible with AM2+ socket apart from its native AM3 socket. HyperTransport 4 GT/s is its chipset interconnect. The new processor is priced at US $195.

Today at Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley 2011, AMD introduced the AMD Radeon E6760 embedded discrete graphics processor. Available now, the AMD Radeon E6760 GPU is the first of its kind to offer embedded system designers the combination of OpenCL support along with support for six independent displays.

"The AMD Radeon E6760 GPU provides customers with superior business economics through long lifecycle management and product stability," said Richard Jaenicke, director of Embedded Client Business for AMD. "Embedded system designers faced with power and density constraints now have a solution that delivers the advanced 3D graphics and multimedia features they require in this performance-driven market."

Expanding their relationship beyond hardware, LucidLogix today announced that its' Virtu GPU virtualization software will be integrated into various SKUs of ASUS motherboards based on the Intel Z68 chipsets. Virtu allows the systems to simultaneously take full advantage of both the low-power best-in-class media processing features of the 2nd generation Intel Core processor graphics and the 3D gaming performance of add-in cards with graphics processing units (GPUs) from AMD and NVIDIA.

"Since ASUS supplies a third of the world's motherboards, their knowledge and expertise in the market magnifies the importance of a seamless media experience only provided by Lucid," said Offir Remez, president and founder of Lucid. "The Virtu solution is rapidly becoming a standard, must-have feature and its expanding market acceptance creates a runway for further innovation in both desktop and notebook PC graphics."

Club 3D B.V. announces the introduction of the Radeon HD 6750 CoolStream Edition video card based on the Juniper LE chipset, AMD' second generation DirectX 11. Club 3D has built a good reputation on silent cooled video cards with the award winning CoolStream series. This card is no exception, with speeds of 700 Mhz core and 4600 Mhz for the memory with a totally silent heatpipe cooler, it makes one of the fastest silent graphics card available today.

With the latest UVD hardware on board, it considerably reduces the CPU load delivering and decoding stunning Blu-Ray and H.264 content. HDMI has been upgrated to 1.4a for 3D content making it the perfect choice for a HTPC.

It could be curtains down for NVIDIA nForce SLI chipset for AMD platform, as the GPU giant formally announced its intentions to license NVIDIA SLI technology for use on AMD chipset-based motherboards starting from AMD's upcoming 9-series chipset. Rumors about this development started trickling in around late March. NVIDIA's public release confirms most of what was outlined in the leaked company slide in the older article, that licenses will be only offered to 9-series (and later) chipset-based motherboards, and that only those motherboard manufacturers that are licensed by NVIDIA for SLI on their Intel platform motherboards will be given licenses. NVIDIA specifically mentions ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock, and MSI as qualifying partners.

The more interesting part of the release, however, was the box-art of ASUS' upcoming high-end socket AM3+ motherboard, the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Crosshair V Formula. Its salad of product logos is what is most fascinating. For one, it confirms the product name and logo of AMD's new high-end desktop processors to be "FX", as revealed by the box designs. The next logo is of Phenom II, and as we know, AM3+ gives backwards compatibility to older AM3 processors. Next up is the AMD 9-series chipset logo, another Radeon-like logo by AMD. Next to it is the logo of the moment: NVIDIA SLI, and lastly ATI CrossFireX. There is a newer rectangular logo of "AMD CrossFire" that succeeds the ATI CrossFireX logo, but maybe ASUS, like many, found it too hideous. You can probably make a better one on MS Paint.

ZOTAC International, a leading innovator and the world's largest channel manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards and mini-PCs, today introduces the new FUSION-ITX WiFi A-series - a world-class mainboard that combines the power of AMD Radeon HD graphics processing with class-leading energy-efficiency for the ultimate flexible mini-ITX form factor.

The ZOTAC FUSION-ITX WiFi A-series features the AMD E-350 APU platform that incorporates a dual-core 1.6 GHz processor with Microsoft DirectX 11 compatible AMD Radeon HD 6310 graphics for the ultimate synergy of CPU and GPU performance. The combination enables flawless high-definition Blu-ray and streaming Internet video playback capabilities for a visually rich computing experience in a mini-ITX platform.

Club 3D B.V. announces the introduction of the Radeon HD 6770 video card based on the Juniper XT chipset, AMD' second generation DirectX 11. The new Club 3D Radeon HD 6770 1 GB GDDR5 video card replaces the very successful HD 5770, the preferred choice by gamers, adding twice the horsepower (28.8 Gpixel/s vs 13.6 Gpixel/s) and incorporating new technologies already found in the 6K series.

The Radeon HD 6770 delivers stunning HD gaming and computing experience. Supporting HD3D which enables 3D gaming and experience Blu-ray 3D, AMD APP to accelerate everyday applications and multi-monitor displays, it makes a this card the ideal upgrade.

TODAY HIS launches the HIS 6770 & 6750 Fan 1GB GDDR5, delivering a stunning HD gaming and computing experience with complete DirectX 11 support and a broad array of advanced graphics, display and memory technologies.

Loaded with core speed at 700MHz and memory speed at 4,600MHz, the HIS 6750 transfers serious high-definition gaming frame rates. The HIS 6770 supplies the same 1GB GDDR5 but a higher core clock at 850MHz and memory clock at 4,800MHz, fulfilling the needs of our Power Gamers who desire an incredible gaming experience on the latest and most demanding titles.

MSI, the leading graphics card and motherboard manufacturer in the world, releases three new graphics cards based on the AMD Radeon HD6000 architecture: The R6770-MD1GD5, R6750-MD1GD5 and R6750-MD512D5. All of the new MSI R6700 series graphics cards support the latest version of MSI's exclusive Afterburner overclocking software with the Predator video capture function.

Gamers can enhance their usage experiences by capturing in-game videos and sharing them with friends over the web! MSI's latest R6700 graphics cards are equipped with 8cm PWM fan to offer better heat dissipation, and Military Class II concept components for extreme stability and durability2. MSI R6700 series adopt HDMI 1.4a connectivity for the latest in 3D video support, and 7.1 channel lossless high-quality TrueHD and DTS-HD sound.

TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer of AMD graphics cards, today released advanced gaming video cards: the PowerColor HD6700 series. Compatible with all the latest technology, the PowerColor HD6700 series includes HD6770 and HD6750, enabling the immersive HD gaming experience like never before.

PowerColor HD6770 has 800 stream processors, clocks in at 850MHz core speed and 1200MHz of memory speed; easily boost up your gaming rig with 1.36 teraFLOPs of computing Power. The PowerColor HD6750 clocks at 700MHz core and 1000MHz memory, with 1GB GDDR5 onboard memory, delivering a faster speed and higher bandwidths to accelerate the PC and enhance the gaming performance.

SAPPHIRE Technology has just strengthened its current range of graphics cards with the introduction of several new models in the HD 6700 series aimed at users wanting to benefit from the latest features including multi-screen displays and stereoscopic 3D output.

Several models will be introduced in the HD 6700 series offering a choice of memory configurations and outputs. All of them feature DX 11 engines from AMD and on-board hardware video decoding with the AMD UVD (universal Video Decoder) supporting Blu-Ray 3D for stereoscopic 3D over HDMI 1.4a. They all support AMD APP Acceleration with Stream processing as well as AMD Eyefinity multi-screen technology. Eyefinity gives users the ability not only to play games on multiple monitors, but also to work across three or more monitors as though it were one large monitor, bringing huge productivity benefits to applications such as photo editing, music creation and document creation.

MD today announced a new collaboration with Multicoreware, a leader in software solutions and tool development for multi-core and heterogeneous computing environments, to deliver an advanced set of tools for OpenCL optimization. The tools development effort accelerates software developers' ability to create and optimize software that fully exploits the unique processing capability of AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Units (APUs).

"Accelerated parallel processing represents unprecedented levels of computing capability in mobile form factors, and the tools suite that Multicoreware is developing enables application developers to achieve this performance benefit with less effort," said Manju Hegde, corporate vice president, AMD Fusion Experience Program. "Our work with Multicoreware marks another milestone toward broad industry adoption of OpenCL as we equip developers with necessary tools to build innovative, next-generation applications ranging from consumer PCs to high-performance computing."

AMD today released this month's timely release of its Catalyst software suite, a unified software package that installs the latest drivers for AMD Radeon graphics processors, AMD HDMI audio device, 7-series and 8-series chipsets, and related system software. This particular release has been touted by its makers within the community to provide significant performance improvements, some of which have been demonstrated by a "preview" version of Catalyst 11.4 released last month. A partial list of those games can be found here. Apart from performance enhancements, Catalyst 11.4 WHQL includes new features such as task based display management controls, an improved Eyefinity setup group, and a new Catalyst update notifier that lets your know if a newer version of AMD Catalyst is available online. There are some OpenCL GPU compute enhancements, and a list of bugs fixed, as listed in the Release Notes document.

DOWNLOAD:AMD Catalyst 11.4 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit