Around the 9th of December, AMD will announce its first Radeon HD 7000M series graphics processors, beginning with mobile parts (for notebooks). There will be at least 16 models announced, all based on two silicons: "Thames" and "Seymour", and being carved out of toggling various components within those GPUs. The models AMD will be launching will span across the Radeon HD 7400M series, 7500M series, and 7600M series. Thames and Seymour are brand new chips built on the 28 nanometer silicon fabrication process, which will allow AMD more TDP headroom, which it can use to step up clock speeds.

While we don't have key details such as stream processor, ROP, and TMU counts, a table based on data compiled by CompuBase.de lists out GPU and memory clock speeds, memory interface widths, and memory type. The table also mentions some higher-end GPU models named "Chelsea", "Heathrow", and "Wimbeldon". By now you know that all these codenames are after names of places in the UK. That's one way you can identify Radeon HD 7000M mobile GPUs from the "Southern Islands" Radeon HD 7000 desktop discrete GPU family (named after islands in the southern hemisphere).

The world of corporate disputes is a funny one. S3 Graphics filed a compliant against Apple for infringing four of its patents related to its graphics IP. Later this year, ITC announced a verdict ruling in favor of S3 Graphics around the same time S3 Graphics was being purchased by HTC. In a spectacular turn of events, on November 21, ITC took a U-turn by overruling the favorable verdict and dismissing S3 Graphics' case.

Commentators note that AMD's intervention into the case as a non-party may have played a key role, AMD claimed the patents in question to be its own, later Apple sought dismissal of the case based on the grounds of AMD's claims. ITC denied AMD and Apple requests to publicly disclose the details of the patents in question, so the the public would't find out what patent claims were used against S3 Graphics. AMD is currently the principal supplier of GPUs for Apple's Mac products, though there are now rumors that with the next generation of Macs, Apple could change its GPU supplier to AMD's rival NVIDIA.

AMD released its latest "performance driver" for Radeon graphics cards, the Catalyst 11.11a. With this release, AMD is using the term "performance driver" to refer to performance-enhancing Hotfix updates it launches between its scheduled monthly WHQL-signed updates. Catalyst 11.11a fixes some outstanding game-related bugs and improves performance and resolves driver-related bugs for a variety of recently-released titles such as Batman: Arkham City, Rage, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, and Battlefield 3. The rest of the driver is based on Catalyst 11.11.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 11.11a Performance Driver for Windows 7 or Vista | Windows XP

A list of changes follows.

As early as in September, we heard reports of AMD toying with Rambus XDR2 memory on its next generation of high-performance GPUs. Apart from our own community's response, that news met with a wall of skepticism as it was deficient in plausibility. New reports from Chinese websites have raised the topic again with fresh rumors that AMD will attempt to implement XDR2 on some of its next-generation ultra-high end products after all. XDR2, according to Rambus, can transport twice the amount of data per clock as GDDR5.

Apparently AMD and Rambus have had much more cordial relations with each other, than other companies the latter engaged in patent disputes with. In 2006, AMD settled outstanding disputes with Rambus by willing to pay licensing costs for certain technologies claimed by Rambus, turning a leaf in the relations between the two. What Chinese sources are suggesting now, is that AMD will design its high-end GPU (codename: "Tahiti") in a way that will let it support both GDDR5 and XDR2. Certain higher-end SKUs based on Tahiti will use XDR2, while the slightly more cost-effective SKUs will use GDDR5.

"Trinity" is the codename of AMD's next-generation performance accelerated processing unit (APU) family. Based on the new socket FM2 package, these chips will take advantage of AMD's next-generation Piledriver processor core architecture and VLIW4 GPU stream processor architecture. Together, Trinity promises increased general, visual, and parallel compute performance. Some of the slides detailing AMD's own performance estimates were put up by DonanimHaber in their recent video bulletin. We screen-grabbed the performance graphs from the low-resolution video, hence the grainy images.

To begin with, AMD is promising noticeable performance improvements over the current "Llano" APU. It spread its benchmarks across three categories: visual performance (using 3DMark Vantage), general performance (using PCMark Vantage), and parallel compute (GPGPU) performance (calculated CTP SP GFLOPs). With 3DMark Vantage, Trinity A8 (quad-core), A6 (triple-core), and A4 (dual-core) APUs are seeing a roughly 32% improvement over their respective Llano-based counterparts; with general performance, the improvement is a candid 13.8% on average; but with GPGPU performance, the improvement is a massive 56.3% on average. This could be attributed to the VLIW4 architecture. Lastly, there are notable CrossFire dual-graphics performance improvements.

AMD has now released the CrossFireX Catalyst Application Profiles 2 for their latest 11.11 WHQL drivers. The improvements apply to just two games:

New profiles added to this release:

- Saints Row 3: Resolves stuttering seen when playing in CrossFireX mode. Also provides Single GPU and CrossFireX performance improvements when running in lower resolution configurations
- Gothic 4 Arcania: Fall of Setarrif: Improves CrossFire performance

There's nothing yet for hit game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in this release, unfortunately. CAP 2 can be downloaded here.

Want a new graphics card this shopping season? Is news of Radeon HD 7000 series arriving late this year or early next year holding you back from purchasing current-generation? Don't let it, go grab that graphics card you had your eyes on. Fairly reliable sources point out that a bulk of Radeon HD 7000 series graphics cards will be based on rebranded current and previous generation GPUs. This bulk mostly spans across the entry-thru-mid range of the product lineup. Familiar GPU codenames such as Cedar, Caicos, and Turks, make a comeback with Radeon HD 7300 series, HD 7400 series, HD 7500 series, and HD 7600 series.

Moving up the ladder, the source postulates two possibilities for Radeon HD 7700 series. First, and more plausible, is that the series is based on Juniper (a hop across two previous generations!); the second is that these make use of rechristened GPUs from a slightly higher market position from the previous generation. Perhaps Barts, perhaps even highly crippled Cayman. The only real next-generation GPU is codenamed "Tahiti", but we're hearing that graphics cards based on it are said to not follow the Radeon HD 7000 series nomenclature altogether.

NVIDIA today announced that system builders worldwide are now shipping the fastest PC gaming platforms ever built, thanks in part to NVIDIA SLI technology and the just-released Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition processors and X79 chipset-based motherboards.

The combination of NVIDIA SLI technology -- which allows for multiple GPUs to run on a single PC -- and new X79-based motherboards allow gamers to customize their PC experience with up to four NVIDIA GeForce GTX GPUs, including the GeForce GTX 580 and GTX 570, the world's fastest DX11 GPUs. Licensed by the world's leading motherboard manufacturers -- including Intel, ASUS, ASRock, EVGA, Foxconn, Gigabyte and MSI, SLI technology is crucial for playing this year's hottest graphics-intensive games, such as the recently released Battlefield 3 and upcoming Batman: Arkham City with detail, resolution and immersion settings cranked up.

The Khronos Group today announced the ratification and public release of the OpenCL 1.2 specification, the latest update to the open, royalty-free standard for cross-platform, parallel programming of modern processors. Released eighteen months after OpenCL 1.1, this new version provides enhanced performance and functionality for parallel programming in a backwards compatible specification that is the result of cooperation by over thirty industry-leading companies. Khronos has updated and expanded its comprehensive OpenCL conformance test suite to ensure that implementations of the new specification provide a complete and reliable platform for cross-platform application development. The OpenCL 1.2 specifications, online reference pages and reference cards are available here.

"The OpenCL working group is listening carefully to feedback from the developer and middleware community to provide significant and timely functionality for heterogeneous computing in this cross vendor open standard," said Neil Trevett, chair of the OpenCL working group, president of the Khronos Group and vice president of mobile content at NVIDIA. "The OpenCL working group is also broadening its membership and has growing representation from the mobile and embedded industries and is enabling innovative devices such as FPGAs to be driven through OpenCL."

AMD, along with launching several new Opteron processors, retouched prices of its socket FM1 accelerated processing units (APUs), across its A-Series. These include tiny price hikes for its lower-end APUs, A4-3300 and A4-3400; a minor price cut for the A6-3500; a price-cut for the FX-6100; and introduction of the new Athlon II X4 651. To begin with, the dual-core A4-3300 and A4-3400 got hiked by $2, sending their prices from $64 and $69, respectively, to $66 and $71, respectively.

On the other hand, the price of A6-3500 is cut from $89 to $85. The six-core FX-6100 socket AM3+ processor saw a $10 price-cut, sending its price down from $165 to $155. Lastly, AMD introduced a new Athlon II processor in the FM1 package, the Athlon II X4 651, AMD's second, after Athlon II X4 631. This quad-core chip has 1 MB L2 cache per core, and is clocked at 3.00 GHz, 400 MHz higher than the Athlon II X4 631.

Leading international mainboard and graphics card manufacturer MSI today announces the official release of its X79A-GD65 (8D), X79A-GD65, X79A-GD45, and X79MA-GD45 mainboards. The new mainboards are based on Intel's latest X79 chipset and uses the LGA 2011 socket supporting the 2nd generation Core i7 processors. The X79A-GD65 (8D) features with 8 memory DIMMs, supports 16GB DDR3 memory modules, bringing maximum capacity up to a staggering 128GB! For superior quality and stability, MSI X79 series mainboards adopts Military Class III components. With DrMOS II - the next generation of DrMOS with improved double thermal protection - the lifetime of components is maximized, even in warmer environments or when the machine is heavily overclocked.

MSI X79 series mainboards also feature the latest PCI Express Gen 3 bus and MSI's proprietary Click BIOS II for maximum performance and user convenience. When taking into account all of the other advanced technologies supported such as 3-Way NVIDIA SLI and 4-way AMD CrossFireX multi-GPU processing technology, THX TruStudio PRO sound, Multi-BIOS II, Control Center II, and Super Charger, MSI X79-series mainboards are simply the best choice for enthusiasts!

TYAN, an industry-leading server platform manufacturer and a subsidiary of MiTAC International Corp., will announce its latest platforms that fully support the latest 32nm AMD Opteron 6200 and 4200 Series processors (NYSE: AMD) at SC11. TYAN will be presenting a live demo of its GN70-B8236-IL, a powerful and cost-effective GPU/HPC 2U server solution installed with two AMD Opteron 6200 Series processors and two AMD FirePro V8800P Graphic Cards at TYAN booth #4202 during the show.

TYAN will be showcasing its broad portfolio featuring AMD Opteron 6200 and 4200 Series processors which ensure that customers experience power efficiency, performance, scalability and management flexibility via features such as AMD Turbo CORE technology and HyperTransport 3.0 Technology. TYAN offers a total of 13 AMD G34 solutions that support the 16-Core AMD Opteron 6200 Series processors which deliver advanced performance for complex workloads and offer flexible scalability for expanding HPC requirements. TYAN also offers six AMD C32 platforms which are compatible with AMD Opteron 4200 Series processors and target applications ranging from general purpose computing to highly-threaded mission-critical applications such as SMB cloud computing, web servers as well as VM applications and virtual machines.

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced immediate launch and availability of its AMD Opteron 6200 and 4200 Series processors (formerly code-named "Interlagos" and "Valencia"). The new AMD Opteron processors are designed to give enterprises:

• Better performance for business with up to 84 percent higher performance
• Increased scalability for Virtualization with up to 73 percent more memory bandwidth, enabling servers to host more virtual machines and also handle increasing workloads
• More efficient economics for the Cloud with half the power per core[iii], requiring 2/3 less floor space and up to 2/3 lower platform price

"Our industry is at a new juncture; virtualization has provided a new level of reliable consolidation and businesses are now looking to the cloud for even more agility and efficiency. We designed the new AMD Opteron processor for this precise moment," said Paul Struhsaker, corporate vice president and general manager, Commercial Business, AMD. "The wait for the most anticipated new product and architecture for servers is over. Leading OEMs are now offering cloud, enterprise and HPC customers a full suite of solutions based on the industry's most comprehensive server processor portfolio, the new AMD Opteron family of processors which deliver an inspired balance of performance, scalability and efficiency."

Following our article yesterday about AMD using new high performance liquid cooling technology for their upcoming 7900-series graphic cards, TechPowerUp can now bring you a detailed insight into how this technology works, which has been developed by Vapro Inc. The following slides will help to explain this technology.

By using liquid cooling based heatsinks, the following performance advantages are achieved: improvement of thermal resistance, handling of high heat flux and power and easy to manufacture.

Here is the first picture of AMD accelerated processing units in the existing FM1 package and future FM2 package on which the next-generation Trinity APU will be based on. Both packages are very similar, follow AMD's favourite yet archaic PGA design. The pins are physically arranged in a mostly similar fashion, though we don't have a pin map at hand. The difference comes with some of the blanked pins in the sub-central portion of the pin array. The FM2 package has 904 pins, compared to 905 on FM1. One pin is blanked, while a pair of blanked pins are arranged further away from the central cutout.

This makes FM1 and FM2 clearly incompatible. Neither will you be able to use today's A-Series APUs in the FM1 package on future socket FM2 motherboards, nor will you be able to run future FM2 APUs on today's FM1 motherboards. Yet, AMD will port the A75 FCH chipset to the next-generation "Virgo" platform. The FCH or Fusion Controller Hub, like Intel's PCH (Platform Controller Hub), is not much more than a glorified southbridge, and is portable between Fusion platforms as it's essentially a PCI-Express 2.0 x4 device. In the picture below, "Llano" FM1 APU is on the left, and "Trinity" FM2 on the right.

On the 29th of this month, NVIDIA will launch its newest graphics card SKU, the GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores. We got our first sniff of it last month. Today we present to you all the specifications that matter: clock speeds, voltages, device IDs, etc., but first a brief history. NVIDIA launched the original GeForce GTX 560 Ti back in January, based on its spanking new GF114 silicon. It packed 384 CUDA cores, a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, 1 GB of memory, high clock speeds, and fairly decent overclocking potential. AMD's Radeon HD 6870 was "pwned" (NVIDIA's words). But then, AMD managed to work closely with its partners to create a 1 GB version of its Radeon HD 6950 graphics card. Coupled with diligent component cost balancing, AMD was able to neuter GTX 560 Ti to a good extant. With the upcoming winter shopping season, NVIDIA does not want to take any chances with its competitiveness in the $250-ish "sweetspot" segment, and hence it had to redesign the GTX 560 Ti.

The new GeForce GTX 560 Ti will come with "448 Cores" brand extension, and as it suggests, the GPU now has 448 CUDA cores as opposed to 384 cores on the original. The new SKU will use the same silicon on which the GTX 570, GTX 580, and dual-GPU GTX 590 are based: GF110. The chip will carry the marking "GF110-270-A1". Apart from the 448 CUDA cores, the new SKU will have a memory bus width of 320-bit, and standard memory amount of 1280 MB, just like the GTX 570. The GTX 560 Ti Core 448 has clock speeds of 732 MHz core, 1464 MHz CUDA cores or shaders, and 950 MHz actual (1900 MHz DDR, or 3.80 GHz GDDR5 effective) memory clock speed. So the only thing that sets the new GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores from GTX 570 is the CUDA core count (448 vs. 480 on the GTX 570).

AMD today announced AMD Ready Solutions for servers, a collaborative effort with leading server platform manufacturers to provide a broad portfolio of ready-to-market AMD Opteron 6200 Series processor-based motherboards worldwide through authorized AMD distributors the day of the launch. Because the upcoming AMD Opteron processors will drop into the existing socket infrastructure, leading motherboard manufacturers such as ASUS, Supermicro and TYAN are able to bring fully validated and rigorously tested platforms to market even more quickly. These new platforms address market demands and customer requirements for a wide range of server workloads, including high-performance computing (HPC), cloud computing, virtualization, enterprise and database applications and Web/email servers.

"With AMD Ready Solutions for servers, our customers can find complete and verified server platforms in the channel the day of launch," said Paul Struhsaker, corporate vice president and general manager, Commercial Business at AMD. "The combination of the existing socket infrastructure already in place with AMD Ready Solutions will enable faster and easier upgrade paths to new levels of server performance and scalability."

AMD is fine-tuning its product development cycle to deliver a new processor architecture towards the end of each year, and a new chipset towards the beginning of one, maintaining platform compatibility and longevity. The company launched its socket AM3+ compliant 9-series chipset months ahead of its first-generation Bulldozer FX processor family, though it looks like in the year 2012 it will launch a new line of desktop chipset, in all likelihood it will precede the launch of second-generation Bulldozer (codenamed "Piledriver") processors.

In 2012, AMD chipset family will be led by the 10-series chipset. At the very top is AMD 1090FX northbridge, followed by 1070. 1090FX will be designed to give out two PCI-Express x16 links, which can then drive up to four graphics cards. The 1070, on the other hand, gives out just one x16 link, which can drive up to two graphics cards. AMD will scrap its present model of 990X and 970, in which the northbridge is essentially the same piece of silicon, with the 990X having lane switches and supporting CrossFireX. A big revelation here is that the 10-series chipset will not feature PCI Express Gen 3.0. We'd normally expect AMD to be at the forefront of supporting new technologies. If we remember, AMD 790FX was the first AMD platform chipset in the industry to feature PCI-Express 2.0. Also, it is highly likely that AMD's Radeon HD 7000 series graphics, which are slated for later this year, will support PCI-Express 3.0 interface.

Hightech Information System (HIS) today unveiled their first twin-fan cooler equipped graphics card range, the HIS 6670 Fan 1GB. Low Profile: Ideal for Media Centers & Home Theater PCs.

Home Theater PC users, looking for that extra bit of cooling to give their system an extra edge, will be delighted with the model's double airflow allowing for expanded cooling efficiency and heat dissipation. The HIS 6670 Fan is another excellent choice within HIS' low profile GPU range for home entrainment enthusiasts looking to build their personal bespoke Home Theater or Media Center PC.

EVGA has just announced a new dual GPU card based on the GF114 GPU - check out the product launch page here and the product page here. If their performance graph on that launch page is accurate, then the card is around 30% faster than a GTX 580 when running the Unigene Heaven benchmark. The output panel contains three DVI connectors for NVIDIA 3D Surround, along with a mini HDMI port. The cooler has three fans, which should make for a well-cooled and reasonably quiet card. The marketing blurb says:

Introducing the EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win
It may not be called a GTX 585, but it's the next best thing. This card harnesses the power of two EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti GPU's for blistering fast DirectX 11 performance, including tessellation performance that destroys the competition. Experience a whole new level of interactive gaming and combine up to three displays off a single card for the ultimate in 3D entertainment, or disable Surround and combine up to four displays for maximum productivity. With these features and more, the EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2Win gives you double the GPU's and double the win!

Translated, this means that your life isn't worth living without one of these babies in your rig. Apparently.

AMD announced a restructuring plan and implementation of operational efficiency initiatives designed to strengthen the company's competitive positioning. AMD expects that these combined actions will create a more competitive cost structure and rebalance the company's global workforce skillsets, helping AMD to continue delivering industry-leading products while improving productivity, reducing time-to-market and better aligning with key industry trends that are expected to drive growth.

"Reducing our cost structure and focusing our global workforce on key growth opportunities will strengthen AMD's competitiveness and allow us to aggressively pursue a balanced set of strategic activities designed to accelerate future growth," said Rory Read, AMD president and CEO. "The actions we are taking are designed to improve our ability to consistently address the needs of our global customer base and stake leadership positions in lower power, emerging markets and the cloud."

In a move that could "ruin a lot of people's Christmas," as TechEye puts it, it is learned that AMD is headed for executive layoffs. The company's new CEO, Rory Read apparently sees value in a leaner, more efficient organization. This, despite rather positive third quarter results, where AMD bagged $1.69 billion in revenue and $97 million in profit. The CEO is eying total restructuring, according to sources. As expected, AMD refused to comment.

HP today announced a new industry program comprising a new server development platform, customer discovery lab and partner ecosystem to help customers significantly reduce complexity, energy use and costs.

HP's new program, dubbed Project Moonshot, combines with HP Converged Infrastructure technology to allow the sharing of resources - including storage, networking, management, power and cooling - across thousands of servers. It paves the way to the future of low-energy computing for emerging web, cloud and massive scale environments.

HP today announced the HP Slate 2 Tablet PC with expanded touch capabilities, enhanced multitasking performance and embedded security, providing added flexibility to mobile business users. The company also announced a new notebook PC targeting business, education and government customers.

The HP Slate 2 Tablet PC provides instant deployment for business and vertical markets such as education, healthcare, government and retail, where jobs frequently take users away from a traditional desk. With a full-featured Microsoft Windows environment, the 1.5 pound HP Slate 2 Tablet PC provides professionals with the flexibility to create, edit and review content on one highly mobile and lightweight device.

In late September, S3 Graphics, still a subsidiary of VIA Technology and soon to be transferred to HTC, dragged Apple Inc. to court over charges of patent infringement related to graphics component IP of nearly all Apple products, including iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and iMac. Last month, AMD, now a main supplier of graphics processors for Apple's Mac products, intervened with a counter lawsuit claiming it owned the patents that S3 has asserted against Apple, and sought an immediate halt to S3's patent case against Apple.

In an October 28 filing with the ITC, S3 says that a federal judge struck down a request for an immediate halt into S3's case, but the Commission is scheduled to release its final decision on November 15. The case struck down is (rather was) Advanced Micro Devices Inc. v. S3 Graphics Co., 11cv965, U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware (Wilmington).