Originally slated for a November 22 launch, AMD's next-generation enthusiast-grade GPU, the Radeon HD 6970 may face some launch delays, according to industry sources. Apparently the company is yet to finalize a launch driver and BIOS for the HD 6970, and that could push back launch by a little. Meanwhile, a Zol.com.cn contributor let out some juicy pictures of the HD 6970 reference design accelerator.

VERTEX3D, a new brand of AMD graphics card, today announces an advanced version of the next generation HD6850 graphics: the VTX3D HD6850 X Edition. The X series aims to deliver extreme gaming performance in the ultra quiet working environment with factory overclocked setting, and tackles the most demanding gamers and applications.

The HD6850 X Edition features superior factory overclocked ability, with core clocks at 800MHz and memory clocks at 1050MHz. Equipped with the most advanced GDDR5 memory, delivering faster and higher bandwidths, allows the ultimate gaming performance on the maximum setting. Gamers can easily tune their rig to its limitations.

We scored an early look at MSI's latest graphics card, the R6850 Cyclone OC Power Edition. This AMD Radeon HD 6850 based graphics card makes use of MSI's popular Cyclone GPU cooler, which it has used on several generations of graphics cards. It consists of a GPU based turned heatsink with spirally-projecting aluminum fins, from which heat is conveyed to two aluminum fin arrays on either sides of the GPU, by 8 mm thick heat pipes. Carrying the "power edition" label, this card is geared for overclocking, in which software voltage control is provided and made use of.

The PCB draws power from just one 6-pin power connector, it uses a 6+1+1 phase VRM that makes use of high-grade components. Display connectivity includes two DVI, and one each of HDMI 1.4a and DisplayPort 1.2. While MSI did not mention what clock speeds it ships with, it definitely put it through some OC tests. The card was able to achieve 1000/1200 MHz (core/memory) with a core voltage of 1.2V. The card was put through Furmark, where it settled down to 65 degrees Celsius. MSI will introduce this card to the market very soon.

TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer of AMD graphics cards, adds its own cooling solution to the HD6850 series: PCS+ HD 6850. This powerful upgraded edition embraces the PCS+ series features which equips with superior factory overclocked setting and excellent cooling solution, unlimited the ultra gaming potential in the coolest working environment.

PCS+ HD6850 clocks at 820 MHz core speed, while memory clocks at 1100 MHz. The factory overclocked setting ensures gaming efficacy can effortlessly go beyond the standard version, delivering the out of box gaming performance which will easily blow up gamers' mind.

Axle took its own sweet time coming up with a Radeon HD 6800 series graphics card lineup, the company released its HD 6870, which sticks to AMD reference design, like every other HD 6870 out there, at the moment. Based on the second-generation DirectX 11 compliant GPU architecture by AMD, the HD 6870 features 1120 stream processors, and makes use of 1 GB of GDDR5 memory over a 256-bit wide memory interface. Display connectivity include two each of DVI, mini-DisplayPort, and one HDMI. Power is drawn in from two 6-pin connectors. Axle's HD 6870 also uses AMD-reference clock speeds of 900/1050 MHz, and is expected to be priced like almost every other card in its league, around $240.

Here are the first pictures of what is touted to be the GeForce GTX 580 reference design graphics card by NVIDIA, by sections of the Chinese media. There are some interesting inferences that can be drawn just by the looks of the card. To begin with the cooler bears an uncanny resemblance to one of the earliest design iterations of the GeForce GTX 480 (pictured here and here). In its final iteration, NVIDIA gave the GTX 480 a more massive cooler, perhaps to keep up with its finalized clock speeds. If the design of the GTX 580 cooler is anything to go by, it means that either NVIDIA refined the GF100 architecture in the GF110 (on which GTX 580 is based) a great deal, increasing performance per Watt; or that since GTX 580 is in its development stage, its final version could look different. GeForce GTX 580 is being designed as a counter to AMD's Radeon HD 6900 series single-GPU graphics cards that are based on the new Cayman graphics core, which is slated for release in late November. It is expected to be 20% faster than the GTX 480.

AMD gave out the latest hotfix driver update to its recently published Catalyst 10.10 WHQL, which is a whole lot more than being just a hotfix, this time. A hotfix update is usually given out by AMD if it misses out on addressing a couple of important issues with a recently published Catalyst WHQL driver update. Catalyst 10.10c Hotfix adds early OpenGL 4.1 support, and surprisingly adds multiple game-specific performance improvements (unusual for a Hotfix).

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 10.10c Hotfix
Details are as follows:

Chinese graphics card manufacturer ColorFire designed a new non-reference design AMD Radeon HD 6850 graphics card that that uses a stronger VRM and a Zalman VF-3000 GPU cooler. The PCB sets the red color-scheme, and the cooler keeps up with it, using a hot rod looking shroud. The card uses a 7+1 phase VRM that draws power from two 6-pin power connectors, facilitating high clock speeds. The PCB also holds two CFBI fingers, indicating the card to support 3-way and 4-way CrossFireX. Low-latency (0.5 ns) GDDR5 memory chips by Hynix are used.

The VF-3000 has some hefty credentials, it can handle very high thermal loads. The cooler makes use of a dense aluminum fin array that is ventilated by two 90 mm fans. The exact clock speeds are not known. Display connectivity includes one each of DVI, D-Sub, HDMI 1.4, and DisplayPort 1.2. Like every other HD 6850, this one packs 960 stream processors, and supports the latest graphics APIs such as DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.x. It's not known if ColorFire will market this card outside China.

MSI announced its Radeon HD 6800 series graphics cards, the HD 6870 based R6870-2PM2D1GD5, and the HD 6850 based R6850-PM2D1GD5. While the HD 6870 card sticks to AMD reference design both with PCB and cooling assembly, the HD 6850 uses AMD reference design PCB, with MSI's in-house cooler design, which makes use of a slightly larger GPU fan-heatsink, and a sporty-looking cooler shroud. Both cards also stick to reference clock speeds.

While the Radeon HD 6870 has 1120 stream processors, and clock speeds of 900 MHz core with 1050 MHz (4200 MHz effective) memory; the HD 6850 has 960 stream processors, 775 MHz core, 1000 MHz (4000 MHz effective) memory. The prices are expected to be largely standard, too. Around $250 for the HD 6870, and around $180 for the HD 6850.

On the occasion of kick-starting its new generation of graphics processors, the Radeon HD 6800 series, AMD backed it up with the launch of [the first] AMD Catalyst, version 10.10 WHQL. The Catalyst software suite installs drivers for installed ATI/AMD Radeon graphics processors, AMD chipsets, as well as installs relevant system software. The major change of course is added official support for Radeon HD 6800 series GPUs, but also a big set of new features, namely support for Blu-ray 3D, Stereoscopic 3D powered by Dynamic Digital Depth (DDD) and iZ3D; AMD Catalyst Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) technology; added hardware video acceleration for HD WMV, and enahnced Dynamic Contrast video controls. It doesn't stop here, a boat-load of game and GPU-specific performance increments were announced, that covers a number of Radeon HD 5000 series GPUs, which are detailed below.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 10.10 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

A detailed list of changes follows.

Club 3D B.V. is pleased to announce the introduction of the next generation video card based on the Barts XT/PRO chipset, from AMD's second generation DirectX 11 architecture. The new Club 3D Radeon HD 6850 1GB and HD 6870 1GB GDDR5 video cards feature the AMD HD3D technology which allows you to play your favorite games in full stereo 3D with a single video card (up to 3 monitors, and enjoy with the new EyeSpeed technology to watch the latest Blu-ray movies in 3D.

SAPPHIRE Technology, the largest manufacturer and supplier worldwide of graphics solutions based on AMD technology is announcing the first products in a second generation of video cards to support the advanced graphical features of Microsoft DirectX 11 and delivering spectacular video clarity, speed and visual effects, including over multiple monitors and 3D stereoscopic displays.

The SAPPHIRE HD 6800 series features the second generation of graphics technology from AMD designed to support all the features of Microsoft DirectX 11 and DirectCompute 11. The new GPU's are built in AMD's 40nm process to deliver high performance with low power consumption. Advanced hardware features include an enhanced Tesselation unit, dedicated HDR Texture compression, multi-threaded communication with system CPU cores, embedded support for many of the DirectCompute 11 instructions, 3D stereoscopic support and HDMI 1.4a.

Industry leader XFX has added a new dimension to gaming with its XFX AMD Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 graphics cards. This latest series of AMD Radeon graphics cards is AMD's first introduction of a 3-D gaming and multi-media solution for desktop computers, plus one of the first HDMI 1.4a and DisplayPort 1.2 solutions for Stereoscopic 3-D on the market.

This advance into Stereoscopic 3-D ushers in a new era of gaming that takes it to the next level. With up to 120 Hz active shutter technology, the quality of 3-D achievable with the AMD Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 is unprecedented in comparison to previous 3-D solutions created by other manufacturers. The AMD 3-D experience is truly immersive and seamless.

Featuring even more processing power than the successful EAH5000 Series of graphics cards, the new ASUS EAH6800 Series continues to serve PC enthusiasts with cutting-edge technology and a range of exclusive performance-boosting improvements to the AMD reference design.

Both the EAH6850 DirectCU/2DIS/1GD5 and EAH6870/2DI2S/1GD5 cards feature AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology, AMD HD3D technology and DirectX 11 support. In addition, exclusive Voltage Tweak overclocking technology offers a 50% performance boost over the reference design. The EAH6850 DirectCU and EAH6870 also ship with factory overclocked cores set to 790MHz and 913MHz.

Hightech Information System (HIS) Limited is proud to unleash the revolutionary new HIS RadeonTMHD 6850 & 6870 graphics cards. Loaded with HD3D stereoscopic technology and three main pillars- Eyefinity, EyeDefinition and EyeSpeed, the new HIS Radeon HD 6850 & 6870 bring an incredible experience of application performance and flawless high-resolution imagery for fully immersive gameplay.

Whether it's enthusiastic gamers hungry for the latest and coolest technology to win virtually at every game, or PC users who want a fast system for their multi-tasking, the new HIS RadeonTM HD 6850 & 6870 are without a doubt the best solution around. The HIS RadeonTM HD 6850 & 6870 not only offer incredible HD gaming performance on all the latest game and DirectX 11 support, but also makes multi-tasking easier with features like Eyefinity technology. So get ready as we bring our all-in-one technology - HD3D, Eyefinity, EyeDefinition and EyeSpeed- right into your home.

AMD today introduced the next generation of PC gaming, the AMD Radeon HD 6800 series, designed to be "perfect graphics cards" for gamers by delivering unprecedented game performance starting at $179 SEP. The new AMD Radeon HD 6800 series graphics cards provide more than 30 percent greater game performance than competing products, harnessing AMD's second-generation Microsoft DirectX 11-capable architecture, best-in-class energy efficiency, and an unmatched feature set, including AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology. The AMD Radeon HD 6800 series is available immediately from etailers worldwide.

"AMD is the market share leader by a landslide in DirectX 11 graphics," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, GPU Division, AMD. "Through our sweet spot strategy and our open, industry standards approach, we've worked to deliver the best possible experience for gamers. Today, our laser focus on gamers continues with the introduction of what we think is far and away the best graphics card series today, the AMD Radeon HD 6800 series. With exceptional game performance, an unrivaled feature set including breathtaking DirectX 11 gaming, AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology, AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing, and more, the AMD Radeon HD 6800 series will have all gamers wanting to get Radeon in their systems."

NVIDIA's next enthusiast-grade graphics processor, the GeForce GTX 580, based on the new GF110 silicon, is poised for at least a paper-launch by end of November, or early December, 2010. Sources in the video card industry told DigiTimes that the GTX 580 is expected to be 20% faster than the existing GeForce GTX 480. The new GPU is built on the existing 40 nm process, NVIDIA's 28 nm GPUs based on the Kepler architecture are expected to take shape only towards the end of 2011. Later this week, AMD is launching the Radeon HD 6800 series performance graphics cards, and will market-launch its next high-end GPU, codenamed "Cayman" in November.

Tomorrow, AMD will release its much talked about next-generation Radeon HD 6800 series graphics cards, to reinvigorate the company's competitiveness in a price-segment both it and NVIDIA regard as "the gamer's sweet-spot" price segment, which spans between $189 and $249, offering performance levels very close to enthusiast-grade products. To put it in perspective, you should be able to play any DirectX 11 game at 1920 x 1080 (full-HD) resolution with medium-to-high level of detail. Currently, NVIDIA holds the upper hand in this segment with its GTX 460-768 MB and GTX 460-1 GB, which is exactly what Radeon HD 6850 and Radeon HD 6870 seem to be after, with the HD 6870 also holding the potential to disturb higher-end SKUs that are currently priced around the $299 mark.

With no new SKU for this segment in sight, NVIDIA's immediate reaction is reportedly that of introducing "fairly big" price-cuts on the GeForce GTX 460 duo, the company also plans to cut prices of the high-end GeForce GTX 470. To what extant exactly these price cuts would go is not known, but they will be put into effect either today, or tomorrow. Meanwhile, sources close to AMD told us that in response to this development, the red-team will fine-tune the final pricing of the Radeon HD 6800 series, to step up pressure on the competition. We expect as much as $20 to be cut on the currently expected prices of the Radeon HD 6800 series pair.Update (10/21; 20:50 IST): NVIDIA sent us a circular about revised pricing of certain GeForce products. Details follow.

Barely a couple of days ahead of its launch, the first picture of the Radeon HD 6850 taken apart made its way to the internet. We were treated to the pictures of the HD 6870 PCB last week. AMD's release-grade reference design PCB is not as long as that of the HD 6870, it keeps up with the black color, and is available as either a premium 8-layer version, or a cost-effective 6-layer one. This particular one makes use of a 4+1+1 phase VRM, a CHIL-made VRM controller that might support software voltage control, power input from a single 6-pin PCI-E power connector, one CrossFire connector, and display connectivity that includes two DVI, one HDMI, and two mini-DisplayPort connectors. From the information available to us from recent reports, the Radeon HD 6850 has 960 stream processors 32 ROPs, 48 TMUs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface holding 1 GB of memory. Its core is clocked at 775 MHz, and memory at 1000 MHz (4000 MHz GDDR5 effective).

Specifications of the upcoming Radeon HD 6800 series GPUs have already been doing rounds for the last couple of days, and ChipHell.com finally managed to leak an alleged press-deck of the HD 6800 series that discloses the GPUs' specifications and some key features that AMD will introduce with this generation. What can be said looking at the slides is that AMD seems to have stepped up performance/die-size big time (up to 35% increase in performance per mm²), with some reconfiguring of key components. It also redesigned the GPUs to have up to 100% increase in tessellation performance, new image-quality enhancements, a new video acceleration engine (UVD 3), and a redesigned display IO with 2nd Gen. Eyefinity technology that can let users of standard variants drive up to six displays with a single card.

Specifications of the HD 6870 are: 1120 stream processors, 32 ROPs, 56 TMUs, 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface holding 1 GB, clock speeds of 900/1050(4200) MHz core/memory(effective), and idle/max board power of 19W/151W. For the HD 6850, it's 960 stream processors, 32 ROPs, 48 TMUs, 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface holding 1 GB, clock speeds of 775/1000(4000) MHz, idle/max board power of 19W/127W.

At the 6th Annual AMD Technical Forum & Exhibition (TFE) 2010, AMD today showcased for its ecosystem partners the first public demonstration of the forthcoming AMD Fusion Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) codenamed "Llano", designed for notebook, ultrathin and desktop PCs. AMD demonstrated the accelerated single-chip processing muscle of Llano by simultaneously processing three separate compute-and graphics-intensive workloads.

"The serial and powerful parallel processing capability of the Llano APU has the potential to make OEMs and consumers re-think their computing experience," said Chris Cloran, corporate vice president and general manager, client division, AMD. "The experience potential of Llano is truly incredible, and the demos we showed today on stage provide a glimpse of what this processor is capable of delivering in sleek form factors with long battery life. Everything consumers love about their digital lifestyles today - social networking, gaming, consuming and creating media - can be enhanced with Llano, enabling a more interactive, vivid and immersive experience."

Here are the press-shots given to us by AMD, of the Radeon HD 6000 series graphics cards, in their reference design. The Radeon HD 6870 was pictured from one angle much earlier, but this new deck of pictures show you the card from other angles. There is also the first set of pictures of the Radeon HD 6850 with its premium blower-type cooler. Partners can opt for this design, or choose a more cost-effective cooler design which isn't much more than a fan-heatsink over the GPU, probably heatsinks over the memory/VRM, and an egg-shaped cooler shroud. Past history has shown that when presented with two reference design cooler options, most AIB partners have chosen the cheaper one, for obvious reasons.

The styling looks a little carried forward from the HD 5000 series (black and red), only this time, the streaks of red-lines are on the top and rear-end of the card, not its obverse side (which now has a flame sticker). The sticker design around the fan intake is suggestive of an "eye", keeping up with the theme for this series and a trio of new "Eye" features the Radeon HD 6000 series will carry, one of them being next-generation Eyefinity. The Radeon HD 6800 draws power from two 6-pin power inputs, while the HD 6850 makes do with just one. Another important feature-change evident from these pictures is that the 6800 lacks support for 3-way and 4-way CrossFireX, there's only one CFI finger.

Sapphire is ready to launch its Radeon HD 6800 series products. As AMD's one of front-line partners, why wouldn't it be? The company will kick off its lineup with a Radeon HD 6870 model that sticks to the AMD reference design, and a Radeon HD 6850 based on an in-house design, probably marketed with the company's popular "Toxic" or "Vapor-X" brands. The Radeon HD 6870 card is compliant with the reference design, and uses reference clock speeds of 900/1050(4200) MHz (core/memory(effective memory)). It features DirectX 11 support, 1120 enhanced stream processors, 1 GB of GDDR5 memory over a 256-bit wide memory interface, and display connectivity that includes two DVI, two mini-DP 1.2, and one HDMI 1.4a. 2-way CrossFire is supported.

The Radeon HD 6850 card, on the other hand, sports an in-house design with both the PCB and the cooler. The PCB is colored in Sapphire's favourite shade of blue. The cooler looks quite muscular with a heatsink (probably making use of vapor-chamber technology) over the GPU, a 90 mm fan, and 8 mm heat pipes conveying heat to additional aluminum fin arrays. This card also reportedly sticks to reference clock speeds of 775/1000(4000) MHz, and features 960 stream processors, and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory over a 256-bit wide interface. Display connectivity on this card is more akin to what we're used to seeing on the HD 5800 series: two DVI, one standard-size DisplayPort 1.2, and one HDMI 1.4a. Expect both these cards to be out on the 22nd. A non-reference HD 6870 later down the line from Sapphire can't be ruled out.

TechPowerUp introduced version 0.4.7 of GPU-Z, our lightweight graphics sub-system information and monitoring utility. GPU-Z provides you with detailed tech-specs of your installed graphics processors, and lets you monitor clock speeds, voltages, temperatures and fan speeds. This month's release improves detection for upcoming GPUs, adds support for new ones, improves stability, and corrects some minor bugs. To begin with, detection for the upcoming AMD Radeon HD 6800 series products has been improved to be most reliable and accurate with the products' launch approaching. Support has been added for GeForce GT 430, GT 420 desktop GPUs, and an important kernel driver related issue has been fixed.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.4.7

The change log follows.

After a recent exposé of the XFX Radeon HD 6870, DonanimHaber scored a few pictures of its next HD 6000 series card, the XFX Radeon HD 6850. Unlike the HD 6870 card, the HD 6850 from XFX makes use of XFX' own design for both PCB and cooler. The card is shorter than the HD 6870 by a fair bit, and makes use of typical XFX styling on the cooler shroud and rear panel. The cooler seems to be a circular fan-heatsink over the GPU, it's not known whether the memory and VRM have heatsinks too. Display connectivity includes two DVI, and one each of HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2.

The card carries 960 stream cores, contradicting an older report, and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory over a 256-bit wide memory interface. The core is clocked at 775 MHz, and memory at 1000 MHz (4 GHz GDDR5 effective). Expect it to be out on the 22nd of this month, at a highly competitive price for its performance level.