Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) launches the latest AMD 890GX chipsets based motherboard family supporting AMD next generation 6-Core CPU with the best visual experience for users. ECS A890GXM-AU and A890GXM-A are powered by ATI Radeon HD 4290 IGP with "ECS 4most Display Design" providing HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI and D-Sub connectors on the rear panel providing great convenience to meet both home entertainment and gaming requirement. For home entertainment, A890GXM-AU and A890GXM-A motherboards bring Full HD 1080P video experience.

For gamers, A890GXM-AU and A890GXM-A support Microsoft DirectX 10.1 with stunning 3D effects. The on-board SidePort DDR3 1333 memory is a great plus on graphics for gamers. It enhances the gaming experience by ATI Hybrid Graphics technology with no doubt. In addition, A890GXM-AU and A890GXM-A assist with ATI CrossFireX technology giving hardcore gamers magnified gaming performance.

TUL concern VTX3D has come up with a new custom-designed graphics card based on the ATI Radeon HD 5830 GPU, aimed at a value-performance price-point. The VTX3D HD 5830 1GB GDDR5 (model no: VX5830 1GBD5-DH), sports a hot-red custom-designed PCB and cooler not seen till date on PowerColor's graphics card (another of TUL's brands). It features 1120 stream processors, 1 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 256-bit wide memory interface, reference AMD clock speeds of 800 MHz (core) and 1000 MHz (memory), and connectivity that includes one each of DVI-D, HDMI, and DisplayPort - sticks to basics. The VTX3D HD 5830 should be priced on par with most base-model graphics cards: around the $220-$230 mark.

A day after releasing the HD 5830 iCooler V series, HIS implemented the same design on the Radeon HD 5870 series. The company is out with HD 5870 iCooler V series graphics card with and without the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 bundle (the only thing that differentiates the model with this bundle, and the base-model). Factory-overclocked variants of these two are designated with a "Turbo" suffix in the model name. The HIS HD 5870 iCooler V uses a custom-designed cooler that's improved from the iCooler IV HIS used on some graphics cards of the previous generation Radeon HD 4890. The cooler makes use of an aluminum fin array cooled by a large centrally-located fan.

While the non-Turbo variants use reference AMD clock speeds of 850 MHz core and 1200 MHz memory, the Turbo models up that to 875 MHz and 1225 MHz, respectively. The cards feature 1 GB of GDDR5 memory, and display connectivity identical to AMD's reference design: two DVI-D, and one each of HDMI and DisplayPort. The pricing and availability aren't known. This goes on to show that with flexibility in design, AMD's AIB partners can come up with common designs to implement across the board with all Radeon HD 5800 series SKUs.

Outside its monthly driver release cycle, AMD released a WHQL-signed driver based on ATI Catalyst 10.2, which adds support for the Radeon HD 5830 graphics processor. It retains the feature-set and bug-fixes packed in Catalyst 10.2, with support for the new GPU being just appended to it. The driver supports Windows XP, Vista, 7, and Linux.

Released yesterday, the ATI Radeon HD 5830 is the cost-effective member of the Radeon HD 5800 series. It is based on the Cypress LE GPU, with 1120 stream processors, 56 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface to connect to 1 GB of memory, apart from the entire feature-set of the Radeon HD 5800 series.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Radeon HD 5830 driver based on Catalyst 10.2 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista | Windows XP

A PCB shot of the upcoming ASUS ROG Ares dual GPU graphics accelerator made it to the media this day. The picture reveals what could be a very complex single-PCB dual-GPU board, with perhaps the strongest VRM to drive the CrossFire-on-board setup. The ROG Ares uses two AMD Cypress GPUs that run at high clock speeds, with even more overclocking potential on offer. The picture reveals that ASUS has made extensive use of digital PWM circuitry, giving each GPU a 4-phase vGPU, 2-phase vMem, and uncore phases. Each zone has its own voltage controller. Power is drawn in from three inputs: two 8-pin and a 6-pin, though the tracks show that the PCB is capable of using three 8-pin inputs. At source, the inputs are fused as a surge-protective measure.

Each GPU is wired to 16 GDDR5 memory chips, 8 on each side of the PCB. The PCB itself is roughly an inch taller than full-height addon-cards. Display connectivity includes one each of DVI-D, DisplayPort, and HDMI connectors. The lone CrossFire finger provides CrossFireX support with another Ares card - or probably other Radeon HD 5800 series products. ASUS in a statement says that all heat-producing components other than the GPU - VRM chips and memory - will be cooled by a copper heatspreader that covers almost all such components. Each VRM chip gets its own copper heatsink. These parts will be anodized in red for the black+red livery characteristic to the ROG series. Earlier, a CAD drawing of the cooling assembly made news.

TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer of AMD graphics cards, announced a factory overclocked graphics solution addition to the HD5000 series: the PowerColor PCS+ HD5830. The newest addition fills the market demand for great performance at a reasonable price. The new HD5830 embraces the PCS+ series, equipped with superior factory overclocked ability that clocks in at 825MHz core / 1050MHz memory speed, delivering the immersive gaming performance.

The PCS+ HD5830 also features a superior silent and efficient cooling solution. With a 92mm ultra cooling fan and 4 pure core heat pipes, this special cooling design can easily dissipate heat from its cooper base that fully covers the GPU in a lower fan speed, efficiently cools down the temperature in a silent setting.

SAPPHIRE Technology has just released two Special Edition graphics cards bundled with the highly acclaimed game Call of Duty - Modern Warfare 2.

The SAPPHIRE HD 5830 is a new graphics card based on the latest 40nm graphics architecture from the ATI division of AMD. It features 1120 stream processors and 56 texture units. With its core clocks of 800MHz and DDR5 memory with speeds of 1000MHz (4GHz effective), it represents a new value proposition in the successful HD 5800 series.

AMD today introduced the ATI Radeon HD 5830 graphics card, bringing gamers the cutting-edge features and performance of the award-winning ATI Radeon HD 5800 series at a lower price than ever before at less than $250 USD. With the introduction of the ATI Radeon HD 5830, gamers have another great choice in graphics hardware, with full support for DirectX 11 gaming, ATI Eyefinity technology, and ATI Stream capabilities.

"The ATI Radeon HD 5830 graphics card makes enthusiast-level performance even more accessible to gamers, adding another compelling choice to the award-winning ATI Radeon HD 5800 series," said Matt Skynner, vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics Division. "Cutting-edge features such as full DirectX 11 support, ATI Eyefinity multi-display capabilities and ATI Stream technology position the ATI Radeon HD 5830 graphics card to become a favorite with the gaming community."

About a month ago, it surfaces that ASUS was working on a limited-edition extreme high-end graphics accelerator that uses two Radeon HD 5870 GPUs, in essence an overclocked custom-design Radeon HD 5970, called the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Ares. The Ares builds on the legacy of the ROG Mars. It uses two AMD Cypress GPUs with 1600 stream processors, each, core and memory clock speeds on par with that of the Radeon HD 5870 (850 MHz / 1200 MHz), and double the amount of memory (2 GB per GPU, 4 GB on the card).

A CAD drawing of the Ares surfaced on Plaza.fi, which shows a single-PCB accelerator. The cooling design borrows a little from that of NVIDIA's second edition GeForce GTX 295, in having a centrally located blower that drives air onto copper GPU blocks on its either sides. The cooler assembly, however, seems much larger at 2.5 slots' thickness. ASUS also claims that the fan will be quieter on load than AMD's reference HD 5970 leaf-blower. A table given out lists its important specifications, which shows it to have the same clock speeds as the single-GPU Radeon HD 5870 (850/1200 MHz), versus those of the HD 5970 (725/1000 MHz), twice the amount of GDDR5 memory, and results of an internally conducted 3DMark Vantage benchmark which shows a 28.2% increment over the HD 5970 on the Ares. The card is powered by three PCI-Express power connectors (8-pin + 8-pin + 6-pin), and may have significantly higher power draw. It has also been designed for record-setting scores in graphics benchmark competitions. Being a limited edition product, we expect productions in the tens of hundreds only. If the price of ROG Mars is anything to go by, this one will be an expensive product, too.

American retailer Newegg.com has started listing Gigabyte's GA-890GPA-UD3H motherboard, one of the first motherboards based on the AMD 890GX + SB850 chipset. This socket AM3 motherboard boasts of native SATA 6 Gb/s support, USB 3.0, Radeon HD 4250 integrated graphics, at a price of $139.99. The GA-890GPA-UD3H supports socket AM3 AMD Athlon II and Phenom II series processors, including support for the upcoming Phenom II X6 six-core processors. It also supports dual-channel DDR3 memory at speeds of over 1866 MHz by overclocking. Expansion slots include two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x8/x8 when both are populated), three PCI-E x1, and two PCI, bringing CrossfireX support. The SB850 gives out six SATA 6 Gb/s ports with RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, 10, and JBOD modes. An NEC-made USB 3.0 controller also provides two USB 3.0 ports. The IGP connects to displays over D-Sub, DVI, and HDMI. Presumably, this could be the starting point for more AMD 890GX based motherboards to reach stores world over.

AMD has started shipping its 8-core and 12-core "Magny Cours" Opteron processors for sockets G34 (2P-4P+), and C32 (1P-2P). The processors mark entry of several new technologies for AMD, such as a multi-chip module (MCM) approach towards increasing the processor's resources without having to complicate chip design any further than improving on those of the Shanghai and Istanbul. The new Opteron chips further make use of third-generation HyperTransport interconnect technologies for 6.4 GT/s interconnect speeds between the processor and host, and between processors on multi-socket configurations. It also embraces the Registered DDR3 memory technology. Each processor addresses memory over up to four independent (unganged) memory channels. Technologies such as HT Assist improve inter-silicon bandwidth on the MCMs. The processors further benefit from 12 MB of L3 caches on board, and 512 KB of dedicated L2 caches per processor core.

In the company's blog, the Director of Product Marketing for Server/Workstation products, John Fruehe, writes "Production began last month and our OEM partners have been receiving production parts this month." The new processors come in G34/C32 packages (1974-pin land-grid array). There are two product lines: the 1P/2P capable (cheaper) Opteron 4000 series, and 2P to 4P capable Opteron 6000 series. There are a total of 18 SKUs AMD has planned some of these are listed as followed, with OEM prices in EUR:

AMD's ATI add-in-board partners (AIBs) will be ready with non-reference design graphics cards based on the Radeon HD 5830 GPU as soon as the GPU is announced, on the 25th, later this month. A few of them are pictured below. Not all of them seemed to be factory-overclocked, but do seem so come with impressive GPU coolers. To begin with, Gigabyte reused its Radeon HD 5870 SuperOverclock design for its HD 5830 card, which boasts of Ultra Durable VGA construction (2 oz copper layer PCB, ferrite core chokes, low RDS (on) MOSFETs, and "Tier 1 GDDR5 memory chips").

Next up, is the Sapphire HD 5830. Its board design resembles non-reference design HD 5850 accelerators. PowerColor joins the league with a PCS+ HD 5830 right away. Again, a reuse of its PCS+ board for HD 5850 and HD 5870. While the card by HIS isn't pictured, its box shot shows that the company will offer a Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 game bundle with its HD 5830. XFX also has its box pictured.

MAINGEAR Computers, award-winning builders of high performance custom computers, is proud to announce the Relief for Haiti Charity Auction in benefit of Save the Children to help support the victims of the earthquake in Haiti. This special edition SHIFT will feature one of the last remaining AMD Phenom II X4 TWKR processors, of which only a few dozen were made. The last time one of these processors went up for sale on eBay for charity, it went for over $10,000 - just for the CPU. For this charity event MAINGEAR is building a whole computer around it with signed hardware and software from industry partners including Microsoft, Valve, SilverStone, Kingston, and Psyko Audio.

"We're thrilled that so many of our industry partners leapt at the opportunity to support this cause." said Wallace Santos, CEO and Founder of MAINGEAR. "With AMD's TWKR, this is truly a special system and it should generate a significant donation to Save the Children's worthy cause."

AMD's new performance graphics card that targets an upper-mainstream price-point, the Radeon HD 5830, is slated for February 25. A set of company slides sourced by IT168.com shows the GPU's specifications are in tune with what we expected. The HD 5830 is based on AMD's Cypress 40 nm GPU. It has 1120 stream processors, a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, 16 ROPs, 56 TMUs, and clock speeds of 800 MHz (core) and 1000 MHz (memory). The memory bandwidth on the card is 128 GB/s, on par with that of the Radeon HD 5850. The core clock speed is slightly higher, too.

With a GPU of these specifications, AMD targets the market price-range of $200-$250, where there's room for a DirectX 11 generation graphics card to be positioned between the Radeon HD 5770 and Radeon HD 5850. The maximum board power of the card is slightly higher than that of the HD 5850, but we think that's because reference designs - if there are - might not use high-grade digital PWM circuitry. That typically shouldn't affect overclocking headroom a big deal.

Combining the highly successful HD 5000 series graphics architecture with its award winning Vapor-X cooling technology, SAPPHIRE Technology is now shipping two new graphics cards - the SAPPHIRE HD 5850 TOXIC Edition and the SAPPHIRE HD 5850 Vapor-X model.

The SAPPHIRE HD 5850 TOXIC Edition and the SAPPHIRE HD 5850 Vapor-X models are both SAPPHIRE original designs based on the latest 40nm graphics architecture from the ATI division of AMD. Both models feature 1440 stream processors and 72 texture units delivering the fastest performance in class as well as supporting ATI Stream technology. They support the advanced graphical features of DirectX 11, and deliver spectacular video clarity, speed and visual effects, including over multiple monitors whilst working at lower operating temperatures and significantly more quietly because of the SAPPHIRE award winning Vapor-X cooling technology.

AMD's Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 Edition, a special variant of the Radeon HD 5870, is slated for release on the 11th of March, according to a recent report. The Eyefinity6 Edition makes use of the six TMDS signal lines of Radeon HD 5870 to drive six display-heads. On the connectivity front, there are six mini-DisplayPort connectors. Using the included dongles, the card can connect to six displays with full-HD resolution, which can then be merged using the ATI Eyefinity technology to form one or more Eyefinity display-heads. The GPU and memory use reference clock speeds of 850/1200 MHz (core/memory), while there is 2 GB of GDDR5 memory on board.

The other AMD product that AMD will be releasing a little sooner is the Radeon HD 5830, a performance-segment graphics card that aims at a sweet-spot price of somewhere between $150~$250, delivering performance in existing applications on par or better than the Radeon HD 4890, but with a lot more future-proofing, DirectX 11 compliance, Eyefinity support, and lower target energy draws. We expect the Radeon HD 5830 to have 1120 stream processors, and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory, and clock speeds of 800/1000 MHz (core/memory). The market release of Radeon HD 5830 and Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 are strategically timed to coincide with those of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 400 series graphics cards.

AMD released the ATI Catalyst version 10.2 driver suite, as promised in a press release earlier today. Catalyst 10.2 is one of two important releases by AMD that add to its products' overall feature-set, among the usual baggage of application-specific and generic fixes. Feature additions are as follows:

• ATI Catalyst application profiles for ATI CrossFireX supported configurations
• ATI Catalyst support for PowerPlay on ATI CrossFireX technology supported configurations
• Support for DisplayPort audio
• Support for ATI CrossFireX on Eyefinity configurations

In addition, there are application-specific performance improvements:

ASUS seems to be ready with one of its first motherboards based on the AMD 890GX chipset. This socket AM3 series of motherboards seems to come in two variants: M4A89GTD Pro and M4A89GTD Pro USB3 (with the latter having support for USB 3.0 SuperSpeed connectivity. An early development version of this motherboard was displayed at this year's CES event. Fresh pictures show a production-grade model, complete with chipset and VRM cooling, as well as a box design.

The M4A89GTD Pro / USB3 is a socket AM3 motherboard with a 10-phase CPU VRM supporting future AMD CPUs with 140W TDP, 2-phase memory VRM powering the four DDR3 DIMM slots, AMD 890GX chipset with faster DirectX 10.1 compliant graphics, and AMD SB800 southbridge. The SB800 provides six SATA 6 Gb/s ports, while an additional JMicron-made controller gives out the IDE connector (and possibly the lone eSATA port). Expansion slots include two PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots (x8/x8 when both are populated), two PCI, and one each of PCI-E x1 and PCI-E x4. Connectivity includes 8+2 channel HD audio with optical SPDIF output, gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0 ports (on the USB3 variant), FireWire, and display connectivity including DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI. The M4A89GTD Pro / USB3 is expected to be launched a little ahead of AMD's launch of its six-core Phenom II X6 processors.

AMD's upcoming six-core desktop processor, the Phenom II X6, will introduce a new feature to the Phenom II series, currently known as "C-state performance boost". The feature gives the processor control over individual cores' power states, and the ability to gate power down completely a core. The remaining active core(s), will then be overclocked beyond the normal clock speeds, so that low-power operation with reduced parallel computing load goes on with much lesser energy consumption.

Features such as C-state performance boost and 'power-gating' is relatively new for AMD processors. The two were originally expected to be introduced with AMD's 32 nm "Llano" Fusion APUs. AMD's Phenom II X6 is expected to be released in May 2010, its architecture is derived from the six-core "Istanbul" Opteron processors, albeit in the socket AM3 package that supports dual-channel DDR3 memory. There are as many as four models in the works for an initial release. Known details of these can be found here.

Lenovo today announced three new PCs for consumers - the Lenovo G455 and G555 notebooks and the Lenovo C315 all-in-one desktop - all based on the AMD platform featuring innovative Lenovo software to improve the overall computing experience. Designed for mainstream consumers, they support up to the latest AMD Turion and Athlon processors and ATI graphics. With Lenovo applications such as OneKey Rescue System and Energy Management on the G455 and G555 and IdeaTouch multitouch applications on the C315, these new PCs deliver affordable, dual-core, worry-free computing.

"Our new G series notebooks and C series all-in-one desktop are designed for users who want a simple but powerful computing experience without any headaches," said Dion Weisler, vice president, Business Operations, Lenovo. "By working closely with AMD engineers and leveraging AMD advanced technologies, we have created products that offer superior performance in the areas of graphics and power efficiency at an affordable price point."

ASUS is readying a new factory-overclocked, custom-design graphics card based on the ATI Radeon HD 5870 GPU, likely named the EAH5870-TOP. The company is also readying the Radeon HD 5850 based EAH5850 DirectCu. While the EAH5870-TOP is expected to have high out of the box clock speeds, a higher performance sporty-looking cooler, the EAH5850 DirectCu relies on a more function-centric cooler design that boasts of being 35% quieter and 20% cooler [than reference AMD cooler]. Further details, such as clock speeds are not known, but it is expected that ASUS will release these during CeBIT 2010, later this quarter.

AMD today announced that it has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, under which the Ministry will award a five-year grant of $56.4 million CAD ($52.8M USD) to AMD Canada under Ontario's Next Generation of Jobs Fund. The grant is expected to fund R&D activities by AMD's Markham-based engineers in the development of its upcoming AMD Fusion family of processors, related software infrastructure and integrated computing platforms. Ontario expects to make its initial investment of $11.2 million CAD to AMD upon signing the formal agreement, with periodic payments occurring thereafter throughout the grant period.

In turn, AMD will commit to substantially invest in AMD Fusion processor-related R&D activities in Markham, and retain and create hundreds of high-value R&D jobs during the grant time frame. AMD also plans to increase collaborative activities with local universities.

AMD, in its presentation at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2010, presented its plan to build its much talked about 'Fusion' processor platform, codenamed Llano, central to which, is the Accelerated Processing Unit (APU). AMD's APU is expected to be the first design to embed a multi-core x86 CPU and a GPU onto a single die. This design goes a notch ahead of Intel's recently released 'Clarkdale' processor, where Intel strapped a 32 nm dual-core CPU die and a 45 nm northbridge die with integrated graphics, onto an MCM (multi chip module) package. Llano is also expected to feature four processing cores, along with other design innovations.

Some of the most notable announcements in AMD's presentation is that the company will begin sampling the chip to its industry partners within the first half of 2010. The Llano die will be build on a 32 nm High-K Metal Gate process. On this process, each x86 core will be as small as 9.69 mm². Other important components on the Llano die are a DDR3 memory controller, on-die northbridge, and a DirectX 11 compliant graphics core derived from the Evergreen family of GPUs. The x86 cores are expected to run at speeds of over 3 GHz. Each core has 1 MB of dedicated L2 cache, taking the total chip cache size to 4 MB.

SAPPHIRE Technology is now shipping a new family of graphics cards in the highly successful HD 5000 series. The SAPPHIRE HD 5570 is a new low profile model aimed at the mainstream market, whist sharing many of the exciting features of the latest high end series.

The SAPPHIRE HD 5500 series is based on the latest graphics architecture from the ATI division of AMD, the second generation of GPU to be built in its 40nm process. It supports the advanced graphical features of Microsoft DirectX 11, and delivers superb video clarity and visual effects, whilst consuming very low power levels.

TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer of AMD graphics cards, today introduces the graphics for HD gaming and advanced home entertainment: PowerColor HD5500 series. Compatible with all the latest features, HD5500 series takes advantage of DirectX 11 technology and makes incredible visual realism possible for all popular HD games and Blu-Ray. HD 5500 series will enhance your home entertainment experience and you can be environmentally friendly at the same time with a card that consumes less than 45 watts under full load.

Also, PowerColor includes a special version in the latest HD5500 series lineup, HD5570 low profile edition. With a single-slot low profile design, HD5570 low profile edition enables smooth frame rates at HD setting, delivers vivid HD experience while watching Blu-Ray videos and other HD contents. It is the best choice for small form factor and home theater PCs.