Advanced Micro Devices today announced it has been named to CRO Magazine's "100 Best Corporate Citizens" list for 2009. AMD secured the #46 ranking. CRO's 100 Best Corporate Citizens List is the only list based on 100% publicly-available information and ranks Russell 1000 companies on their performance in seven key areas: Environment, Climate Change, Human Rights, Philanthropy, Employee Relations, Financial and Governance. AMD's highest scores came in the areas of environment, climate change and human rights. This is AMD's second award this year honoring the company's efforts in the area of corporate responsibility. In January, AMD was named for the third consecutive year to the 2009 Global 100 Most Sustainable Companies in the World list. The annual Global 100, unveiled each year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, is a list of role models in sustainable business practices.

During CeBIT, MSI showcased two AMD 790GX motherboards that combine support for both DDR2 and DDR3 on the same board. Although both the MSI 790GX-8D and the MSI P45-8D are designed for different platforms, the enormous RAM capacity support - both offer four DDR2 slots and four DDR3 memory slots - makes them really unique. The AM3 board 790GX-8D featuring the 790GX chipset, supports DDR2-1066 or DDR3-1333 RAM. It is also capable of supporting socket AM2+ processors with DDR2 RAM. Moreover, the 790GX-8D allows overclockers to increase the RAM frequencies at any time using an onboard control dial. Users can even erase the CMOS RAM with the touch of a Reset button or switch into power saving mode by pressing the "Green Power" button. The board offers two PCIe x16 slots, two PCIe x1 slots, and a vanilla PCI slot.
As for the P45-8D, this motherboard makes use of Intel's P45 +ICH10/ICH10R chipset and supports Intel's 45nm and 65nm Core 2 (Extreme) processors. The board has one PCIe x16 slot, one PCIe Gen2 (1x16) slot, one PCIe x1 slot, and three vanilla PCI slots. The P45-8D should be widely available already, while the MSI 790GX-8D AM3 child is still unavailable.
MSI nicknamed the boards - "Memory Lover".

AMD today introduced the ATI FirePro 2450, a low profile quad display graphics accelerator that consumes minimal power, delivering exceptional power efficiency. Designed to operate at less than 18 watts, the new graphics accelerator is another example of AMD's leadership in energy efficiency.
"The ATI FirePro 2450 offers the reliability professionals expect and the efficiency IT departments require. IT managers want a card they can test once, deploy virtually anywhere, and count on to run reliably," said Janet Matsuda, senior director, AMD Professional Graphics. "The low power consumption enables cool, energy-efficient operation, as well as superior reliability and longevity. The compact form factor can be deployed in nearly any system. This accelerator is perfect for customers who need more than two displays, such as in financial services and process control."

AMD is attempting to revive its competitiveness that took a beating with NVIDIA's introduction of 55 nm G200b-based graphics accelerators. The method AMD seems to be adopting is by giving its existing flagship GPU, the RV770, a series of design improvements that facilitate higher clock-speeds, in turn, better performance on offer.

A lot has been said about RV790 till date, with each commentator coming up with a new version of the story. It has been more or less established that the RV790 will be a improvement over the RV770, though not a revolutionary one. Fresh information gathered by PC Games Hardware places a realistic estimate on up to where RV790 is going to push the performance envelope for AMD.

Yet to be released worldwide, the Kabuto CPU cooler by Scythe made an appearance on the company's Japanese website. It is designed to be a high performance stock-cooler replacement for Intel sockets x478, LGA-775, and LGA-1366. All AMD desktop sockets since s754 are supported.

Measuring 124 mm (l) x 133 mm (w) x 132 mm (h), the cooler seems like a complex work of metal: A CPU contact block doubles up as a small heatsink. From it, arise six copper heatpipes. The heatpipes, in groups of two, convey heat to three independent aluminum fin stacks. A 120 mm PWM-controlled fan, operating at speeds of around 1300 rpm blows air onto the three fin stacks. At those speeds, its noise levels remain around 26.5dBA. The cooler tips the scales at 730 g (around 1.6 lbs). It remains to be seen when Scythe announces this cooler worldwide.

AMD's graphics product group, the core division that handles the company's ATI graphics and AMD chipset product lines, is said to be engaging in a reshuffling of its add-in board partners (AIBs). These are companies that manufacture and/or sell ATI Radeon-based graphics cards. With the recent success of the Radeon HD 4000 series graphics processors, the company added two more popular AIBs: Pine Group (XFX Graphics) and Gainward, a subsidiary of Palit.

Inter-AIB competition meant that a few weaker, non-performing AIBs have come to light, which AMD is reportedly contemplating breaking partnership with. GeCube is the first brand. GeCube is the channel-vendor brand for InfoTek Corp, a manufacturing partner for AMD GPG. Speculation is rife about hardware giant ASUS also being in the league. The most plausible explanation is poor sales figures.

On the other hand, a Chinese company that is relatively unknown to the Western markets yet not new to selling graphics cards, Colorful is joining AMD's league as an AIB.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES, a new leading-edge semiconductor foundry formed by a joint venture between AMD and Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), today announced key additions to its management team that bring extensive semiconductor experience to the table. Joining GLOBALFOUNDRIES Chief Executive Officer Doug Grose and Chairman of the Board Hector Ruiz are:

• Jim Doran as senior vice president and general manager of Fab 1, the company's current primary manufacturing facility in Dresden, Germany
• Bruce McDougall as chief financial officer
• Alexie Lee as vice president and general counsel

GLOBALFOUNDRIES, a new leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing company formed by a joint venture between AMD and the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), today announced its official launch and outlined plans to drive profound change and expand opportunities in the semiconductor industry. GLOBALFOUNDRIES is led by an experienced semiconductor management team, including CEO Doug Grose, formerly senior vice president of manufacturing operations at AMD, and Chairman of the Board Hector Ruiz, formerly executive chairman and chairman of the board at AMD. The Company is the only U.S. based global semiconductor foundry and commences operations with approximately 3,000 employees worldwide with headquarters in Silicon Valley.

ATI's CrossFire multi-GPU technology started off on the Intel platform with ATI's own brand of chipset before AMD acquired the company. AMD/ATI then allowed CrossFire and the succeeding CrossFireX standards to be supported by Intel chipsets. The only current chipset platform that doesn't support CrossFire is the NVIDIA nForce series, which as ASRock demonstrated during the ongoing CeBIT event, breaks the dogma.

ASRock devised a BIOS for its nForce 740i based N7AD-SLI motherboard that enables support for CrossFire. AMD's Catalyst drivers were able to detect the motherboard as a qualified platform and enable CrossFire between two installed ATI Radeon accelerators. The setup was able to show performance increments during a 3DMark06 session. ASRock is reportedly working out similar BIOS firmware for several other motherboards made by it, and wants to enable CrossFire, CrossFireX for all its nForce motherboards.

Following the big announcement AMD made today, the company has appointed Bruce Claflin as Chairman of its Board of Directors. Mr. Claflin replaces Hector Ruiz, who retired from AMD's Board in conjunction with assuming the position of Chairman of the Board of "The Foundry Company". Mr. Claflin has been a member of AMD's Board of Directors since August, 2003. The AMD Board also appointed Waleed Al Mokarrab to the Board. Mr. Al Mokarrab is chief operating officer of Mubadala Development Company. Dirk Meyer continues in his role as president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the AMD Board of Directors.
"Bruce Claflin brings a wealth of business experience that applies directly to the challenges and opportunities relevant to our company," said Meyer. "We are also honored to welcome Waleed Al Mokarrab to the Board. His experience in business development across a broad range of industries will be an invaluable asset to AMD."

AMD today announced it has closed its Asset Smart strategic transaction with the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) and Mubadala Development Company of Abu Dhabi, setting the stage for the formal launch of the world's only U.S.-headquartered semiconductor foundry, temporarily called "The Foundry Company." The Foundry Company is expected to formally launch and disclose its new name and visual identity later this week.
AMD received $700 million from ATIC for a portion of its ownership interests in The Foundry Company, The Foundry Company assumed responsibility for the repayment of approximately $1.1 billion of associated AMD debt, and Mubadala paid AMD approximately $125 million1 for 58 million newly issued AMD shares and warrants for 35 million additional shares.

AMD and Seagate are set to demonstrate the new 6 Gbps SATA storage device interface. The companies will hold the demo today, in New Orleans, USA. Although not a player in the enterprise storage controller market, AMD is using this demo to exhibit the kind of technology that will go into its future chipset. The company already has plans to build chipset for its own current-generation Opteron processors.

Seagate, on the other hand, is a large player in the hard drive industry, enterprise storage included. The company notes that SATA 6 Gbps will benefit solid-state drives before they can significantly help conventional hard-drives. "Flash will take advantage [of the new interface], in applicable markets, sooner than you think," said Marc Noblitt, senior marketing I/O development manager for Seagate. "Six-gig is a perfect interface. OEMs tell us that they want to have the same SATA interface for flash as for a 1.8-inch rotating drive, so they can swap in a drive for flash, or vice versa." he added.

After spinning off its manufacturing division to The Foundry Co., AMD is left with all the engineering resources it needs to make processors. Contradicting older roadmap slides by the company predicting it would start selling 32 nm processors in 2011, Dirk Meyer, CEO of AMD in an interview with Information Week said that the company is on-track to ship smaller, more powerful processors built on the 32 nm manufacturing process by 2010.

The new manufacturing process would allow the chip maker to step up transistor counts to add more features and computational power. Tomorrow, on March 2, the AMD is expected to close the deal with Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) of Abu Dhabi to form The Foundry Company (TFC). This would render AMD fabless. The company will then, like other fabless market heavyweights such as NVIDIA and VIA, will focus on designing processors, while TFC, its largest foundry partner will manufacture the processors. Currently AMD is tied up with foundry companies such as TSMC and UMC for manufacturing products of its Graphics Products Group, products such as GPUs and chipset.

AMD will be an year behind larger market rival Intel in selling processors built on the 32 nm technology. Intel plans to roll out 32 nm processors by Q4 2009. AMD's designs will be ready by mid-2010, following which volume production of its 32 nm chips will commence by Q4 2010.

AMD updated today its AMD OverDrive utility to version 2.1.6. This little program specially designed for AMD platforms, enables easy overclocking from Windows, can monitor the temps of your system, and finally can serve as torture test if you want to check your system for stability. Download it, if you need it.

DOWNLOAD: AMD OverDrive 2.1.6

Earlier this week, an article by a Korean computer enthusiast made waves across the internet. The enthusiast found a simple way to unlock the rudimentary core on Phenom II X3 processors, thanks to what AMD now refers to as "buggy BIOS". The article was followed up extensively by global media confirming the procedure. The result: sales of Phenom II X3 processors are seeing an upsurge.

Who wouldn't want to spend $150~170 on a triple-core processor that can be converted to a $200+ worth quad-core chip with decent levels of performance and overclocking headroom? AMD now has a tricky situation at hand. It can cash in on the demand and let the sales stay, but unfortunately, its planning went south looking for Greenland. The company has reporedly asked motherboard vendors to fix the "buggy BIOS". Ironically, in the wake of the DigiTimes report about upsurge in demand, AMD gave another statement, saying that the value Phenom II X3 processors offer speaks for itself.

The ability of AMD's Phenom II X3 processors dole out an additional core thanks to flaws in BIOS programming, has been one of the most interesting events in the computer enthusiast industry this month. A simple toggle of an option would unlock the disabled core, appreciating the value of the processor. It was earlier known that only chips belonging to 0904 (fourth week of 2009) batch of the processors would be able to respond to the mod successfully, but now, a fresh finding by German website Hartware.net suggests that even chips made in the 51st week of 2008 batch responded to the mod, and the fourth core could be enabled. Hartware.net used Biostar's TA790GX A2+ motherboard for the feat.

Meanwhile, the only entity that stands to lose due to this rather bizarre "phenomenon" has stepped in. AMD has reportedly requested motherboard manufacturers to not to release motherboards with the "buggy" BIOS, and to devise a fix for the issue immediately. Manufacturers are requested to release fixed BIOS updates. Evidently Phenom II X3 could cannibalize higher quad-core chips by the firm. The company is yet to release an DDR3-supportive quad-core chip based on the Deneb core with the entire 6 MB cache enabled.

After showing us working samples of the first six-core "Istanbul" server chips, AMD today hosted some information on its blog regarding the work process on the chips. "The silicon is healthy and we're targeting a launch in 2H09," AMD spokesperson Jake Whitman said Tuesday. "The new 6-core version of the AMD Opteron processor is scheduled to be available in the second half of this year, and it is everything we had hoped for - and more." added John Fruehe from AMD, on his blog.
With the release of "Istanbul" server chips, AMD will try to catch up with Intel and its six-core "Dunnington" processor for servers. The Socket 1207 Istanbul chips will offer an easy upgrade from current 45nm quad-core Shanghai Opterons, while still maintaining the same thermal envelope with even more cores per processor. To watch videos of "Istanbul" in action left click here.

An unexpected visitor to Guru3D.com's offices was a pre-release sample of a yet to be released 40 nm RV740-based Radeon HD 4750 graphics accelerator. Not bound by any NDAs with AMD, the website went ahead with a little (p)review of the card. The HD 4750 is the RV740XT model, and features GDDR5 memory. The name contradicts an earlier report suggesting HD 4770 to be the shelf-name for the RV740XT, and HD 4750 for the GDDR3-based RV740Pro. It features 640 stream processors, core clock speeds between 650~700 MHz and GDDR5 memory clocked at 800 MHz (3.20 GHz effective), across a 128-bit wide memory bus. The RV740XT comes with a rated shader compute power of 900 GFLOPs, as against 740 GFLOPs the RV770LE-based HD 4830 is rated at, while having similar specifications. It comes with 32 TMUs and 16 ROPs.

The findings of the preview show it to be somewhere between the performance levels of the Radeon HD 4830 and HD 4850. Interestingly, Guru3D omitted GeForce 8800 GT/9800 GT from the comparison, though GeForce 9600 GT was left to face the onslaught from stronger ATI GPUs. The Radeon HD 4750 is expected to be priced below the $100 mark and is expected to outperform most competitive accelerators in its price-range. To read the review, head over to Guru3D here.

Known to be an innovative lot when it comes to designing graphics cards, Palit has quitely slipped in a new variant to its Radeon HD 4850 series: the Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic Special Edition. What makes this card special, or rather different from the HD 4850 Sonic, are its memory and connectivity options. This is perhaps the first and only Radeon HD 4850 accelerator with GDDR5 memory. The card features 512 MB of GDDR5 memory across a 256-bit wide bus.

It uses an identical dual-slot cooler design to that of the HD 4850 Sonic. If the faster memory wasn't incentive enough, Palit has also expanded the connectivity options. The card provides a DVI, D-Sub (analog), HDMI and DisplayPort connectors all on the card. Owing to the Sonic branding, the card definitely sports higher clock-speeds than what AMD specifies. Further blurring the line between this card and a Radeon HD 4870, is its requirement of two 6-pin PCI-E power inputs. We are in the process of finding out its exact clock speeds, price and a larger picture.

The ability to unlock the disabled core on Phenom II X3 processor draws parallels with the days when one could soft-mod a NV40-based GeForce 6800 XT to higher models. An article by Korean website Playwares made waves on the internet yesterday, which suggested a very easy method to unlock the disabled core on Phenom II X3. Several users have been able to verify and confirm the method works. While Playwares used a Biostar-made motherboard, people with ACC-supportive motherboards from several makes have been able to get the mod to work. Motherboard vendors performed their own testing to confirm this method, and have had some success so far.

The success of this mod however, depends on a few factors:

• The disabled core AMD notes to be "unstable", should be fit-enough to be at least enabled and working
• The motherboard should support the Advanced Clock Calibration feature, which currently only motherboards with AMD's SB750 southbridge chip support
• The Phenom II X3 processor should belong to the 0904 manufacturing batch, these should be some of the initial batches of the processor, and may still be found with retailers

It is a well-known fact that AMD has been carving out triple-core and dual-core Phenom/Phenom II series processors out of complete Agena/Deneb dice with one or two cores disabled. In a fresh revelation, a Korean enthusiast claims to have discovered that it is rather easy to unlock the disabled core on Phenom II X3 processors, provided the motherboard supports the Advanced Clock Calibration (ACC) feature that is meant to enhance overclocking using AMD's Overdrive software. The enthusiast claims the soft-mod to have worked in his/her case, where a Phenom II X3 710 was paired with a Biostar TA790GX 128M motherboard. The CPU was overclocked to 3.12 GHz, with a vCore setting of 1.37 V.

The method employed: Set the appropriate BIOS setting for the Advanced Clock Calibration feature to "Auto", save settings and restart. The system will be able to deal with the disabled core, and off load some work to it. The processor with the "additional" core was tested to be Prime95 stable and was able to boost 3DMark06 CPU score by as much as 1,000 points. Let the screenshots below speak for themselves:
The method:

It is clear now, that AMD's next performance GPU, the RV790 will be built on the 55 nm manufacturing process. To build on this information, sources tell German website Hardware-Infos that one of the factors that will help the new GPU perform better and run at higher clock-speeds than its predecessor, the RV770 does, is the newer improved 55 nm manufacturing process it will be built on. Going by the foundry-partner codename "55GT", the RV790 may get a little help from its superior silicon fabrication, which invariably makes it more expensive to manufacture.

One of the reasons behind why AMD is starting its 40 nm GPU lineup with a mainstream GPU such as RV740, is that the 40 nm process needs further development by foundry companies. It hasn't developed to the level that safely permits manufacturing high-end GPUs with stellar transistor-counts. For the same reason, NVIDIA's 40 nm conquest will be flagged off by the entry-level GT218 GPU. High-density circuits built on the current 40 nm process are known to be very prone to electrical leakage.

In yet another overclocking feat using AMD's Phenom II series processors, Team Finland set a new 3DMark06 world-record score of 35,698 3DMarks. The team consisted of renowned overclockers Petri "SF3D" Korhonen Sampsa Kurri and Sami "macci" Mäkinen. The team used AMD's DDR3-supportive AM3 platform and used high-performance DDR3 memory to demonstrate its overclocking capabilities. The bench consisted of:

• AMD Phenom II X4 6187MHz (4500MHz NB) under Dragon F1EE pot, liquid nitrogen cooling
• ASUS M4A79T Deluxe (790FX chipset)
• Corsair XMS3-2133 2x1GB DDR3-1800 CL7-7-7-1T
• 2x Radeon HD 4870 X2 830/950MHz with stock cooling
• Thermaltake Toughpower 1200W

As NordicHardware notes, for the first time in ages, an AMD-platform topped 3DMark06 Hall of Fame, crossing the previous record holder by 150 3DMarks. Validations of the score can be found here. A video of the feat has been posted on YouTube, and can be viewed here.

After a successful shareholder approval AMD received for spinning-off its manufacturing division to form The Foundry Company (TFC) with a majority stake holding by Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), top-brass of the Fab subsidiary in Dresden, German saw a power-shift. Long-standing general manager Hans Deppe left the company, to be succeeded by Jim Doran.

Doran's experience with the subsidiary covering Fab 36 (65 nm SOI capable) and Fab 38 (45 nm SOI capable) includes being its general manager in the past, which made with a contender to the post. The Dresden facilities will officially come under TFC from March 2. While as part of AMD the facilities were dedicated to manufacturing AMD microprocessor parts, under TFC, not only will they serve as foundry-partner for AMD, but also accept designs from other companies seeking manufacture on the facilities TFC offers.

AMD has just released ATI Catalyst version 9.2, so now you have a brand new driver for tonight and a nice tweaking utility to test. Catalyst 9.2 brings performance benefits in several games:

• Crysis DX10 gains up to 20%
• Crysis Warhead DX10 gains up to 20%
• World in Conflict gains up to 5%

Now the new driver also enables Anisotropic Filtering for DirectX 10 applications in Windows Vista and fixes some minor issues that occured in previous versions. For the full list of fixes, please read the Catalyst 9.2 release notes.


DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst version 9.2 for Windows XP and Windows Vista (32/64-bit versions)