AMD has officially unveiled its new Phenom and Phenom FX processor logos (see below). You can all now change your avatars.

After a few tough months for AMD following the release of Intel's new Core 2 Duo processors, sales are finally starting to pick up again for the company. During the second quarter of 2007 AMD is estimated to have gained 2.5% in the CPU market, giving it an overall share of 13.4%of total CPU revenues. Meanwhile, Intel has seen its market share fall by 2%, leaving it with a 78.8% share of revenues, still comfortably ahead of AMD. However, AMD has still lost a 3.1% share of the market compared to this point in 2006, with Intel up by 5.4% year-on-year. The recent improvements for AMD are due to increased shipments of notebook, desktop and server processors following a fall in the average CPU selling price.

Today, AMD announced a limited edition of the X2 6000+ which is rated at TDP of 89W. There is no physical differences between the 125W and 89W 90nm SOI processors, except the new labelling: ADA6000IAA6CZ. Both CPUs operate at 3.0GHz and have 2x 1MB L2 cache. The 89W edition operates 1.3v in contrast to 1.35V on the 125W version.

Gateway, Inc., the nation's third largest PC vendor, will offer the powerful new Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors in its entry-level tower server and complete line of rackmount servers. The new AMD processors feature four cores on one piece of silicon in the same thermal envelopes as the previous generation of dual-core AMD Opteron processors, for an increase in performance without an increase in heat generation.

AMD is planning two new graphics chips, the RV635 and RV620, upgrades of its entry-level and mid-range ATI Radeon HD 2000 series products. The RV635 and RV620 are upgrade versions of the Radeon HD 2400 (R630) and 2600 (R610). The new chips will adopt a 55nm process, compared to 65nm of the previous chips, and will have core frequencies increased to 800MHz. The chips will be manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). In addition, the new video cards will also support DirectX 10.1, Shader Model 4.1 and PCI Express 2.0, while output will be upgraded to include Display Port. AMD schedules to provide EVT (engineering validation test) samples of the RV635 and RV620 chips in October and will launch in January next year. RV635 and RV620 will each come in XT and Pro versions. Although the official market names are not yet set, the cards are likely to be named Radeon HD 2650 and 2500.

AMD today introduced the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, the world's most advanced x86 processor ever designed and manufactured and the first native x86 quad-core microprocessor. Designed from inception for the most demanding datacenters, Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor-based servers from global OEMs and system builders can deliver breakthrough capabilities to customers in a time of dramatically escalating performance-per-watt emphasis.

While Intel is preparing to move on to a 45nm micro-architecture, AMD is preparing true quad-core processors, and working on a quad-graphics card solution. The technology that will allow for four graphics cards to be stuck in one system will be called "QuadFire", and there are no major details out at this time, other than the name and pictures of supporting motherboards. The chipset supporting "QuadFire" is AMD's own RD790, which is pictured below in MSI's K9A2 motherboard. The RD790 is designed to work with a Phenom processor, has six SATA ports, and two E-SATA ports.

Pictures courtesy of OCWorkbench.

It seems as though hardware manufacturers finally got tired of being forced into AMD products if they bought an AMD motherboard, or NVIDIA products if they bought an NVIDIA board. And so, Voodoo PC (owned by HP) decided to fix that. Using an unknown method, Voodoo is giving customers the option to get either CrossFire or SLI in a computer built around an NVIDIA SLI platform.

You can read the full interview, where Voodoo PC discusses the new technology and makes some "rather unflattering" remarks over the Dell XPS here.

AMD today announced that it will hold its Premiere Event for the launch of the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor at approximately 6:30 pm Pacific Time (9:30 pm ET) on Monday, Sept. 10, 2007. The event will be webcast live and can be accessed here. A replay of the webcast can be accessed at this site approximately one hour after the conclusion of the live event and will be available for 10 days after the event. The webcast will also be available at AMD.com.

Fudzilla claims AMD's Suzuka K11 CPU will use desktop socket AM3 and will be the last CPU to support DDR3. Both dual and quad core Suzuka-cored CPUs will be based on 45 nanometer process type with 1MB of L2 cache per core and 6MB of L3 cache.

Barcelona should be available next week and when compared with Intel's Clovertown, Barcelona is 30% faster than Clovertown at floating point instructions. However, at integer instructions, Clovertown is approximately 30% faster than Barcelona. Dell also says they will continue to use AMD processors in their line up to give their customers a variety of choices to choose from.

Today AMD has unleashed a brand new gaming microsite to provide a forum for gamers to communicate, collaborate and stay in tune with the latest developments in PC gaming. Gamers will have the ability to access exclusive game content and contests while customizing aspects of the site to fit every user's preferences. The site is now available on game.amd.com.

AMD plans to launch nine new quad-core processors later this month with clock speeds ranging from 1.7 GHz to 2.0 GHz. The initial launch will only have two thermal bins, 68-Watt and 98-Watt TDP. AMD's two-way capable quad-core Opteron 2300 series launch with five new models. Pricing for the two-way capable models start at around $206 and go up as high as $372. On the multi-way side of things, AMD has four quad-core Opteron 8300 models starting at a $688 entry price all the way up to $1,004. Desktop users will have to wait until Q4 of 2007 for AMD's Phenom to experience quad-core.

HEXUS can confirm that Rick Hegberg, AMD Senior Vice President of World Wide Sales, has resigned from AMD. This is the third time an AMD senior has left in less than two months. Hopefully, more suitable replacements can be found.

Let the pictures do the talk:Click here for more information.

AMD today announced further plans to innovate the x86 architecture by introducing SSE5, a new extension of the x86 instruction set that is designed to allow software developers to simplify code and achieve greater efficiency for the most performance-hungry applications. SSE5 will give developers additional capabilities to help maximize the performance of applications that have daily impact on consumers and enterprises, including high performance computing, multimedia and security applications.

The Inquirer is claiming that they have some benchmark scores to disclose with AMD's K10. They say that it was running on the RD790 chipset, with two HD 2900 XT cards, and some Corsair's Dominator PC2-9136C5D. They clocked it at 3.0 GHz with the video cards clocked at 830 MHz for the GPU and 900MHz for the memory. They ended up with a score of 30,031 in 3DMark06 a new world record if true. They didn't point out what kind of cooling was used, but if it was just your standard heatsink. Expect even higher scores to be reached after their release.

At this year's Games Convention ASUS is showing off their new RD780 M3A-MVP motherboard. It will feature the new Socket AM2+, but it will be able to handle any AM2 CPU along with the new Phenoms. It will also be able to run DDR2 up to 8500 (1066MHz) speeds, and it will feature two PCI-E 2.0 compliant x16 slots.

Henri Richard, AMD's head of sales and marketing, officially turned in his resignation. Henri Richard will stop working for AMD on September Eighth, just two days before the fashionably late Barcelona micro-architecture launches. The Wall Street Journal claims that Richard is leaving AMD to pursue a different career path.

AMD today silently launched its limited "Black Edition" Athlon 64 X2 6400+ with 90nm Windsor core. The product is on sale in Japan at a price of ¥32,000 YEN, equal to around USD $280. The latest Socket AM2 CPU runs at 3.2GHz, and has 2x1MB L2 cache. Manufactured using 90nm SOI technology it has TDP of 125W. All Black Edition labeled CPUs will come without the usual boxed heatsink.

While every hardcore AMD fan awaits the Barcelona and Phenom series of CPUs, AMD is busy making the best out of what it has already. In a Japanese presentation, AMD showed off the Athlon 64 6400+ "Black Edition". This CPU should hit retail markets on August 20th, and should cost anywhere between $220 and $240 USD. The CPU runs on a 90nm process, and is clocked at 3.2GHz.

At the same presentation, AMD demoed a Phenom X4 system at 3GHz in an AMD RD790 motherboard. AMD somehow managed to present this without anyone getting good performance numbers.

AMD today made available a new specification describing "Light-Weight Profiling" (LWP), a technology designed to increase the performance of software applications by providing a mechanism that allows software to more effectively leverage the benefits of multi-core processing. The LWP specification describes the first technology that supports a recently introduced initiative called "Hardware Extensions for Software Parallelism," which will encompass a broad set of innovations designed to improve software parallelism, and thus application performance, through new hardware features in future versions of AMD processors.

With the passable launch date of September 10 there seems two be a couple of problems with the chip and compatibility. It seems that the Dual Dynamic Power Management will not work without a BIOS update, and with a supported motherboard. This is something to be expected from knowing that some features will not be supported on former socket types.

"It seems the CPU itself is capable of engaging in CoolCore operations, but not Dual Dynamic Power Management (formerly "Split Plane," which allowed each core to operate independently with different voltages and clock speeds). It won't be able to handle these power saving and performance enhancing aspects of operations from the core alone. The motherboard must be brought into the mix in an active way to help reduce power consumption and save energy when the many cores are not in high use."

The other issue while not truly being an issue is the 128-bit floating point. There simply isn't any software on the market to take advantage of it. Hearing something like this isn't new to the PC market at all. The 64Bit CPUs are just now starting to see the light after a few years of their release, and Dual core CPUs are also just now starting to be implemented into applications. It's safe to say that the 128-bit floating point technology may take some time before developers start using it.

A few weeks ago, a Digitimes report suggested that AMD had accidentally released a large quantity of broken HD 2400 and HD 2600 cards into the market. This created mass hysteria in the hardware world, and even sparked a mass recall from one manufacturer. However, after the dust settled, AMD and their partners did some investigating. What they found shows that the entire situation was overblown. ASUS representatives say that ASUS has not received a single broken HD 2400/ HD 2600 card. Gigabyte and MSI also have not received broken cards. Most engineers suspect that the idea of a defect/recall came from Acer, who ordered a large quantity of HD 2400 and HD 2600 graphics cards with UVD (Universal Video Decoder) disabled. When news of the UVD "problem" reached the market, the hardware world went hysterical, while Gigabyte, MSI, and ASUS all did internal testing to confirm no problems with the HD 2400 or HD 2600 series.

AMD engineers have a statement to cover the entire HD 2400/HD 2600 fiasco: "Any report claiming that defective HD 2600 and 2400 [cards] are recalled in the channel is completely untrue".

At SIGGRAPH 2007 today, AMD announced five new high-performance ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators for CAD, DCC and medical imaging professionals. The ATI FireGL V8650, FireGL V8600, FireGL V7600, FireGL V5600, and FireGL V3600 graphics boards are based on the next-generation ATI graphics processing unit (GPU) with an innovative unified shader architecture featuring up to 320 individual stream processing units. These new boards deliver acceleration of DirectX 10- and OpenGL 2.1-based professional applications resulting in increased performance of more than 300% as compared to the previous generation of product.