AMD released an untimely Catalyst 10.8b Hotfix driver specifically targeted at users of the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 and HD 4850 X2 graphics cards on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. The new driver claims to improve multi-GPU performance scaling, and improves image-quality in Tom Clancy H.A.W.X. 2 by forcing anisotropic filtering from ATI Catalyst Control Center.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 10.8b Hotfix

AMD's Phenom II TWKR 42 quad-core CPU was made with only one objective: to deliver record-setting CPUs to more professional overclockers than thought was possible. Having rolled out at least 100 units, AMD opened a door for several world-record attempts. Some of the most important ones took place at the SF3D OC Gathering in Finland. The new world record the group of overclockers put up was 7.00 GHz. The record was attempted on a DFI LANParty 790FXB-M3eH7 motherboard, and involved (from what the validation page shows) a bus speed of 250 MHz, and 28.0x bus multiplier. Its voltage remains a secret-sauce.

Other highlights include a run of 3DMark06 with the CPU clocked at 6.54 GHz, on a different bench. 3DMark06 tests the stability of this clock speed, as the test includes the CPU test score. The bench was aided by two ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 GPUs in CrossFireX mode. The same bench was used for a run of 3DMark05, with the CPU clocked at 6.67 GHz. This time however, the CPU test was not part of the score.

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.

Advanced Micro Devices has slashed the manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP) of its ATI flagship graphics board, X-bit Labs reports. The new prices come as no surprise to everyone, now that NVIDIA has launched GeForce GTX 295, ATI has to withstand its position, so slashing the prices of ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the first logical move. From now on, ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 with 2GB GDDR5 costs $449, down $100 from the previous price of $549. Moreover, some partners of ATI such as Newegg now offer $50 mail-in rebate for select Radeon HD 4870 X2 models, which immediately precalculates the card's price down to $399. If you're looking for a cheap ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 dual-GPU monster, now is the time.

CoolIT Systems, the leading innovator in liquid cooling technology, announces the Dual Drive Bay VGA Cooler designed to aggressively cool AMD's new ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 Graphics card. The unique form factor enables extreme computing performance for PC Enthusiasts and Gamers. In recent testing, the liquid cooled cards were stably clocked up to 880MHz (13.5% Increase) core clock speed and the GDDR5 memory pushed to 1GHz (11% increase).

Asetek's industry-leading, LCLC liquid cooling solution is now available for AMD's much anticipated multi-GPU cards, the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 family of graphics cards (codenamed R700). The unique, liquid cooling approach is exactly what OEMs need to extract the highest performance from the graphics card and produce top-of-the-line gaming and entertainment products.

"Heat is an 'age-old' problem for computers. However, what once used to be a concern primarily for cutting-edge systems has now become an issue for everyone," says Gary Baum, Asetek's Senior VP of Marketing. "OEMs developing high-performance, low-noise systems require a safe thermal management solution that not only keeps their systems cool, but is easy to install, maintenance free, and most important, is virtually noise free,"

Baum continues: "The days of computers that sound like jet aircraft taking off are over. Our award-winning, LCLC provides worry-free, aggressive thermal management for advanced gaming and graphics-intensive applications-especially those using multiple GPUs like AMD's latest R700-based graphics cards."

AMD today announced the world's fastest graphics card, the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, advancing visual computing ever closer to eye-definition computing gaming and cinematic experiences and delivering a whopping 2.4 teraFLOPS of processing power. Also announced today is the ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 graphics card, delivering blistering performance at a compelling price point.

These cards comprise the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series, combining two ATI Radeon HD 4800 series GPUs with a more advanced cross-GPU connection based on the PCIe 2.0 standard, plus two gigabytes of memory - the most in any currently available consumer graphics card. These technologies combine to make the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series perfectly suited for the most demanding games, able to deliver astonishing frame rates at extreme resolutions and image quality settings.

The capabilities of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series were on display yesterday in New York City, where leading experts from the game development community and Hollywood joined AMD to discuss and demonstrate eye-definition computing computing. Eye-definition computing is the art and science of achieving visual computing experiences that seem optically real. The tremendous computational 2.4 teraFLOPS horsepower of the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series makes computing experiences that approach eye-definition computing possible. The first application of eye-definition computing computing, demonstrated by AMD in New York yesterday, is Cinema 2.0, the fusion of digital people, places and things, rendered with real-time interactivity. Cinema 2.0 shows the power to digitally create interactive environments and characters that seem optically real in either a video game or digital cinema context. With the help of leading content creators, AMD demonstrated the first "virtual" actor to be rendered in real-time in perfect, lifelike detail, via the incredible processing power found in the ATI Radeon HD 4800 X2 series.

The mighty dual GPU ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 monster was spotted today during the QuakeCon 2008 Tournament finals in Dallas. This post comes to bring to your attention that AMD/ATI has finalized the work on the card, and it will hopefully be released sometime next week after the NDA content is over. Enjoy the two pics until then.

With the launch of AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2 flagship knocking at the front door, a couple of hardware sites have managed to get their hands on early engineering samples of the card and post preliminary results, dropping a hint at what's coming next month. From what I saw today, AnandTech and [H]ard|OCP are the first two web sites to drop unofficial benchmark results. PC Perspective and The Tech Report are also among these sites. To make their previews even more interesting they have added performance results from GeForce GTX 280 in SLI and other popular cards that can work in pairs.

Please let us know what you think about ATI's fastest single card.

With the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, codenamed R700, inching towards an August launch, ChipHell released fresh pictures of the R700, these are product images of the card in the form in which it will be sold, all built to order.

Visually, the R700 can be regarded as a black colored R680 (HD 3870 X2). While early shots of the cooler showed it to have a red colored leaf-blower, these shots show a black one. The appearance can be described as: Black PCB, black see-thru cooler cover, black leaf-blower, black heatspreader over the rear-side of the PCB.

I spotted some new nude shots of the upcoming ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics card today and decided to share them with you. Little is known about the card's specs at the time, but what's apparent from the pics is the black PCB, the two 55nm-built RV770 GPUs and the PLX PCI-Express 2.0 bridge chip situated between the GPUs. On both sides of the PCB there are 16 Qimonda GDDR5 chips for a total of 1GB video memory. Also one 6-pin and one 8-pin PCI-E connectors will be needed for proper operation.