With all the attention the RV790 (Radeon HD 4890) is grabbing as it heads for launch, we almost seem to forget its smaller sibling, the RV740 (Radeon HD 4750) is also in the works. What makes the special, is the fact that it is the industry's first GPU to be built on the 40 nm silicon fabrication process.

A preview of this desktop card surfaced late last month, which showed its performance to sit somewhere between those of the Radeon HD 4830, and HD 4850. With this the company plans to step up the heat against NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT, and is adequately equipped to bear the brunt of a price-war, thanks to the lower manufacturing costs this card brings. German retailer Hardware Schottenland.de has added the first listing of the card, which shows its price set at 129.90 €.

Even amidst fears of the company closing down, GeCube has made it a point to release new products. The latest offering is a passively-cooled Radeon HD 4550 accelerator. The GC-HD4550LP3-E3 is a half-height, HTPC-friendly graphics card which makes do with a heatsink to cool it. The heatsink spans across three quarters of the length of the card.

The card is driven by the 55 nm RV710 GPU which holds 80 stream processors, and a 64-bit wide memory interface to hold 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. The core is clocked at 600 MHz, with the memory at 800 MHz (1600 MHz DDR). DVI and HDMI connectors are located on the card, with a D-Sub connector that extends out. Expect this card to be priced around €50.

GPU-accelerated physics is turning out to be the one part of specifications AMD is yearning for. One of NVIDIA's most profitable acquisitions in recent times, has been that of Ageia technologies, and its PhysX middleware API. NVIDIA went on to port the API to its proprietary CUDA GPGPU architecture, and is now using it as a significant PR-tool apart from a feature that is genuinely grabbing game developers' attention. In response to this move, AMD's initial reaction was to build strategic technology alliance with the main competitor of PhysX: Havok, despite its acquisition by Intel.

In the upcoming Game Developers Conference (GDC) event, AMD may materialize its plans to bring a GPU-accelerated version of Havok, which has till now been CPU-accelerated. The API has featured in several popular game titles such as Half Life 2, Max Payne II, and some other Valve Source-based titles. ATI's Terry Makedon, in his Twitter-feed has revealed that AMD would put forth its "ATI GPU Physics strategy." He also added that the company would present a tech-demonstration of Havok technology working in conjunction with ATI hardware. The physics API is expected to utilize OpenCL and AMD Stream.

AMD has yet again stepped up excitement and anticipation surrounding a product-launch. This time, it's the company's fastest GPU: the RV790, whose single-GPU product, the Radeon HD 4890, is dressing up to go to office between April 6~8 worldwide. Taiwanese tech community website XFastest went found that volumes of the card by AMD partner Gigabyte have already reached a certain store.

The Gigabyte Radeon HD 4890 1 GB (model: GV-R489-1GH-B) is based on AMD's reference design, which has been pictured earlier, and whose early 3DMark performance figures have began surfacing. The card, features 1 GB of GDDR5 memory, which now seems to be the standard amount of memory on the reference design card. The unboxed card has been pictured from a good angle, which gives us a better indication of its length. It is longer than the HD 4870. Another scoop we can bring to you, is that from the first picture of the RV790 GPU that was published by DailyTech, it has been observed that the die is slightly larger than that of the RV770. What makes it larger is not known at this point in time.

AMD today released the latest version of their ATI video driver, Catalyst 9.3. The key addition with this release is official support for Windows 7, in the form of a unified graphics driver for Windows 7 and Windows Vista. As part of supporting Windows 7, Catalyst 9.3 supports WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model) 1.1 for all ATI Radeon HD 4000, HD 3000 and HD 2000 series of graphics cards. According to AMD, "this new WDDM 1.1 support utilizes DirectX 10 rather than DirectX 9 and can cut down your GPU memory usage by half when opening up multiple windows thereby enabling increased performance."

AMD have said the driver brings performance benefits in several cases where framerates are CPU limited and using ATI Stream technology, owners of the ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series, ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series, and ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series of graphics accelerators will see a performance boost in their Folding@Home scores when running the latest Folding@Home client. AMD only documented one performance improvement in the release notes:

• Lost Planet: Colonies gains up to 20% on 4800 series products, and up to 50% on 4600, 4500 and 4300 series products

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst version 9.3 for Windows XP/Vista/7 (32/64-bit versions)

Taiwan-based English tech website OC Heaven has disclosed some performance figures of the upcoming ATI Radeon HD 4890 1 GB graphics accelerator. The tests run are two of the most popular synthetic benchmarks: 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark06. Also disclosed, rather verified, are the card's clock speeds as read by ATI Catalyst Control Center and GPU-Z. The test bed, from what the 3DMark06 window shows, consists of an Intel Core i7 920 CPU running at 2.66 GHz, coupled with 3 GB of system memory. In 3DMark06, the HD 4890 accelerator secured a score of 16,096 points, with SM 2.0 score of 6155, HDR/SM 3.0 score of 7521, and CPU score of 4836. In 3DMark Vantage, it secured a score of P10996. Catalyst Control Center reveals the card's memory bandwidth to be 124.8 GB/s, up from the 111 GB/s on its predecessor, the HD 4870. The early driver in use makes provides "RV790" as the device string to GPU-Z.

Update (03/19):Ukrainian website Overclockers.com.ua has come up with a more comprehensive 3DMark shootout between cards in this segment. Radeon HD 4890 and HD 4890 CrossFireX are part of the comparison. The testers used an Intel Q6600 CPU running on an X48 motherboard with 4 GB of memory. The article can be read (Google-translated to English) here.

Here's something fresh from Asia, with love. Popular Chinese site Coolaler is once more first to show pics from an yet unreleased product - the next generation ATI Radeon HD 4890 video card. The card below is equipped with single RV790 GPU clocked at 850 MHz and 1 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 3900 MHz. It has full DirectX 10.1 support and is CrossFireX ready. Apart from that, all other distinctive features can be seen from the pictures. The Radeon HD 4890 is set to be released after April 6th of this year.

TechPowerUp today released Radeon BIOS Editor version 1.20, our popular ATI Radeon graphics card BIOS manipulation utility. The newest version of the software brings about some important feature-additions, along with improved stability and minor bug fixes. Changes in this version, as listed in the software's changelog is as follows:

• Added hex editor
• Added alternative BIOS extraction method
• (Hopefully) fixed the 3650 Device-ID-bug for good
• Fixed a bug concerning weird 4670 fan settings

For a complete version history, and to download the software, please visit this page.

Intel Corporation today disclosed that the company has notified Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) that it believes AMD has breached a 2001 patent cross-license agreement with Intel. Intel believes that Global Foundries is not a subsidiary under terms of the agreement and is therefore not licensed under the 2001 patent cross-license agreement. Intel also said the structure of the deal between AMD and ATIC breaches a confidential portion of that agreement. Intel has asked AMD to make the relevant portion of the agreement public, but so far AMD has declined to do so. AMD's breach could result in the loss of licenses and rights granted to AMD by Intel under the agreement.

ATI on Friday released ATI Stream Software Development Kit (SDK) version 1.4, the fourth installment of the free toolkit, that provides a way for developers to find what ATI Stream technology is capable of. The standard toolkit delivers a full-featured software development environment that exposes the amazing computational power of AMD GPUs in an easy to use interface. Version 1.4 of the development kit brings many improvements to previous versions, the full list of which is listed below. To download the ATI Stream SDK, please click here.

Following Sapphire's move to create a Radeon HD 4670 SKU with GDDR4 memory, GeCube has one of its own, ready for launch. The RV730-based graphics card has 512 MB of GDDR4 memory, across a 128-bit wide memory interface. It uses a simplistic design for its PCB and cooler. The card draws all its power from the PCI-Express slot.

The clock speeds on this card differ from the reference ATI specifications. The core is clocked at 750 MHz, with the GDDR4 memory at 2200 MHz. With the memory speed on offer not much higher than what GDDR3 offers, the inclusion of GDDR4 looks more like a dressing to the SKU. It remains to be seen if the memory benefits from overclocking, to overcome the bottlenecks of the narrow memory bus. Rest of its specifications are standard: 320 stream processors, DirectX 10.1 compliance, and support for ATI CrossFireX technology. It is yet to be priced.

AMD announced that the 50 millionth ATI 'Hollywood' graphics processor for the Wii game console from Nintendo shipped today. With 50 million units delivered, the ATI graphics processor code-named 'Hollywood' becomes the most successful AMD game console chip to date in terms of unit sales.

"Nintendo values its ongoing relationship with AMD. AMD's graphics technology expertise as displayed in the ATI 'Hollywood' chip is a great part of the momentum of Wii. Our combined efforts help deliver entertaining experiences to create many smiling faces in living rooms around the world," said Genyo Takeda, general manager of Integrated Research and Development, Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Information from an industry source was misinterpreted by VR-Zone yesterday, which wrote in its original report that the ATI Radeon HD 4870 1 GB was going to get a price-cut from $199 down to $179. In reality, it is the GeForce GTX 260 that is expected to get the price cut, sending its price down to $179.

NVIDIA had implemented significant reductions in prices of GeForce GTX 260 accelerators as recently as today, setting its price to $199. AMD may react to this move with its own new pricing scales for the competitive Radeon HD 4870 accelerator. There is no word on when the new pricing would be implemented.

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.

Barely months into being an ATI add-in board partner, XFX refuses to be a newbie to the scene. After starting off the proceedings with non-reference designs for most of its initial product lineup, XFX adds yet another of its own designs to its small yet formidable ATI Radeon HD 4000 series: a passive-cooled design for an HD 4650 model.

Pictured by ATI-Forum at the ongoing CeBIT event, the XFX Radeon HD 4650 silent keeps up with XFX' black and red colour scheme. The PCB stays black, so does the heatsink over the GPU. Two heatpipes convey heat from the heatsink to a dense array of aluminum fins at the back of the card. One can expect reference clock-speeds for the card, considering its USP mainly is its silent cooling, and not exactly its cooling efficiency to aid overclocking. XFX may announce this card shortly.

ATI wants to diminish the list of supported graphics cards in the next release of Catalyst. With the release of ATI Catalyst 9.4, the plan is to exclude support for Radeon 9500, 9600, 9800, X800, X1800, X1900 and other desktop video cards. Catalyst 9.4 will also lack support for the FireGL X1/X2/X3, V3000, V5000, V7000 and FireMV 2200, 2250 professional cards. Of course owners of these models will still be permitted to download older drivers and use them happily. The ATI Catalyst 9.4 is set to be released next month.

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 today announced the world's first graphics processors to harness 40nm process technology: the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4860 and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830. These feature-rich graphics processors redefine mobile PC entertainment with advanced capabilities including support for the latest Microsoft DirectX 10.1 games, a home theater-quality HD multimedia experience, and energy-efficient features for long battery life at work, at home or at play.

With the release of ATI's next generation Radeon HD 4890 just a few weeks ahead, the company is going to cut the prices of its Radeon HD 4870 512 MB GDDR5 and Radeon HD 4850 512 MB video cards and thus balance its graphics cards product line-up. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB will drop $50, from $199 down to $149 and fight with NVIDIA's rebranded GeForce GTS 250 1 GB. The ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB will drop to $129, and will become main competitor of NVIDIA's GTS 250 512 MB version. Resellers and distributors are expected to start selling with the new prices this week.

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.

The RivaTuner team today announced a new version of one of the popular graphics card performance-control and monitoring utilities. Rivatuner version 2.24 adds several new features and fixes minor bugs and issues found with the older version.

DOWNLOAD: RivaTuner v2.24

Detailed lists of bug-fixes and feature additions follow:

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.

Close to ten days before ATI's Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series rolls out at the upcoming CeBIT event, one of its eggs seems to have hatched a little early. Dell's Indian website has already started listing it in the specifications of the Studio 15 notebook. Enter Mobility Radeon HD 4570. This mGPU is derived from the 55 nm RV710 graphics processor, and intends to be a handy performance boost over integrated graphics. It features 80 stream processors, 8 texture memory units, and 4 raster operations units. It connects to GDDR3, DDR2 memory using its 64-bit wide memory bus. The card used in Dell's Studio 15 sports 256 MB of memory. The mGPU is expected to outperform competing NVIDIA G110M by 20~30%, while keeping its TDP rating at a mere 13 W. Once formally announced, one could expect to hear more about this mGPU.