It does come as a surprise to us, that XFX is going to have a full-fledged non-reference design ATI Radeon lineup, barely a month into its official announcement of a tie-up with AMD. Pictured below are XFX Radeon HD 4350, Radeon HD 4650 and Radeon HD 4830. Ideally XFX will use a common design with its Radeon HD 4600 series cards. Both incorporate black-coloured PCBs, and the XFX colour scheme with the coolers.

The XFX Radeon HD 4350 (model: HD435X-YAH2) comes with a core clock speed of 600 MHz and 512 MB of DDR2 memory clocked at 1000 MHz. It is passively cooled and is low-profile friendly. The XFX Radeon HD 4650 / HD 4670 cards use reference AMD clock speeds. The Radeon HD 4850 card comes in two variants, HD465X-YAF2 (512 MB) and HD465X-ZAF2 (1 GB). Also pictured is the XFX Radeon HD 4830 512MB (model: HD483X-YDFC) that looks identical to the XFX Radeon HD 4850, pictured earlier.

Having absorbed Voodoo PC, HP is going full-cylinders with its gaming PC lineup. It has not overlooked gaming notebooks either. In the works is the HP Firefly, a gaming notebook with exclusive features, driven by bleeding edge hardware in a stylish chassis. The Firefly is in a concept design phase, with working prototypes being readied for events such as the upcoming CES expo.

To run you through with the features, the top lid of the notebook holds a 17" main LCD with a native resolution of 1920x1200. The lid also holds a small 4" screen with a resolution of 800x400, which can be used as a HUD or a secondary utility display. Also mounted are front speakers and a night-vision webcam. The business end of the notebook holds an illuminated keyboard with a right-hand placed track-pad. The exterior of the notebook has some techno-themed motifs printed or engraved. Under the hood is a quad-core Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9xxx CPU clocked at 2.40 GHz, 4 GB of memory, and a graphics subsystem consisting of two ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 GPUs in CrossFire. Two 250GB hard-drives operate in RAID 0 for storage. There is a Blu-Ray drive provided. Creative SB X-Fi Xtreme Audio handles 6-channel audio with game audio effects processing and Dolby Digital output capabilities. We will learn more about this notebook come CES.

Thermaltake today announced an initiative with AMD to redesign the revolutionary Xpressar micro refrigeration cooling system for use with ATI Radeon HD 4000 series graphics cards. First introduced in a specialized case designed to achieve CPU temperatures much lower than standard liquid cooling systems, the Xpressar technology will be modified for use as a graphics cooling solution. When commercially available, the Xpressar graphics solution could reduce graphics processor temperatures by as much as 20°C when compared to common liquid cooling products.

The Thermaltake Xpressar micro refrigeration cooling system utilizes a miniature version of the compressor cooling module commonly used in refrigerators and air conditioners. To streamline installation, the graphics cooling module will utilize a compact design, occupying only the drive bay area in the computer.

RV740, the first GPU built by AMD on the 40nm silicon fabrication process, seems to be gaining attention. While earlier reports suggested this core to be simply a miniaturized RV730, a fresh report emerging from VR-Zone says otherwise.

The RV740 is supposed to be largely derived from the RV770, as in its RV770LE avatar which went into making the ATI Radeon HD 4830. There are some interesting specifications attached to it. To begin with, the core physically holds only 640 stream processors, in comparison to the 800(+) on the RV770. The core continues to have 32 texture memory units (TMUs) and 16 render back-ends. Interestingly, there is a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory bus instead of 256-bit wide GDDR3 (for the RV770LE). With this, the RV740 has a rated memory bandwidth identical to that of the RV770LE, 57.6 GB/s, though the bus width would warrant the use of lesser number of memory chips, and effectively reduce manufacturing costs. Graphics cards based on this GPU are expected to emerge in early 2009. You can also expect derivatives based on this core with GDDR4, GDDR3 or even DDR2 memory. In any case, the products are expected to cost below US $100.

Bringing the highest levels of graphics and gaming performance ever seen in the PC, SAPPHIRE Technology - the leading innovator of ATI-based graphics solutions - is now introducing the amazing single slot, liquid cooled ATOMIC Edition of its HD 4870 X2.

Featuring a closed loop liquid cooled system, the SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC brings workstation class cooling to the PC, enabling faster clock speeds and quieter operation - and delivering the fastest graphics performance ever seen in a single slot solution. Both GPU's in the SAPPHIRE HD 4870 X2 ATOMIC are clocked at 800MHz and each has 1GB of DDR5 memory clocked at 1000MHz, making a total of 2GB of memory on board. The streamlined single slot cooler assembly on the graphics card evenly cools both GPU's and their associated memories - enabling this dual graphics system to run with a high level of stability even when delivering the highest levels of performance - currently the fastest PC graphics available.

ATI programmers have released a hotfix that corrects the black screen and boot OS failure when Catalyst 8.12 is installed on Windows Vista, and two or more ATI Radeon HD 4850 video cards are working in CrossFire X mode. This issue only occurs when two or more ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphic cards are installed in the system with ATI CrossFireX technology. One single ATI Radeon HD 4850 card will not encounter this issue. To download the hotfix for both Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit, please click here.

The manufacturing process technologies for graphics processors that dominated the 2008 were TSMC 65nm and 55nm. While AMD made the transition to 55nm over an year ago, it was a little later when we started seeing 55nm versions of existing NVIDIA GPUs.

A month into TSMC's announcement of of its 40nm bulk production node, AMD has reportedly taped out its first 40nm GPU, the RV740. While this is no high-end GPU, it is supposed to be the first successful port of AMD's GPU architecture to the new node. The RV740 succeeds the RV730, the GPU that went into the making the Radeon HD 4670. It is a mainstream GPU that ideally should make it to the sub-$100 graphics card segment. With RV740, AMD gains some experience as a manufacturer as it works on the RV870 "Lil' Dragon", the next generation GPU from the red camp. A product based on the RV740 can be expected only after Q1 2009.

PINE today announced that its graphics division, XFX, is partnering with AMD. The collaboration will incorporate the award-winning ATI Radeon HD 4000 series GPUs into XFX's already impressive line of extreme performance graphics cards.

"We are delighted as this partnership allows us to incorporate the current and future AMD graphics technology into our future graphics card designs, and enables our R&D teams to develop an even wider range of graphics products for our worldwide customers," said Michael Chiu, Chairman and CEO of Pine Technology Holdings.

A longstanding partner of NVIDIA, XFX would soon embrace AMD to release graphics cards based on the ATI Radeon series. Its plans however are somewhat similar to what Gainward seems to be executing: to maintain strong ties with NVIDIA, while dedicating a smaller portion of its product lineup to those incorporating ATI Radeon GPUs.

Expreview spoke with an XFX official, who confirmed that the company would be taking up projects based around ATI Radeon products, while continuing to maintain its partnership with NVIDIA by continuing to have flagship products using the NVIDIA GeForce. XFX would be going as far as making sure that its products based on ATI Radeon GPUs wouldn't release in the Chinese market (a key market for NVIDIA products). The decision by XFX to work on ATI Radeon products came as a surprise to many, since XFX has been a staunch NVIDIA tier-1 partner.

SAPPHIRE Technology is now introducing the SAPPHIRE ATOMIC HD 4870 X2, an exclusive new dual GPU water cooled version of the standard ATI HD 4870 X2 card. Because the article is written in Greek which is not my strongest language, I'll stick to the specs and pics, after all that's all we need. As usual, the SAPPHIRE ATOMIC HD 4870 X2 comprises of two complete HD 4870 graphics systems on a single PCI-Express card connected by an on-board PCI Express Gen 2 bridge chip. Each GPU has 1GB of GDDR5 memory, making a total of 2GB on-board memory. Core clock speed for this model is 800MHz, there are 2x800 stream processors, the memory clock speed is 1000MHz with 512-bit memory interface. What's so special in this model is the full cover liquid cooling provided by the famous OEM cooling expert Asetek. The water-block cools both GPUs, all memory chips, the bridge chip and all the power elements. Two Dual Link DVI outputs are provided as well as TV-Out. Additionally the card's bundle includes a CCL UV lamp and Sapphire USB memory stick with drivers. The card will be available starting December 18th for a MSRP of $649.

ATI has just released this year's final version of its Catalyst driver package. As you might already know from our previous BETA release post, with the release of ATI Catalyst 8.12 users can now unlock the potential of accelerated applications enabling ATI Stream technology for various ATI Radeon graphics processors. This release also adds Stream technology to ATI's AVIVO Video Converter and many performance improvements.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 8.12

Gigabyte today, has released a new graphics card based on the ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics processor (GPU), in a non-reference design. While sporting a thin and light appearance, the card retains high-grade electrical components such as digital PWM circuitry the reference PCB sports. The prominent features of the card include a DisplayPort connector alongside an HDMI port, both on the PCB. The card features 1 GB of GDDR5 memory made by Qimonda, across a 256-bit wide bus.

Being non-reference and Gigabyte, it's expected to have a blue coloured PCB. The GPU is cooled by a Zalman VF830 cooler, which features on several of today's graphics cards by Gigabyte. The memory is left to be cooled under its air-flow. The VRM area gets a heatsink of its own. The card is powered by two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors. It uses reference clock speeds of 750 MHz for the GPU and 900 MHz (effective 3600 MT/s) for the memory. It is yet to be priced.

A common feature with shopping seasons, namely summer and Christmas, is that consumer graphics giants, AMD and NVIDIA announce new products that push up the pure performance and performance per dollar envelopes. With this Christmas season however, nothing notably new is going to come out of their stables, making their existing products slog it out. This resulted in both companies resorting to some serious price-cutting with their existing mid-thru-high-end products.

In the wake of massive price-cuts by NVIDIA for the GeForce GTX 260, AMD has decided to prepare its own price-cuts for the one card that goes neck and neck with the GTX 260, Radeon HD 4870. Originally seated in the $299~$399 bracket, the GeForce GTX 260 and Radeon HD 4870 have become some of the key SKUs for both companies. These are the products we have seen going neck and neck, resulting in both companies refreshing them, and later resorting to price-cuts. NVIDIA refreshed GeForce GTX 260 with a 216 stream processor version that came with added shader compute power, while AMD responded with the 1 GB variant of the Radeon HD 4870. As on today, the company pricing for the Radeon HD 4870 has been set around US $199 for the 512 MB and $239 for the 1 GB variants. This roughly catches up with the pricing for GeForce GTX 260, with roughly $199~$219 for the 192 stream processor and $239~$249 for the 216 stream processor variant.

It's already December, time for a new ATI Catalyst 8.12 driver. It's still a little bit early for the final driver release though, but a Beta version is already available, and now we know some inside information of what this driver will bring very soon. Here's a little sneak preview, with Catalyst 8.12 ATI will land its Stream support for Radeon video cards. The CAL (Compute Abstraction Layer) is now included in the Catalyst driver package. CAL is the enabling component for ATI Stream. Catalyst 8.12 is also said to bring Stream technology to ATI Avivo Video Converter, for enhanced video transcoding. For good or for bad, only ATI Radeon HD 4800 and Radeon HD 4600 series support this tool. At last, Catalyst 8.12 comes with many game performance improvements (read more below). Here's the link to the Catalyst 8.12 Beta version, the final release is coming soon. We'll inform you when it is available.

ASUS seems to have finally made room for an ATI Radeon HD 4870 based graphics card to fit in its elite MATRIX series. Presenting: EAH4870 MATRIX. The card features ASUS' own-designed PCB with high-grade components to facilitate overclocking. The card comes equipped with a dual-fan cooler. The fans blow air directly onto circular aluminum fin arrays, to cool the various components of the card.

The card sports 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. The core is clocked at 770 MHz, with memory at 920 MHz (3680 MHz effective). One of the main selling points for the MATRIX series cards is the level of control it gives the users. Users are able to set and control clock-speed profiles, monitor the card's various thermal zones and voltages, set voltages manually, monitor and control fan speeds, and also end up with enhanced power-saving modes that reference-design cards don't come with. ASUS is yet to announce pricing and availability.

AMD has released an ATI Catalyst driver hotfix, Catalyst 8.11 with Intel X58 i7 Driver, that aims to improve performance on Intel X58 platfoms with ATI graphics accelerator installed. The X58-specific optimizations would also be part of next month's Catalyst 8.12 release. The hotfix applies to all discrete graphics cards, ATI Radeon X1000 series and later. The game-specific improvements are universal (helps everyone). A concise list of improvements this hotfix brings about as listed by AMD is as follows:

• Improves performance in various Direct3D and OpenGL applications on the X58 platform. AMD's next official ATI Catalyst release (ATI Catalyst 8.12) will include these optimizations
• Improves performance for the DirectX 9 version of Far Cry 2 on CrossFire compatible systems
• Improves performance for the DirectX 10 version of Far Cry 2 on both single and CrossFire compatible systems
• Improves performance for the DirectX 10 and DirectX 10.1 version of Stalker Clear Sky on both single and CrossFireX configurations at higher resolutions
• Brothers in Arms - Hells Highway no longer displays corruption on the 'Black Friday' level.

DOWNLOAD: for Windows XP (32/64-bit) | for Windows Vista (32/64-bit). More information can be found here.

Alienware introduced its fleet of high-performance gaming PCs based on Intel's newest Core i7 processors. The range is branded as Area 51 X-58. Its range starts from US $1,349, with the base model using the Core i7 920 processor, which is configurable to Core i7 940 and the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition. Memory options go up to 12 GB of DDR3 1066 MHz memory, and base graphics card being the ATI Radeon HD 4870, configurable up to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 SLI or Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX.

There are options for up to 2 TB of storage, or the option to pick performance over storage, with two WD VelociRaptor 300 GB drives in RAID 0. Parallel to this brand is Alienware's other brand, the ALX X-58. The ALX comes with the same base CPU and memory, but ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 or two GeForce 9800 GTX, 2 TB of storage, along with the option of a Blu-Ray burner. The ALX X-58 starts at $3,699. These systems come equipped with 700, 1000 or 1200W power supplies depending on the hardware opted for.

Almost a month into the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 4830, HIS is ready with its IceQ-4 model. The graphics card uses the Radeon HD 4830 at reference speeds of 575 MHz, and features 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 1800 MHz. The card uses the same exact PCB and cooler design, as that of the Radeon HD 4850 IceQ-4, since the GPU is pin-compatible, but the heatsink over the VRM area is lacking.

As with other ATI graphics cards in its cadre, it provides audio-routed HDMI via a dongle, ATI CrossfireX multi-GPU technology, and DirectX 10.1 support. The card is expected to hit stores soon, carrying a price-tag of €140 in Europe.

AMD has taken steps towards providing its next embedded CPUs with the introduction of a core-logic platform that suits its thermal envelopes, while providing the kind of features essential to embedded platforms today. Its direct implementation could be the embedded low-power Athlon single and dual-core processors that could make it to UMPCs, nettops, and the likes.

The embedded processors will come in the ball-grid array package, and a reduced board footprint (package-size). At the heart of this core-logic is the AMD 780E northbridge. It is a reworked 780G chip with reduced thermal footprints. It will provide the CPU with a HyperTransport 3.0 (up to 5.6 GT/s) connection. This northbridge embeds a ATI Radeon HD 3300-class integrated graphics (IGP) which is AMD Sideport-capable. This adds the provision of adding DDR3 memory chips on the board to serve as video-memory. The northbridge provides an A-Link 2.0 connection (PCI-Express 2.0 x4) to the AMD SB7x0 class southbridge. The northbridge also features a native PCI-E multiplex to allow ATI CrossfireX with two PCI-E 2.0 x8 electrical connections. The SB7x0 southbridge provides up to six SATA II channels, 12 USB 2.0 connections, HD Audio, among others.

DFI is ready with its high-end motherboard based on the Intel X58 chipset, providing support for the Intel Core i7 processors. It features three PCI-E x16 slots, that arrange themselves into x16, x8, x8, to support ATI CrossfireX and NVIDIA SLI technologies. The board is studded with high-grade components that include a digital PWM CPU power circuit. The board provides vDroop control. It features an intricate cooling design, with blocks of aliminum fin arrays over the northbridge, and the VRM areas. The VRM cooler projects out of the case, and over the case-fan, if arranged. DFI is expected to announce this product soon.

Earlier today, AMD announced the release of its much anticipated enterprise quad-core processor, the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron, codenamed "Shanghai". A regular feature with AMD press releases, is that the PR team details about the products' availability. In this particular release, AMD went a step further and revealed the brand name the company's desktop 45nm processors would carry: Phenom II, when getting into details about the AMD Dragon enthusiast platform. Dragon succeeds Spider, and consists of a Phenom II processor, running on AMD 7-series core logic, along with ATI Radeon HD 4000 series graphics accelerators.

The Phenom II processors will consist of a whole range of quad-core, triple-core and dual-core processors, with the products segregated on the basis of their core count, clock-speed and cache arrangement. Several models are lined-up for launch. The platform itself, as AMD asserts, would release in Q1, 2009. There are signs of the company launching some models of the Phenom II X4 sooner, for which motherboard vendors have already started releasing lists of their existing motherboards that are ready for the processors.

AMD today announced the new AMD FireStream 9270 compute accelerator and the latest version of its free and open ATI Stream Software Development Kit (SDK), version 1.3. Both are designed to help researchers, technical professionals and IT organizations use mainstream computing platforms to address challenges that once would have required multi-million-dollar investments in proprietary hardware and software.
Today's announcements also advance the company's corporate brand and strategy, called Fusion, by further enabling AMD graphics processors (GPUs) to work in concert with CPUs to deliver balanced platforms capable of increasing performance, energy-efficiency, and cost-effectiveness.

I'm happy to inform you that ATI has just posted links to its latest Catalyst version 8.11 WHQL drives. This release of ATI Catalyst enables users to verify whether an application is running in ATI CrossFireX mode. The new option found in the ATI Catalyst Control Center system tray, will allow users to verify whether a Direct3D or OpenGL application is running in ATI CrossFireX mode and display "ATI Cross-FireX" logo on screen when the application is actually running. This release also includes some performance enhancements (on all Radeon HD04xxx and Radeon HD3xxx products) that improve Far Cry 2 gameplay from 3 to 10% for single card mode and 8 to 14% in CrossFire configuration. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky game also gains 6 to 18% performance in single card settings and 10 to 30% in CrossfireX mode.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 8.11 WHQL

In an exhibition of pure technological flexibility by AMD, the RV770 graphics processor is going to be used along with GDDR4 memory, in PowerColor's newest Radeon HD 4850 PCS+ GDDR4 graphics card. The inclusion of GDDR4 memory is to boost the memory clock speeds and to provide room for a little more memory overclocking.

The PCS+ GDDR4 features a GPU cooler designed by ZEROtherm, which is advertised to keep the GPU up to 10 °C cooler than what the reference cooler would. It features heatsinks for the memory and the VRM area. It features 512 MB of GDDR4 memory clocked at 2.20 GHz, with the core clocked at 675 MHz. The card supports CrossFireX, and sports dual-DVI connectors. There is no word on its availability pricing as of now.

The RV770 graphics processor changed AMD's fortunes in the graphics processor industry and put it back in the race for supremacy over the larger rival NVIDIA. The introduction of RV770-based products had a huge impact on the mid-range and high-end graphics card markets, which took NVIDIA by surprise. Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA has been quoted saying that they had underestimated their competitor's latest GPU, referring to RV770. While the Radeon HD 4870 graphics accelerator provided direct competition to the 192 shader-laden GeForce GTX 260, the subsequent introduction of a 216 shader variant saw it lose ground, leaving doubling of memory size to carve out the newer SKU, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. Performance benchmarks of this card from all over the media have been mixed, but show that AMD isn't giving up this chance for gaining technological supremacy.

In Q4 2008, NVIDIA is expected to release three new graphics cards: GeForce GTX 270 and GeForce GTX 290. The cards are based on NVIDIA's G200 refresh, the G200b, which incorporates a new manufacturing technology to facilitate higher clock-speeds, stepping up performance. This looks to threaten the market position of AMD's RV770, since it's already established that G200 when overclocked to its stable limits, achieves more performance than RV770 pushed to its limits. This leaves AMD with some worries, since it cannot afford to lose the wonderful market-position its cash-cow, the RV770 is currently in, to an NVIDIA product that outperforms it by a significant margin, in its price-domain. The company's next generation graphics processor would be the RV870, which still has some time left before it could be rushed in, since its introduction is tied to the constraints of foundry companies such as TSMC, and the availability of the required manufacturing process (40nm silicon lithography) by them. While TSMC takes its time working on that, there's a fair bit of time left, for RV770 to face NVIDIA, which given the circumstances, looks a lost battle. Is AMD going to do something about its flagship GPU? Will AMD make an effort to maintain its competitiveness before the next round of the battle for technological supremacy begins? The answer is tilting in favour of yes.