AMD today launched a new corporate brand campaign under a new tagline, "The Future is Fusion." The campaign is intended to focus on how the unique AMD combination of technologies, coupled with close relationships with computer manufacturers and a deep understanding of customer needs, results in exciting next-generation capabilities and experiences at work, at home, and at play.

The battle for supremacy in the current generation of consumer graphics hasn't calmed down as yet. Just as reports came in of NVIDIA giving the GeForce GTX 260 a boost with its shader compute power by enabling 24 shader units, taking on the Radeon HD 4870, GeForce GTX 280 seems to be enjoying its $420~$440 price-tag. For sure it isn't the fastest graphics accelerator but its compelling price tag is what is drawing buyers away from the HD 4870 X2.

AMD had already announced in its press release for the Radeon HD 4870 X2 launch that it would release a HD 4850 X2 at a roughly $400 price range. That moment seems to be coming closer, when ATI has a graphics card for $399, that outperforms the GeForce GTX 280. Three slides from the company have surfaced. The first one lists out its vital specifications, including its maximum power draw, rated at 230W. The memory bandwidth of this card is 128 GB/s, and it ends up with 2 GB of GDDR3 memory.

AMD/ATI's graphics partner Sapphire has released today Radeon HD 4870 TOXIC, an overclocked Radeon HD 4870 card with a custom cooling on it. What makes this card so special is the patented Vapor-X cooling system and its clock speeds higher than the reference boards. The cooling itself takes up two slots, makes use of a Vapour Chamber technology and features a thermally-controlled fan supported by three copper heatpipes. The new TOXIC model is also factory-overclocked to 780MHz GPU from 750MHz stock speed and 4000MHz memory from 3600MHz stock respectively. The card is equipped with 512MB GDDR5 memory. It offers 800 Stream Processors, has DirectX 10.1 and CrossFireX support, a PCI-Express 2.0 interface and two DVI connectors. Except that and maybe the fancy retail box it ships with, there's nothing else about this card that could interest you more. Pricing and availability are still unknown.

As much as releasing hardware that brings in competition and products at great prices is essential for AMD, backing it up with software is equally important. Company slides that point to tentative time-scales that pertain to AMD's software releases have surfaced. Some of the important software products AMD releases are Catalyst driver suite for ATI products and OverDrive, a tool that provides features to tweak AMD processors and graphics cards, as well as several motherboard parameters for motherboards equipped with AMD chipsets.

The slides also provide a sneak-peak into what could be in store with those releases. VR-Zone has published slides, from which the first one points to release dates for the Catalyst driver suite with respect to release candidates and public releases. The second slide points to time-scales at which software with vital changes are released. We are already past August and AMD has rolled out the feature pertaining to that release, allowing Hybrid Crossfire of AMD chipsets with integrated graphics working in tandem with Radeon HD 3400 series graphics accelerators.

Gainward has launched a custom design Radeon HD 4670 graphics card featuring the latest GPU from ATI. The card spans across two slots. While cooling might attribute to that, the other reason is that Gainward has provided every kind of display connector that's standard today. The card has a dual-link DVI, an analog D-Sub, a HDMI with 7.1 ch audio, and a DisplayPort connector.

It comes with the RV730 core clocked at 750 MHz, features 512 MB of GDDR3 memory clocked at 2000 MHz. Underneath the sporty grill hood of the card is a cooler consisting of a fan blowing air onto a heatsink with radially projecting fins. Such a cooler can be seen on some of Gainward's own mid-range GeForce Golden Sample series graphics cards, though this card didn't get that title.

Later this month, AMD is expected to launch the ATI Radeon HD 4550 graphics processor (GPU). Its board SKU details have surfaced. The RV710 graphics processor will make it to the grass-root of entry-level and high-definition media grpahics boards. It is based on the 55nm silicon fabrication process. The GPU has a transistor count of 242 million, it has 80 stream processors. It is engineered in a way that makes it draw less than 25W. In the form of reference designs, AMD will release two cards: a full height, passively cooled 512 MB DDR3 version, and a low-profile, 256MB fan-heatsink cooled card. Both models have core clock speeds of 600 MHz with the memory clocked at 800 MHz on a 64-bit wide memory bus. The GPU schematic shows it to have 8 texture address and 8 texture filter units. There's only one render back-end. The 512MB variant is expected to be priced at US $49~59, while the 256MB variant in the $39~49 range. These cards are expected to compete with the GeForce 9400 GT GPU.

AMD today announced the ATI Radeon HD 4600 series, mainstream graphics offerings that deliver exceptional gaming and HD multimedia performance while consuming less power than a standard light bulb. Comprising the ATI Radeon HD 4670 and the ATI Radeon HD 4650 graphics cards, the ATI Radeon HD 4600 series leverages the leading technology found in the award-winning ATI Radeon HD 4800 series, including support for the latest DirectX 10.1 games, superior HD multimedia capabilities and industry leading performance-per-watt, all delivered at affordable prices for the mainstream graphics segment. The combined features and technologies and incredible prices makes the ATI Radeon HD 4600 series a superb all-around performer, ideal for playing the latest games or driving a high quality home theatre entertainment experience.

Earlier this year, the unthinkable happened when ATI brought in stiff competition with NVIDIA in almost all segments to snatch the performance crown. All NVIDIA could do as a retaliation was to hurry up with a transition to the 55nm silicon fabrication technology and price cuts among all its segments. The latter is of more importance since price cuts for NVIDIA's products have been huge, in many cases, as much as 40%. While Radeon HD 4850 in its 512 MB and 1 GB avatars took on GeForce 9800 GTX/GTX+, the GeForce 9800 GT slipped in from nowhere. Technically at launch the GeForce 9800 GT isn't much more than 8800 GT except a few features that only nForce chipset users could benefit from, among other changes. Indications are that this product isn't faring bad in the market and to retaliate ATI is devising a new graphics core, the RV770LE.

Simply put, the RV770LE is a toned down variant of the RV770 core that will position below the RV770 Pro (Radeon HD 4850). It features lower clock speeds than the RV770 Pro and more importantly, a 192 bit memory bus and 480 Stream Processors. This also affects the TMU and ROP counts with the new core having 12 ROPs and 24 TMUs. Memory configurations would be affected as well. While some sources indicate that it would be branded as Radeon HD 4830, others say it's likely to be branded as the Radeon HD 4750 and is slated for release in October.

After a successful high and enthusiast segment conquest, ATI seems to be going for the kill. Pre-release evaluations show the RV730 graphics processor to be a potent piece of silicon. When it's made to stretch in its Radeon HD 4670 512M variant, it certainly ousted competitor's offerings but owing to the price-band it belongs to, in the process of beating the GeForce 9500 GT, it seems to have created a vacuum. The HD 4670 could be faster than the 9500 GT, but at a price that takes it away from the band 9500 GT sits on. Certain European online stores have started listing RV730 based products. Their prices in terms of US Dollars seem high, but the product itself is awaited in the North American markets. PCHC.ch listed products that seem like custom designed. They haven't released pictures but as their specifications and product names tell, they do have an interesting mix in store.

HIS is already out with IceQ variants of the HD 4670, with a 1 GB GDDR3 variant priced as high as $141 (in terms of EUR to USD conversions). Also in store is a 512MB variant of the same card at $115. There are two variants of HD 4650, a base model and another advertised as silent. The RV730 graphics processor features 320 stream processors and a 128 bit wide GDDR3 / DDR2 memory bus. It features one of the smallest dies in relation to its performance, at 145 sq mm. Tests show the RV730 to deliver a performance level up to what a Radeon HD 3850 can deliver.

The ATI RV730 graphics processor in its Radeon HD 4670 avatar was reviewed by Chinese website IT168. Findings of the review show the card outclassing its predecessor, the RV635, and deliver a level of performance close to that of the RV670-based Radeon HD 3850 512MB. Several tests that include 3DMark Vantage, Crysis Single Player Demo and Call of Duty 4 among other game tests were run. The highlight of the test was where the HD 4670 produced up to 100% performance gains over the NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT in the Crysis Single Player Demo test, more or less explaining NVIDIA's possible move to bring in a GeForce 9550 GT. Across several tests, the RV730 trailed the HD 3850 by a small margin of FPS.

The RV730 GPU features the same number of stream processors as that of the HD 3850, while it uses a narrower 128-bit memory bus. The HD 4650 has a 600 MHz core clock speed, while the HD 4670 uses a much higher 750 MHz core clock speed.

It is a known flaw that some models of the Radeon HD 4800 accelerators fail oZone3D FurMark, an OpenGL based graphics benchmark application that has found to stress Radeon HD 4800 series far enough to result in over-heating, artifacts or even driver crashes. The Catalyst 8.8 drivers have found to treat the FurMark executable differently based on its file-name. Expreview tested this hypothesis by benchmarking a reference design HD 4850 board using Catalyst 8.8 driver, with two runs of FurMark. In the first run, the test was cleared at a low score, much lower compared to those of whatever successful runs on older drivers could churn out. Suspecting that the driver could be using some sort of internal profile specific to the FurMark executable, Expreview renamed the furmark.exe file, thereby not letting the driver know it's FurMark that's being run. Voila! the margin of lead the renamed FurMark executable gave over "furmark.exe" shows the driver to behave differently. A shady thing since Radeon HD 4800 almost became infamous for failing at FurMark, and at least passing it with a low score seemed better than failing at it altogether.

Expreview caught this flaw when testing the PowerColor Radeon HD 4870 Professional Cooling System (PCS+) when odd behaviour with the newer driver was noted. Successive BIOS releases didn't fix the issue, in fact, it only got worse with erratic fan behaviour caused due to a "quick-fix" BIOS PowerColor issued (covered here).

AMD released the ATI Catalyst version 8.8 drivers. This driver brings in two new features among a host of bug-fixes specific to games, performance increments as such aren't indicated.

The driver suite can be downloaded here.

The two new features include new Avivo video features such as Dynamic Gamma/Contrast correction and improved video presets for ATI accelerators, Radeon HD 3000 series and upward. Another feature addition is that of the Hybrid Graphics feature being available to users of Windows XP. This technology allows pairing of the integrated graphics processor (IGP) of the AMD 780G and 780D chipsets with a Radeon HD 2400 or Radeon HD 3400 series accelerator. For a comprehensive list of fixes, please read the Release Notes.

Hexus.net pictured the RV730 series and RV710 based reference graphics cards that will populate ATI's low-thru-mid range of products under the successful Radeon HD 4000 series. In the picture, the RV730 XT based Radeon HD 4670 is to the left in the foreground. Next to it (right), is the RV 730 Pro. The card in the center (background) is the RV710 that's passively cooled. The specifications of the RV730 cards can be read here. Little is known about RV710 at this point, except that it comes in two models, using DDR2 or GDDR3 memory and will be branded as Radeon HD 4450 and HD 4470. Here's a picture of a RV710 based card that is passively cooled this model seems to come with a DVI port along with a HDMI and DisplayPort connector.The full article can be read here.

Sapphire has been showing off their new HD 4850 non-reference design, that you have already been discussing here. The card uses an eight layer PCB designed by Sapphire and comes with a quieter cooler. Even though it offers these improvements, the card is cheaper to make which should bring its retail price below that of the reference design cards.

XpertVision is Palit's European VGA graphics cards brand. Only recently they released an announcement that the brands will merge again to become "Palit Microsystems Ltd.".

At the show we saw several new ATI based cards from Palit. Since their booth is located in the AMD hall, no NVIDIA cards were on display.First up is the new Palit HD 4870 which does not use the AMD reference design. The cooler is equipped with two fans and is much quieter than the normal cards. The HD 4870 Sonic Dual features DisplayPort and a Turbo switch which allows you to change the clock frequencies on the fly. When in "Turbo" mode, the card runs at 775/1000 and 750/950 in "Normal" mode. Even in normal mode this is still an overclock over the AMD reference clocks.

MSI, a leading manufacturer of computer products, proudly unveils its latest R4870-T2D1G graphics cards for the game enthusiasts. It comes with the 1G DDR5 memory which enables users to enjoy the DirectX 10 high-capacity 3D games easily and smoothly.

This high-end level graphics card is based on the latest 2nd generation of 55nm GPU. Integrated with the ATI PowerPlay power-saving technology, MSI R4870-T2D1G provides twice the performance enhancement with the same wattage. It conforms to the environmental energy conservation worldwide initiative with MSI (ECOlution) environmental protection theory of evolution objective. In addition, MSI R4870-T2D1G graphics card also has the advanced UVD 2.0 video decoder core, a built-in HDCP key encryption which supports Blu-Ray and HD DVD movie disc playback and make 100% complete hardware acceleration to the MPEG-2/VC-1/H.264 video format. MSI R4870-T2D512 supports the DirectX 10.1 framework of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and offers 800 stream processors, which achieve the unprecedented levels teraflop (1000Gflops) computing capability. MSI R4870-T2D1G graphics card supports CrossFireX technology. Combined with CrossFire ready mainboard to enable 2~4 graphics cards to work at the same time; substantially enhancing gaming performance.

Following the release of the R700 Spartan, the most powerful graphics card till date, AMD has noted that the ATI Radeon HD 4800 series products has boosted the company's market share in the discrete graphics industry from 30% to 40%. This has triggered optimism with the company, it expects to achieve the 50% mark against rival NVIDIA corporation, and that's as soon as late 2008, continuing the introduction of its products, surpass NVIDIA in 2009.

AMD also noted that it expects its discrete graphics card to IGP ratio in notebook shipments will be 35:65 in 2009. Meaning there will be growth in the sales of notebooks with discrete graphics in general against integrated graphics. NVIDIA rubbished AMD's comments saying it has the performance lead with its GeForce 200-series graphics products, while AMD claimed its Radeon HD 4800-series were clearly the more advanced lot.

Gainward officially announced the highest segment products of ATI chipsets -Gainward HD 4870 X2 graphics card to the market.

Gainward HD 4870 X2 is the latest graphics solution equipped with two powerful RV770 GPUs which is designed to take advantage of the power that GDDR5 memory delivers. GDDR5 has twice the available memory bandwidth compared to GDDR3 and GDDR4; thanks to its quad data rate. The Gainward HD 4870 X2 comes with 2048MB of GDDR5 memory at an effective memory speed of 3,600MHz (900MHz quad data rate) connected to two RV770 graphics processors with each 256bits bus per GPU. The two graphics processors, which are clocked at a massive 750MHz, are combined to 800 stream processors for a big performance boost. It supports the latest ATI CrossFire X technology to smoothly fulfill HD gaming experience at highest details settings even with the most demanding games. The card supports a PCI Express 2.0 interface to ensure maximum bandwidth availability.

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.

PCPop has access to an upcoming mobile (notebook) graphics processor (mGPU) from ATI, codenamed the M98. This graphics board makes use of the RV770 core and will be accompanied by 512 MB of GDDR3 memory, up to 1 GB in some models. It could be branded under the Radeon HD 4000 series. It can be dubbed the fastest till date if it's pitted against NVIDIA's current high performance mGPU, the GeForce 9800M GTX which makes use of the G92 GPU with a similar configuration to that of the desktop 8800 GT / 9800 GT cards (112 shader units). It then becomes comparable to GeForce 8800 GT versus Radeon HD4850 where the latter obtains 15% to 20% performance gains.

Pictures show the M98 Axiom Package featuring the the RV770 GPU next to four GDDR3 memory chips made by Qimonda. The GPU is marked "M98 XT", it is an engineering sample.

The success of the RV770 graphics processor (GPU) meant that partners of ATI could experiment with the design and come up with several products based on the GPU. The likes of Sapphire, HIS, PowerCOlor, Palit, HIS, etc., have already come up with numerrous non-reference designs, though all those designs had a common ATI designed PCB, with a primary PCB design with common layout of the various components, where the memory configurations and coolers used made all the difference. Sapphire has come up with a new non-reference PCB design for the Radeon HD 4850 that places components in a different way, perhaps it aides manufacturing and keeps the memory chips at a distance from the VRM circuitry enough to keep it cool enough to be passively cooled by a central cooler's air-flow? Whatever be the design methodology, Expreview pictured an upcoming Sapphire product based on this new PCB.

AMD today raised the bar for Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Digital Content Creation (DCC) application performance with the announcement of two new professional graphics accelerators - ATI FirePro V5700 and ATI FirePro V3700. As a part of that announcement, AMD also introduced a new brand for the company's professional graphics accelerators, ATI FirePro, reflecting AMD's continuing and evolving commitment to the professional graphics market.

Expreview conducted a comprehensive comparison between the performance of ATI graphics hardware using the older Catalyst 8.6 + Hotfix driver versus that of the newest Catalyst 8.7 driver. The testbed comprised of:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 overclocked at 4.05 GHz
• ASUS Maximus II Formula motherboard
• G.Skill 4GB (2×2GB) DDR2 1100
• ASUS Radeon HD 4870 TOP

Tests included a majority of games, real-world performance tests along with synthetic benchmarks such as 3DMark. The performance gains of the hardware using the 8.7 Catalyst driver never crossed 2.33%, in fact in some tests there was a performance loss of up to 1.08% against the older 8.6 Catalyst driver plus the hotfix. It shows that on a Radeon HD4870, the newer driver did not bring about significant improvements, at least not on par with what the release notes suggested. Expreview also suggests that if users aren't experiencing other issues which the Catalyst 8.7 fixed such as video output corruption in rare cases, the older driver is worthwhile. Test results are provided below.

AMD released stable versions of the ATI Catalyst driver package for the Radeon series graphics accelerators. According to the release notes document (located here), improvements on both the features and performance fronts have been brought about. The drivers specific to your version of Windows, Linux, Windows on Macintosh (Bootcamp), Mac OS and on your model of Radeon accelerator can be found on the company website here.

Sources at TSMC told Hardspell that the next graphics processor (GPU) by ATI/AMD, the RV870 in the works have specifications such as:

• 40nm or 45nm fab process
• 140 sq. mm die size
• 192 ALUs, 960 stream processors
• 256-bit GDDR5 memory controller

It is believed that this GPU could perform 1.2 times better than RV770, purely based on the paper-specs.

Another interesting news is that R800, unlike its predecessors the R700 and R680, might not be a dual-GPU card but the world's first dual-core GPU.