AMD announced the new Radeon R9 290X, its next-generation flagship graphics card. Based on the second-generation Graphics CoreNext micro-architecture, the card is designed to outperform everything NVIDIA has at the moment, including a hypothetical GK110-based graphics card with 2,880 CUDA cores. It's based on the new "Hawaii" silicon, with four independent tessellation units, close to 2,800 stream processors, and 4 GB of memory. The card supports DirectX 11.2, and could offer an inherent performance advantage over NVIDIA's GPUs at games such as "Battlefield 4". Battlefield 4 will also be included in an exclusive preorder bundle. The card will be competitively priced against NVIDIA's offerings. We're awaiting more details.

AMD revealed that EA's highly-anticipated online shooter, Battlefield 4, is an AMD Gaming Evolved title, in the run up to its GPU'14 event, slated for later today. It also hints at the possibility of Battlefield 4 being part of an upcoming "Never Settle" bundle that's exclusive to buyers of the Radeon R 200 series. What does this translate to in the real world? Radeon HD 7700 series and above, and the upcoming Radeon R 200 series, feature 100% support for DirectX 11.1, which Battlefield 4 is rumored to take advantage of, on PCs running Windows 8 (and above). It could translate to better performance or visual effects.

AMD posted Catalyst 13.9 WHQL software suite, which is logo-certified for Windows 8.1, and Catalyst 13.10 Beta for everyone else. Catalyst 13.9 Windows 8.1 driver is logo-certified (i.e., it complies with the newest Windows Display Driver Model 1.3), yet the it isn't quite WHQL-certified. You're at the very least assured that the driver will make your hardware work on Windows 8.1, and support Direct3D 11.1 on compatible Radeon HD 7000 series, HD 8000 (OEM) series, and the upcoming Rx 2xx series hardware. Direct3D 11.1 should get its first major outing with Battlefield 4.

Catalyst 13.9 for Windows 8.1 supports all AMD Radeon GPU families since HD 5000 series, and integrated graphics for all APUs AMD ever sold. The new Catalyst Control Center requires .NET 4.5 runtime environment. Moving on, Catalyst 13.10 Beta is being released to users on older operating systems. It brings game-specific performance improvements, including 20% performance scaling on Rome Total War 2 for CrossFire setups and display corruption issues associated with it; 20% performance scaling on Saints Row 4 for CrossFire setups; and 10% performance scaling on Metro: Last Light for CrossFire setups. Frame-pacing (fluidity) is improved for six games, including Tomb Raider (2013), Metro: Last Light, Sniper Elite V2, World of Warcraft, Max Payne 3, and Hitman: Absolution. The driver also fixes a bug that spools down PCIe link speeds of secondary graphics cards in CrossFire setups down to x1, when idling.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 13.9 WHQL (64-bit) | AMD Catalyst 13.9 WHQL (32-bit) | AMD Catalyst 13.10 Beta

How far can you strip down a GK104? Very far. Reports from the Chinese press and the whirring rumor mill there speaks of a new mid-range graphics card SKU taking shape at NVIDIA, named GeForce GTX 750 Ti, which is being designed to succeed the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost, outperform the GeForce GTX 660, and become NVIDIA's posterboy for this year's AAA shooter releases - Call of Duty: Ghosts, and Battlefield 4, when the company expects a tiny spike in GPU sales.

Based on the same G92 GK104 silicon as several other 600- and 700-series GeForce GTX products, the GTX 750 Ti will be configured a notch above the GK106-based GeForce GTX 660. To begin with, it's expected to feature 960 CUDA cores, a notch below the 1152 cores on the GeForce GTX 760. It has the same 80 TMUs as the GTX 660, but 32 ROPs and a 256-bit wide memory interface (compared to 24 ROPs and 192-bit on the GTX 660). Clock speeds are expected to be higher, too, at 1033 MHz core, 1098 MHz GPU Boost, and 6.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory. There's no clarity on when exactly NVIDIA plans to launch the SKU, but we expect that to happen before AMD's late-September high-end extravaganza.

Battlefield 4 minimum system requirements (MSR) lists released to the web show them to be largely identical to those of Battlefield 3, with a few changes in the GPU requirements. The RSR (recommended system requirements) list is interesting. There's no support for Windows XP, much like Battlefield 3, but contrary to rumors, Battlefield 4 doesn't mandate 64-bit platforms. It includes 32-bit executables, even if it can take advantage of over 4 GB of system- and over 3 GB of video-memory. Battlefield 4 needs at least a Windows Vista 32-bit installation, with Service Pack 2 and KB971512 update. An AMD Athlon X2 processor clocked at 2.80 GHz or Core 2 Duo 2.40 GHz processor, 4 GB of RAM (which 32-bit platforms don't fully make available anyway), and 2009-class DirectX 10 graphics cards, are part of the MSR.

Moving on to the recommended system requirements list, EA-DICE recommends 64-bit Windows 8, making us wonder why not Windows 7 64-bit, and if it has something to do with the fact that Windows 8 supports DirectX 11.1, which Windows 7 doesn't. Any six-core AMD CPU, and any Intel quad-core CPU will do. 8 GB of RAM is recommended. The developer recommends at least Radeon HD 7870 or GeForce GTX 660 graphics cards with at least 3 GB of video memory, which strangely disqualifies the Radeon HD 7870 from the RSR list, as there's no known HD 7870 variant with ≥3 GB of video memory. Hard drive space is consistent between the two lists, at 30 GB. It was 25 GB for Battlefield 3. In all, we expect Battlefield 4 to be another eye-feast, which rewards faster hardware, and perhaps even upgrading to Windows 8.

By the time AMD unveils its "Volcanic Islands" GPU family in Q4-2013, the company will have pulled on with a single product stack for well over 20 months. A part of what kept AMD's Radeon HD 7000 series competitive over these months, apart from frequent price cuts, is its "Never Settle" game bundles, which give buyers of graphics cards from Radeon HD 7700 series and above, two to eight free game coupons, some of which are recently launched AAA titles that are $60 off market. AMD plans to launch the next edition of its Never Settle bundles with its next GPU family, which will be named "Never Settle Forever."

"Never Settle Forever" takes a different approach to game bundles than its predecessors, which gave buyers a predetermined set of freebies depending on which series of Radeon products, or what quantities they purchased. The new bundle lets buyers choose what games they want, broken down from three selections, probably tied to what series of graphics cards they purchase. "Radeon Rewards Bronze" lets you choose any one game from a selection of six, "Radeon Rewards Silver" lets you pick any two games from a slightly wider selection of eight games, and "Radeon Rewards Gold" lets you choose three games from a selection of nine. Buying a Radeon x700 series product gets you access to the Bronze selection, x800 series Silver, and x900 series Gold. The slide below shows an example of such a bundle, which could be implemented for current Radeon HD 7000 series. The selections could change with "Volcanic Islands," especially with all the talk about AMD roping in Battlefield 4 into its future bundles.

Some time in late September, the 25th to be precise, AMD is flying the press at large over to Hawaii, to unveil its "Volcanic Islands" GPU family, with its flagship part, codenamed "Hawaii." This chip is expected to succeed "Tahiti," on which AMD's top-end Radeon HD 7900 series is based. An poster on ChipHell forums leaked these pictures of a press-package of AMD's flagship Hawaii-based graphics card, which has things going both for and against its credibility.

To begin with, the picture shows an audio CD-type jewel case holding Battlefield 4. Given that the game won't launch until late-October, we find it implausible that its release DVDs will be ready a month in advance. There's also a graphic printed on the box that shows the shore of a volcanic island (where magma meets the ocean) in the background, and an AMD logo in the foreground. The thread also contains a few alleged x-ray shots from a different poster, but we're pretty sure that they're of a motherboard. Nice try.

EA-DICE' upcoming online shooter Battlefield 4 will take advantage of DirectX 11.1 API, on PCs running Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. Running the game with DirectX 11.1 will have a positive performance impact compared to running it on DirectX 11.0, or on older operating systems like Windows 7 (which doesn't support DirectX 11.1). In the words of the technical director behind Frostbite, the underlying engine for Battlefield 4, "We use DX11.1, there are some optimizations in it (constant buffer offsets, dynamic buffers as SRVs) that we got in to the the API that improves CPU performance in our rendering when one runs with DX11.1." This could give Radeon HD 7000 series GPUs an edge over their GeForce competitors. GPUs based on NVIDIA's "Kepler" micro-architecture don't fully support DirectX 11.1. Incidentally, Battlefield 4 was just bagged and tagged by AMD for its future "Never Settle" bundle. Join the dots.

All Frostbite 3 Titles Will Be Optimized For AMD Only (Updated)

According to a report from IGN, EA and AMD have entered an agreement which sees the latter benefiting from exclusive rights to optimization for games based on EA's Frostbite 3 engine. Titles like Battlefield 4, Need for Speed Rivals and Mirror's Edge 2 are subject to this rumored accord between AMD and EA, but also many other current and future EA titles. Of course, this will not completely remove NVIDIA from the Frostbite 3 table, they will simply be absent from it until the actual launch takes place, meaning that pre-launch testing and driver optimization can only be done by AMD, leaving NVIDIA at a clear disadvantage.

While still an unconfirmed rumor, AMD refused to deny it in a reply to Ryan Shrout's query regarding the story. AMD's reply below.
"It makes sense that game developers would focus on AMD hardware with AMD hardware being the backbone of the next console generation. At this time, though, our relationship with EA is exclusively focused on Battlefield 4 and its hardware optimizations for AMD CPUs, GPUs and APUs."

AMD made an addition to its "Never Settle Reloaded" game bundle. Everyone who has already redeemed "Never Settle Reloaded" for their AMD Radeon products, will receive keys to activate Ubisoft's newest FPS title, FarCry 3: Blood Dragon, by e-mail. Those with unused coupons will automatically receive the game, when the coupons are redeemed. They keys will be given out by May 1st.

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a standalone game, and an expansion pack in-principle to Far Cry 3. You don't need to own the original to play Blood Dragon. It gives you a single-player campaign that's completely set apart from the Far Cry universe, and features a retro-futuristic, exploitative B-movie setting, which is interesting and never tried out by a game studio in the last decade. A little earlier this month, AMD vice-president Roy Taylor announced that Battlefield 4 will be part of the company's next "Never Settle" bundle.

Advancements in PC graphics technology could be on the verge of a slump, according to GPU major AMD. In an interview with German publication Heise.de, AMD vice president of global channel sales, stated that his company doesn't believe there will be a DirectX 12 API, at least not as far as the company can see. The timing of this statement is particularly important, as both AMD and NVIDIA are expected to unveil next-generation graphics products by the end of the year.

Neither Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system, nor the rumored Windows "Blue" 8.1, could ship with a newer DirectX version. Taylor was responding to a question from Heise about next-generation GPUs and technologies they could be built around, to which he replied that normally, new DirectX versions stimulate introduction of new GPU architectures, but there won't be a DirectX 12, and so the company's next-generation GPUs will integrate other technologies. Answering another question, Taylor hinted that Battlefield 4, EA's upcoming entry to the hit online FPS multiplayer franchise, could be part of the company's next "Never Settle" bundle.

EA has confirmed reports that a beta invite to Battlefield 4 will be included with pre-orders of the Medal of Honor: Warfighter Limited Edition. The announcement claims the Battlefield 4 beta will be available sometime in fall 2013, so you have a while to wait. EA points out that the two games are very different, but touts the shared heritage of the Frostbite engine. Yesterday, the rumors started churning from a leaked ad that promised the beta. Today you can actually order the Limited Edition from Origin, which costs $10 more than the standard edition.