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.

A lot has been said about AMD's rather mysterious new performance GPU, the RV790. Clues about the new GPU surfaced as early as in November last year, when we first reported about AMD working on a successor to the RV770 before the RV870 comes to be. During the course of time, we were given several scoops about its specifications, with some reports hinting at increased stream processor and TMU counts alongside increased clock-speeds to give out early projections of as much as 20% performance increments, taking its single-GPU flagship product to the domain of the GeForce GTX 285, but as multiple sources confirm now, none of that looks plausible.

The RV790 is essentially a reworked RV770 with higher clock-speeds. AMD seems to have reworked the design of the RV770, perhaps altered or removed rudimentary components that facilitate slightly higher clock speeds. While samples of the RV790 are spec'd to run at 850 MHz, one can expect a slightly increased overclocking headroom. The samples also carried Qimonda IDGV1G-05A1F1C-40X memory chips that are originally specified to run at 1 GHz, yet running at 975 MHz on the samples. The core continues to have 800 stream processors, 40 TMUs and 16 ROPs. It features a 256-bit wide memory interface to support GDDR5, GDDR4 and GDDR3 memory standards. It will be built on the existing 55 nm TSMC manufacturing node. Products based on the RV790 can be expected only by April.

The Radeon HD 4670 graphics processor made itself some place in the sub-$100 graphics market. AMD's partners maintained profitability as the production costs of this accelerator remained low. Its opponent, the GeForce 9600 GSO, though available in its price-range makes it difficult for its manufacturers to sell at low price-points owing to it being based on the G92 graphics processor. Eventually, NVIDIA found a way around with releasing the GeForce 9600 GSO+ SKU, where the G94 GPU with reduced shader core count was employed. This made sure NVIDIA's partners brought in aggressive pricing to counter the Radeon HD 4670.

Sapphire on its part, put innovation to the table and attempted to spice-up the specifications sheets using the "GDDR4" moniker. The company released the first Radeon HD 4670 accelerator that uses 512 MB of GDDR4 memory across a 128-bit memory bus. The new graphics card features a shorter than usual PCB. It uses a central aluminum-based GPU cooler, with memory chips being cooled by heatsinks. The GPU is clocked at 750 MHz, with the memory clocked at 2200 MHz, a 200 MHz increment over the reference specs. It provides outputs in the form of a D-Sub, a DVI and a HDMI connector. It is priced as low as 75€.

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.

TUL Corporation today announced that it is introducing a high-end graphics solution, PowerColor HD 3870 X2 with Samsung GDDR4 memory that is designed to bring incredible performance and life-like graphics to all gamers.

Expreview claims to have pictures of a version of the Radeon HD 3850 which uses GDDR4 memory instead of the GDDR3 found on current models. Dubbed the HD 3850 512MB Infinity, this card is built by Unika and uses Hynix 0.8ns memory - and you may notice it also has a non-reference PCB and quite an unusual cooler, which has been designed by Triplex. Apparently this card is clocked at 700MHz core and 2200MHz RAM, and according the Expreview the price will remain at around $200.

Samsung Electronics announced the availability of its new 50nm-class DDR2 DRAM certified by Intel. Samsung technicians state that processing 1Gb DDR2 DRAMs in the 50nm range doubles productivity and improves the production efficiency by 50% in comparison to a 1Gb DDR2 DRAM fabricated using 80nm process technology. Samsung's 50nm-class DRAM processing technology will be used not only in DDR2 but also in DDR3, GDDR4 , GDDR5 and mobile DRAM.

Samsung Electronics announced today that its 80nm GDDR4 high-speed graphics memory chip is being used in both the 1GB ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT and the 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics processing cards. The 1GB card has the widest bus in the industry designed for full-performance, high dynamic range (HDR) rendering in PCs.

We chose Samsung's GDDR4 memory for our 1GB ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT and ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics cards because its design complements our strategy in offering leading-edge technology to a broader enthusiast gaming market

said Vijay Sharma, Director, Product Marketing, AMD Graphics Products Group. Samsung's GDDR4 memory devices are now in mass production and will appear widely as soon as the new ATI graphics cards hit the market.

Fudzilla is reporting ATI/AMD might have considerable problems with it's fastest R600 variant. The reason behind is unknown, they are now focusing on the 512 MB DDR3 version and this one will be available at the release sometime in May this year.

While there were initially predictions about low GDDR4 yields and high costs, AMD has announced that they will only put GDDR4 memory in the R600 series. The R600 series will also be compatible with Stream computing (maybe even a second version).