Toshiba's Digital Products Division (DPD), a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., today introduced two 4G WiMAX-ready models of the Portégé R700, the world's lightest 13.3-inch full-performance ultraportable laptop with an integrated DVD drive2. The new Portégé R700 models not only provide business users with unprecedented performance and durability in a highly mobile form factor, but the most comprehensive connectivity options available.

"4G WiMAX coverage continues to rapidly grow and offers millions of people wireless access in many major metropolitan areas across the U.S.," said Carl Pinto, vice president of product development, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Digital Products Division. "Now with a WiMAX-enabled Portégé R700, Toshiba business professionals will be able to enjoy the benefits of having citywide connectivity at their fingertips."

AMD's dual-GPU flagship graphics accelerator, the Radeon HD 5970, is closer than you think it is. Slated for 18th Nov, it includes every feature that allows AMD to reclaim the performance leadership it yearned for since the beginning of this year. In a series of company slides sourced from XtremeSystems Forums, it is learned that this could be one of the first accelerators which AMD "openly" markets as having a "Massive Headroom" for overclocking. While the clock speeds on the HD 5970 are lower than those on the single-GPU HD 5870, AMD lifted limits on what the driver-level ATI Overdrive software can offer in terms of clock speeds. While the engine (core) and memory speeds are set at 720/1000 MHz, the unlocked ATI Overdrive lets users take the clock speeds all the way up to 1000/1500 MHz. That's 30% for the core, and a stellar 50% for the memory.

To back such speeds, AMD seems to have splurged heavily on top-notch components on the PCB. To begin with, the PCB holds two high-grade AMD Cypress GPUs, each with all its 1600 stream processors enabled. The GDDR5 memory, while clocked at 1000 MHz or 4 GT/s, is technically rated by its manufacturer to run at 1250 MHz or 5 GT/s. All systems are powered by high-grade digital PWM voltage regulators, with independent Volterra VRM controllers that allow real-time monitoring, and software voltage control. Barring the five-odd cylindrical solid-state capacitors, Japanese pure ceramic surface-mount capacitors are extensively made use of.

After RV740, the next AMD venture on the 40nm silicon process will be the company's next flagship GPU: the RV790. With this core AMD hopes to reclaim the performance and value crowns, more importantly, energy efficiency the newer fab process hopes to bring to the current-generation GPU.

Quite obviously, AMD will assign new SKUs to the products based on the RV790. The safest guess would be the formation of a new sub-series under Radeon 4000, the Radeon HD 4900 series. German website ATi Forum has learned that indeed AMD planning on a new sub-series based on the new GPU, following scoops on RV740 making the Radeon HD 4700 series. Once again, AMD might create two products based on a single GPU and one flagship dual-GPU accelerator, to begin with. The company's lackluster optimism in the R700 Pro (Radeon HD 4850 X2), has shown on the upcoming series with no mention of a second-inline dual GPU accelerator. In ATi Forum's theory, the RV790XT gets HD 4970, RV790Pro gets HD 4950 and the dual-GPU flagship SKU could be named Radeon HD 4995 X2. Talk about competitive naming.

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.

Following the launch of the flagship graphics card from AMD, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 (codenamed R700 Spartan), Alienware has begun offering its Aurora series high-performance gaming desktops with this card. It lists as a US $550 upgrade over the base model that comes with the GeForce 9600 GT accelerator, buyers can customize their desktops with these cards. When configuring, buyers might incur costs such as $1100 for two cards in Crossfire X plus $350 for the required 1,200 Watt power supply that (Alienware finds) is required when configuring Aurora desktops with two cards.

The Radeon HD 4800 series micro-site can be reached here

The good souls at GPU Café provided product images of the Radeon HD 4870 X2 offering from MSI, placed under the product name MSI R4870X2. Being a standard reference design, it is identical to R700 products from any of ATI's partners (AIBs). MSI went a step ahead by providing product images of a suspended-dismantle image of the card showing two identical copper heatsinks over the GPUs with the black base heatsink assembly and the rear heatspreader assembly. Another image shows two cards seated on a motherboard ganged by a Crossfire interconnect bridge.

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 (R700), the flagship graphics card by AMD is observed to have a lower than expected price-point that seems to justify its performance lead (through pre-release performance evaluations). Going by several reports in the past few months, the R700 was expected to have a US $549.99 launch price, at a time when the competitor NVIDIA was pricing their flagship product in that range. In the period between then and now, the price of the GeForce GTX 280 plummeted from $649.99 to $449.99 while still regarding $499.99 as the company standard price, with some stores and partners in the US selling for as low as $429.99, a huge lop of its original price.

NordicHardware studied several European stores that began listing the R700 for as low as 395 €, with the North American markets keeping their shelf prices set at around the $500 mark. With these price points set as standards, there's bound to be flexibility in pricing, coupled with the launch driver which AMD claims to have fixed several issues in both feature and performance aspects, the product is expected to deliver a level of performance that justifies its price while still remaining 'competitive' per say, and not commanding a high price merely because it holds the performance crown, again going by pre-release performance evaluations.

Chinese hardware website ChipHell put up preliminary comparisons between the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and a Crossfire X setup using two of these cards to compare the scaling efficiency of these cards when paired in a Crossfire X setup. Readings were put up on a chart. The cards seem to scale up to 104% and in several tests the performance scaling stayed above 50%. The average performance increment a pair of these cards has over a single card is noted to be 66%, on launch drivers. It is general belief that entry-level and mid-range cards scale more efficiently than high-end cards. Scaling efficiency for these cards are high even with settings such as 4x AA, 8x AF enabled. The HD 4870 X2 is expected to be formally launched this Tuesday the 12th.

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.

HardOCP previewed the ATI Radeon HD4870 X2. In the preview it was pitted against a single BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC (overclocked) and Crossfire X setup using two cards was pitted against two GeForce GTX 280 cards in SLI. Across variable settings, the HD4870 X2 was compared to the GTX 280. In Crysis the competition was neck-to-neck while the ATI cards returned marginally lower average frame rates. In Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, the ATI cards outclassed the NVIDIA cards significantly, where the Anti-Aliasing (AA) performance of the cards proved to be a trump-card, with the cards returning over 30% performance increments in both single and Crossfire X configurations over the GeForce GTX 280 OC and its SLI configuration. With the AA bottleneck reduced, the R700 is a monster. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures shows what this card is truly capable of, the author of the preview goes on to use "AMD AA Performance FTW" to head a write-up on the AA system. AMD has reworked AA and also a new mode that doesn't tax the video memory as much has been added. The total of 2 GB GDDR5 memory only helps this cause.

The card in Crossfire X peaked 700W though not much is revealed with the power-testing. You can read the article here.

The Taiwanese team of Tom's Hardware revealed several confidential (no more) slides pertaining to the AMD R700 product line, exposing details of the product codenamed "Spartan". It's now confirmed that it comes with a total of 2 GB of GDDR5 memory spanning across sixteen 1 Gb chips.

The picture is that of the HD4870 X2 itself in an angle never pictured before:The first slide shows certain details about the R700 "Spartan", the GPU core speed isn't disclosed yet. Crucial bits: 32Mx32 GDDR5, driver version 8.52 or later, deviceID: 0x9441.

Pre-release performance evaluations suggest that the Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB GDDR5 model will on an average be 50% faster than the GeForce GTX 280 and in some tests 80% faster. A second model, the HD 4850 X2 (2GB GDDR3 memory, 2x RV770Pro) will also convincingly outperform the GeForce GTX 280. The R700 series will be brought into the market late-July thru August.

Although it's known that the HD 4870 X2 (R700) is slated for a July thru August launch, reports from GPU Café suggest that AMD could subject the R700 to an early launch, and that's as early as four days from now, July 14. That's more than two weeks ahead of its launch schedule. It's not clear as to what's the nature of the launch, presumably a 'paper-launch', since there already is concrete information from industry observers in Taiwan as to the time-line of the R700 launch we covered here. Some high-profile overclockers are already to have their sample of the R700. Unreliable sources already point at the possibility of a HD 4850 X2 which comes with 2 GB of GDDR3 memory.

Update by W1zzard: Sorry guys but my sources tell me "middle of August" launch.

NVIDIA Plans to Nuke R700?

Let's face it, the ATI RV770 and its derivatives have become a rage. Everybody loves this chip and wants a card based on this, be it the card that made NVIDIA slash their prices, the HD4850 or the HD4870 which rivals the GeForce GTX 260 at a decent price. In surveys conducted by several websites, be it TweakTown or Hexus.net, majority community members chose ATI as a brand over NVIDIA, rougly indicating that the HD4000 series has done an excellent repair job with ATI and its brand value.

Nothing (exciting) is going NVIDIA's way these days, their notebook graphics division has taken a beating over the recent faulty parts issue. The NVDA stock is a little volatile at the stock market these days, after the company announced it predicts weaker earnings this quarter financial year. Here's something to ponder: If NVIDIA predicts weaker earnings, how come talks are they have something to counter the R700, which AMD already made statements about, saying it will "overwhelm the GeForce GTX 280"?

Although unreliable sources have been pointing out to the possibility that The Radeon HD 4870 X2 (R700) could come in a 2GB variant for a while now, we now get reports from even the Taiwanese industry observer, DigiTimes that the R700 in fact could come in a 2048 MB GDDR5 flavour. Similar reports have also been sourced from the likes of HKEPC and ChipHell. Current products such as the Radeon HD 4870 come equipped with "IDGV51-05A1F1C-40X" 512 Mbit GDDR5 chips made by Qimonda, the cards feature 8 such chips. It's already known that the R700 comes with a total of 16 memory chips, 8 on each side of the PCB, Qimonda readies its 1 Gbit memory chips slated for a July, 2008 release, Hyundai/Hynix already have their parts in the making.

Expect this product to launch by late August.With inputs from DigiTimes

With the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, codenamed R700, inching towards an August launch, ChipHell released fresh pictures of the R700, these are product images of the card in the form in which it will be sold, all built to order.

Visually, the R700 can be regarded as a black colored R680 (HD 3870 X2). While early shots of the cooler showed it to have a red colored leaf-blower, these shots show a black one. The appearance can be described as: Black PCB, black see-thru cooler cover, black leaf-blower, black heatspreader over the rear-side of the PCB.

Following the recent launch of the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and 4870 GPUs, AMD plans to introduce the high-end dual-GPU HD 4870 X2 by the end of July, according to sources at graphics card vendors. Evaluation samples are schedule to be available in mid-July, and AMD will begin shipping reference design boards with 1GB* GDDR5 memory at the end of the month, the sources detailed. In mid-August, AMD will also begin shipping the 4870 X2 (RV770XT) GPU to partners wishing to design custom cards, the sources added. HD 4870 X2 graphics cards are expected to be priced around US$499, the sources detailed.*unconfirmed reports suggest this card to feature a total of 2GB GDDR5 memory

AMD, Austin have managed a benchmark score of X12515 in the 3DMark Vantage benchmark using two Radeon HD4870 X2 cards in CrossfireX, a feat that takes three GeForce GTX 280 cards in 3-way SLI to achieve. The R700 boards were clocked at 778 MHz core, while the GDDR5 memory was clocked at 980 MHz QDR (effectively 3.92 GHz). This brings the total on-board video bandwidth to a stellar 250.8 GBps.With inputs from TG Daily

ATI reportedly aims to release its next-generation R700-series GPUs in mid-2008. The news comes as a surprise, as earlier it was revealed that the ATI R700-series chips are only due either in late 2008 or early in 2009.

According to a news story by the Chinese newspaper Commercial Times, ATI's RV770 GPU is due to be commercially released in late Q2 2008. Two of such chips are projected to power AMD's new high-performance ATI R700 graphics card.

AMD has already released samples of the 55nm RV770 GPU to its partners for certification and cards are expected to launch at late second quarter, added the paper.

AMD recently unveiled plans to put out R680, RV635 and RV620 chips, which would power high-end, mid-range and budget cards, respectively. While this is all well and good, AMD said that the anticipated R700 series of graphics chips would not be put out until at least 2009. This decision will hopefully give AMD a chance to return to profitability. The long wait for a new graphics family will also give AMD more time to ensure that they're putting out a high-quality product that will dominate the market. During the event that this was discovered at, AMD also put out some details of the upcoming Leo platform. For more about the Leo platform, please check the source link.

After being late to market with high-performance graphics offerings for a number of times, ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, is reportedly considering high-end graphics solutions that utilize more than two or, perhaps, even more physical dice. The method has been successfully utilized by Intel Corp., but will it be feasible for graphics processors too? ATI Radeon HD 2900 (R600) graphics chip, which contains about 700 million of transistors had power consumption of 160W, or even more, but still did not manage to demonstrate performance on par with Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX, a solution that also demands high amount of power and is rather expensive to manufacture. But ATI Radeon HD 3800 (RV670) graphics processing unit, which is made using 55nm process technology, has the same amount of horsepower as R600, but is cheaper to build and consumes less amount of energy. While two of such ATI RV670 chips would still consume quite a lot of power, they will be able to offer performance and features that were not available before without necessity to develop a chip that would have about 1.3 billion of transistors, the amount of elements that would require very thin process technology - so that the GPU would stay cheap enough to manufacture - and quite a lot of time to design it and verify the lack of bugs.