Even amidst fears of the company closing down, GeCube has made it a point to release new products. The latest offering is a passively-cooled Radeon HD 4550 accelerator. The GC-HD4550LP3-E3 is a half-height, HTPC-friendly graphics card which makes do with a heatsink to cool it. The heatsink spans across three quarters of the length of the card.

The card is driven by the 55 nm RV710 GPU which holds 80 stream processors, and a 64-bit wide memory interface to hold 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. The core is clocked at 600 MHz, with the memory at 800 MHz (1600 MHz DDR). DVI and HDMI connectors are located on the card, with a D-Sub connector that extends out. Expect this card to be priced around €50.

Close to ten days before ATI's Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series rolls out at the upcoming CeBIT event, one of its eggs seems to have hatched a little early. Dell's Indian website has already started listing it in the specifications of the Studio 15 notebook. Enter Mobility Radeon HD 4570. This mGPU is derived from the 55 nm RV710 graphics processor, and intends to be a handy performance boost over integrated graphics. It features 80 stream processors, 8 texture memory units, and 4 raster operations units. It connects to GDDR3, DDR2 memory using its 64-bit wide memory bus. The card used in Dell's Studio 15 sports 256 MB of memory. The mGPU is expected to outperform competing NVIDIA G110M by 20~30%, while keeping its TDP rating at a mere 13 W. Once formally announced, one could expect to hear more about this mGPU.

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 Fusion could well be the first CPU to feature a graphics processor core. It will incorporate a graphics processor with specifications identical to the RV710. This CPU would be based on the 45 nm silicon fabrication process, and this processor will be manufactured at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). This GPU will be called "Kong". Here are its specifications:

• Core Frequency between 600 ~ 800 MHz
• 128-bit wide memory bus (DDR3, Side-port supportive)
• 40 Stream Processors
• 8 TMUs, 4 ROPs
• DirectX 10.1 support
• UVD

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.