TSMC, one of the world's major semiconductor foundries, said that it has resolved all issues pertaining to proper yields of chips built on the 40 nanometre node. During a company event on the 19th, Mark Liu, Senior VP of Operations, said that the quality of production on the 40 nm node is almost on par with the 65 nm one. Liu stated that the chamber matching problems that had impacted yield rates for the company's 40nm node have been resolved.

TSMC caters to graphics processor giants NVIDIA and AMD, with both having designs of 40 nm performance graphics processors with multi-billion transistor counts. AMD has been selling 40 nm GPUs made by TSMC since its previous generation ATI Radeon HD 4770, it currently makes all its Radeon HD 5000 series GPUs on the node. NVIDIA is poised to release its first billion transistor 40 nm GPU, the GF100, in its consumer GeForce brand later this quarter.

In addition to this, TSMC has just finished building a new factory at the Hsinchu Science Park (HSP), Taiwan, part of its Fab 12. The new facility will be able to commence volume production of 28 nm products as early as by Q3 2010.

A Chinese tech community MyMyPC.com member pictured, and tested a Radeon HD 5750 graphics accelerator, which is intended to be AMD's flagship product in the sub $150 market segment. Unlike the Radeon HD 5770, which is pictured with a different cooler that resembles that of the Radeon HD 4770 (AMD reference), and Radeon HD 3870, this card makes do with a GPU cooler essentially similar to that of the more common Radeon HD 4770 cooler design, except for a few changes with the fan and the cooler shroud. Under the black, egg-shaped shroud is a heatsink with radially-projecting fins, in which is nested a red 80 mm fan. Everything else on the card, relies on its air-flow.

Gigabyte has a custom-design version of the ATI Radeon HD 4770 accelerator ready, packed with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory instead of the usual 512 MB. Already listed by several German online stores, Gigabyte GV-R477UD-1GI is selling for as low as 114.43 EUR. Although there are no pictures of the actual card, we can infer from the model name that it is going to have a custom design, featuring Gigabyte's Ultra Durable Video technology that makes use of durable components, and perhaps the signature Gigabyte-blue PCB.

Apart from the expanded memory, the rest of its specifications remain the same, including clock speeds of 750/800 MHz (core/memory). Notable specs of the Radeon HD 4770 include 640 stream processors, DirectX 10.1 support, and ATI CrossFireX support. A global launch of the accelerator can be expected soon.

Following the likes of PowerColor and HIS, Sapphire, one of AMD's largest AIB partners, is preparing a custom-design Radeon HD 4770 accelerator. Highlights of this card are strictly confined to its design and cooling, not that it has a brighter specs sheet compared to the reference design. It uses a blue colored PCB with a heat-spreader over the card's VRM area, and the GPU is cooled by an Accelero L2 variant originally made by Arctic Cooling. Display outputs include DVI-D, D-Sub, and HDMI. Specifications-wise, the accelerator sticks to AMD reference clock speeds of 750/800 MHz (core/memory), and sports 512 MB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit interface. Again, expect standard pricing on this one.

Following custom-design product launches from the likes of PowerColor, HIS decided to roll out one of its own. Named the HIS HD 4770 iCooler III, the color scheme is trademark HIS shade of blue with black. The company custom-designed both the PCB and the cooler. Under the black plastic shroud is what appears to be an aluminum heatsink with radially-projecting fins, nested into which, is the fan.

Despite all this, the clock speeds remain reference 750 MHz (core) and 800 MHz (memory). It holds 512 MB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit wide interface. Outputs are care of DVI-D, D-Sub, and HDMI with 7.1 channel audio. Expect a fairly standard price when this comes out.

TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer of AMD graphics cards, announces an upgrade to the HD4770 series, the custom cooled PCS HD4770. Manufactured with a cutting-edge 40nm process and using the latest GDDR5 memory, the PowerColor PCS HD4770 represents an industry milestone in the advancement of gaming performance.

The PowerColor PCS HD4770 clocks in with a 750MHz core speed and 800MHz of memory speed. Added to the HD4770 is our Professional Cooling Solution (PCS) made by ARCTIC COOLING. The specially designed 92mm cooling fan dissipates the heat from the GPU and memory more efficiently than a standard fan, providing a cool operating environment.

ATI surprised us last month, when sections of the Chinese media leaked information about Radeon HD 4860, a new SKU that intends to succeed Radeon HD 4850 in the $120~$130 segment. Fresh information suggests that the SKU indeed will see the light of the day, even outside China. Slated to ship from around August 18, the HD 4860 will substitute the HD 4850, which is handling the lower price segment of $90~$110. This only gives you an idea of how intense competition has become in the sub $150 graphics market.

Another bit of information surfacing is about the Radeon HD 4750. Even as the Radeon HD 4770 is suffering stock shortages around the world, ATI seems to be going ahead with the HD 4750, a graphics card based on the 40 nm RV740 GPU. The HD 4750 has similar specifications to the HD 4770. It even sports GDDR5 memory. The RV740 core runs at 730 MHz, and its memory at 800 MHz (3200 MHz effective). While the memory clock speed is identical to that of the HD 4770, the core is clocked slightly lower. Overall, the card won't have as much overclocking headroom as the HD 4770, because it will not draw power from a 6-pin power connector. The design ensures existing low-performing raw materials are utilized more effectively. The HD 4750 is expected to be priced at $88 initially. The first batch of these cards will be very small, quantity-wise.

AMD is preparing yet another performance-mainstream Radeon HD 4000 series SKU. The Radeon HD 4790 finds lineage from the Radeon HD 4890, currently AMD's fastest GPU. The RV790 GPU will be given a new set of specifications and memory configuration, to yield an SKU that performs better than the Radeon HD 4770, and slightly better than HD 4850. It beats us as to why it is positioned in the HD 4700 series, and not say "Radeon HD 4860", but we are too late to comment on that.

Specifications-wise, the RV790 core runs at 600 MHz, slightly lower than the RV770 in Radeon HD 4850 (625 MHz), but its performance increment over it comes from the use of GDDR5 memory. The GPU makes use of a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. It handles 512 MB of memory clocked at 800 MHz (3200 MHz effective). Being based on the RV790, it is pin-compatible with any existing HD 4890 PCB. Price-wise, it is expected to sit between the HD 4850 and HD 4870.

We had a chance to drop by the XFX suite during the Computex. They are showing off their Radeon HD 4770. It comes with the dual slot reference cooler, which was actually not intended for retail and the power supply has a very unique design along with a cable management system. The PSU is rated for 850W and features a single 70A 12V rail. On top of that it is 80Plus Silver certified.

AMD is expected to introduce a series of price-cuts next month, for its ATI Radeon HD 4800 series graphics products. The price-cuts may amount to as much as US $50, perhaps taking advantage of the low manufacturing costs. The cuts also come ahead of the time-frame in which the company will introduce a DirectX 11 compatible future-generation of ATI Radeon, to sync with the commercial launch of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system.

When implemented, the price of the high-end Radeon HD 4890 is expected to be $199, down $50 from its current price of $249. Radeon HD 4870 will sell for $149 from its current listing price of $199, although there needs to be some clarity on how the 1 GB and 512 MB variants are positioned. Finally, the Radeon HD 4850 will enter the $100 realm, to substitute the Radeon HD 4770, which seems to be suffering an acute stock shortage.

Gigabyte has designed one of the first custom PCB designs for the Radeon HD 4770, this time, brandishing a silent cooler and double the amount of memory. The company also designed a new GeForce 9800 GT accelerator with a similar design and feature set. To begin with, the Radeon HD 4770 model GV-R477SL-1GI, sports a blue custom-PCB, which is built using the company's Ultra Durable VGA construction. A somewhat large passive cooler spans beyond the length of the card, and consists of three copper heat-pipes conveying heat to an aluminum fin block. The card features 1 GB of 128-bit GDDR5 memory. The GeForce 9800 GT model N98TSL-1GI(289) features a similar cooler over a blue custom UDV PCB. It makes use of 1 GB of 256-bit GDDR3 memory.

TechPowerUp Radeon BIOS Editor (RBE) has been updated to version 1.21. RBE is our popular ATI Radeon graphics card BIOS manipulation utility. The new version brings about a few changes that enhance the application's functionality and stability. The developer has listed the following important changes:

• Fixed minor glitch in BIOS flashing procedure
• Minor fixes and enhancements for hex editor
• Updated WinFlash link
• Fixed more Radeon HD 3650-related bugs
• Added some DeviceIDs
• Improved specs string analysis code
• Added fan support for Radeon HD 4770

For a complete version history, and to download the software, please visit this page.

ATI looks to be still in the mood to cater to the dying breed of AGP motherboard users. A Radeon HD 4770 graphics card made by PowerColor surfaced on Amazon.com (model: 1A1-G000004992), that boasts of support for the AGP interface, although a picture of the PCI-E variant accompanies it. The store claims it to be in stock, and priced at US $99, although PowerColor's website has no trace of it. We are in the process of finding out more about this card.

If indeed PowerColor made such a card, AGP users have something to rejoice: the fastest AGP accelerator, one that puts them into the current-generation of GPUs. The card features 640 stream processors, is DirectX 10.1 compliant, and features 512 MB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit memory interface. Until now, the fastest AGP card from ATI is the Radeon HD 3850 AGP.

Update (05/13): PowerColor responded to this article saying that the product is falsely advertised, and that the company neither has an HD 4770 AGP accelerator, nor is it currently in the works. In the course of the conversation however, the company disclosed that it is working on products based on the Radeon HD 4600 series (HD 4650, HD 4670) that are AGP-compatible.

XFX continues to show enthusiasm with its ATI Radeon line of products, by coming up with the first Radeon HD 4770 accelerator for the market to use the premium reference design for Radeon HD 4770 (model: XFX 4770ST D5 512MB). AMD had come up with two choices of coolers for its partners. Most of them choose the one which is more cost-effective, so the sales margins could be improved in an already tight pricing-segment.

XFX used the premium reference-design cooler and PCB, with a major difference that it comes in black instead of red. XFX has so far had a knack of trying as hard as it can, to color its cards black. The company did so with the Radeon HD 4870 reference design accelerator recently. This card retains the reference clock speeds of 750 MHz (core), and 800 MHz (memory). Given that XFX chose the more expensive parts in making this card, it will pass on the premium to the consumer, making it slightly more expensive than the reference design cards in its league.

Following ASUS, XFX is another partner breaking away from the reference design mold for the Radeon HD 4770 accelerator soon after its launch. The company is ready with a variant that features 1 GB of GDDR5 memory. For now, a picture of only its box can be found from an incomplete promotional page of the company, with links leading to its 512 MB base-model, but what the one picture reveals, is a rather lavish packaging. The "X" shaped box shows no signs of a "XXX" branding, or anything that suggests the card features factory-overclocked speeds, though the "1 GB GDDR5" is legible. The card is backed by the company's "5-star" warranty. Its pricing and availability are not known.

Barely 24 hours into the launch of the Radeon HD 4770, ASUS has announced its factory-overclocked, and overclocker-friendly variant of the ATI Radeon HD 4770 (model: EAH4770 TOP/HTDI/512MD5). Giving it the "TOP" branding, the company upped the clock speeds, and backed the product with its Voltage Tweak technology, and its popular SmartDoctor performance control application. The gains end-users have compared to using a reference design accelerator are two fold.

First, ASUS set the clock speeds at 800 MHz (core), and 850 MHz (memory), both 50 MHz bumps over the reference AMD clock speeds of 750/800 MHz (core/memory). Second, using the value-added features, the voltages can be upped from 0.95 V to 1.2 V, increasing the overclocking headroom. ASUS claims the core could be set at freqencies as high as 971 MHz, and 1150 MHz for the memory: a seemingly massive increment over the reference speeds, which ASUS rounds off as a 35% speed improvement. The card retains the reference AMD design, and the most common cooler design partners are currently using. Its pricing and availability are yet to be known.

AMD today released the ATI Radeon HD 4770 graphics card. The release marks several milestones for the company, mainly winning the race for the first GPU to be built on the 40 nm process, and the introduction second-generation GDDR5 memory for the mainstream consumer segment.

The brains of this card is the 40 nm AMD RV740 GPU. Its specifications include 640 stream processors that churn out over 900 GFLOPs of shader compute power, 32 texture memory units, and 16 render back-ends. The GPU is aided by 512 MB of fast GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit wide interface. This provides the same amount of bandwidth as 256-bit GDDR3 commonly found in most graphics card in the range. The card is DirectX 10.1 compliant, and supports the ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU standard.

The card has been launched worldwide, with its initial US price set at $109, and an optional rebate that can send its price further down. In its range, it competes with NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT, and AMD's own Radeon HD 4830. TechPowerUp is one of the first technology portals to publish a thorough review of the Radeon HD 4770. Our review can be read here.

As we head towards the launch of AMD's newest GPU, the ATI Radeon HD 4770, things certainly seem to be looking good from what we have seen of the sub-$100 accelerator so far. After the recent exposé of the HIS HD 4770, it's time now for the one from another AIB.

The card features an identical overall design to the one from HIS, indicating that the cooler is a standard reference design, not what we had seen from the company presentation of HD 4770, showing a rather visually-appealing cooler. The card features 512 MB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit interface, 640 stream processors, and DirectX 10.1 compliance. Taiwanese website CoolPC put the card through a round of 3DMark06, 3DMark Vantage, and FurMark. The testbed consisted of an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 processor and 4 GB of DDR2-800 memory. The card secured 12,042 points at 3DMark06, and P7408 at 3DMark Vantage. After 350 seconds of FurMark stability test, the GPU temperatures were tipping 72 degrees Celsius, with the fan running at 42% speed. Here's one card to look out for.

AMD's newest line of desktop graphics cards in the making, Radeon HD 4700, will be launched in weeks to come. The Radeon HD 4770 model in particular, is the company's move to compete with NVIDIA's GeForce 9800 GT, while at some highly competitive price-points. Earlier in February, a sample made its way to Guru3D, which revealed quite a bit about the SKU. It looks like AMD's partners, at least HIS, is ready with its HD 4770 card, according to a press-shot leaked by Chinese website ITOCP.

The pictures show the card to feature a PCB visibly identical to the reference PCB candidate spotted on the Guru3D sample, while featuring a company-designed cooler. The cooler consists of a GPU block from which metal fins project radially, on which a fan is present, decked with a fancy shroud. Also pictured are the box design, and package contents. The common features of the Radeon HD 4770 are known to be: 40 nm RV740 GPU, 640 stream processors, 128-bit GDDR5 memory interface, and CrossFireX support. This card features 512 MB of memory. The price of this card is not known, though AMD reportedly set a US $99 target SEP price for the Radeon HD 4770.

AMD may be inches close to launching its high-end Radeon HD 4890 accelerator, but in its shadows, an equally exciting product-line is taking shape: the Radeon HD 4700 series, which AMD refers to as "A new paradigm of performance and price", rightly so, with the new 40 nm process the RV740 GPU is built on, and the performance that looks to put it on top of its class.

IT168.com published a few slides from a recent presentation AMD carried on, for its upcoming Radeon HD 4700 series. The most relevant slides reveal a lot about the Radeon HD 4770, the flagship product based on the RV740. The card design that has surfaced, reveals a cooler design similar to that of the Radeon HD 3870, except for a different colour-scheme and printed graphics. The card features 512 MB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit memory interface, which ideally churns out the same amount of bandwidth as 256-bit GDDR3, while consuming lesser power (due to lesser number of chips on the board). A slide also reveals a crucial bit about the pricing strategy AMD is planning to adopt, which shows the Radeon HD 4770 to be priced at US $99 (target SEP prices). From AMD's own ratings, the card should offer higher performance per watt and performance per dollar (in terms of rated compute power) than NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT. You can also work out from the figures that the card consumes 80 W of power. The card is slated for a May 4 launch.

ATI, as part of its initial plans with the 40 nm manufacturing technology is preparing the RV740 graphics processor, the company's next mid-range workhorse graphics processor. The new manufacturing process lets AMD respect the price-constraints of that market segment, and accordingly price its SKUs. VR-Zone sourced a few more details about the GPU.

While it is already known that the RV740 goes into making the Radeon HD 4700 series, it is now rumored that its two variants will be termed HD 4770 and HD 4750, and not HD 4750 and HD 4730, as reported earlier. The HD 4770 SKU will be distinct in being the first mainstream graphics card with GDDR5 memory. It will use its 128-bit wide bus to accommodate 512 MB of memory. The HD 4750 on the other hand, will stick to GDDR3. The reference model may have 1GB of it. HD 4770 is expected to be priced around the US $120 mark, making it a head-on competitor to the GeForce GTS 240, which is known to be a re-badged GeForce 8800/9800GT with higher reference clock-speeds. The HD 4750 has GeForce 9600 GT in its sights, with its expected initial pricing ranging around the $100 mark. The two are expected to follow the RV790 launch, and will arrive in May, close to two months after the GeForce GTS 240 comes to be.