Palit's subsidiary Gainward has a low-profile GeForce GTS 450 graphics card in the making, much like Palit's card. Both these are yet to ship to major markets. In the mean time, Korean website Brainbox.com did a picture preview of Gainward's card, called GTS 450 GOOD Low-Profile. The pictures reveal a neatly-designed PCB and cooler assembly modeled along the lines of high-end graphics cards in which hot air is directed right out of the case. The assembly includes a blower, a shroud that directs air-flow, a large heatsink with densely packed aluminum fins that channel air through, and a heatsink over the MOSFETs.

The PCB seats the GF106 GPU right in the middle. While it looks long, it's only because the PCB is half-height to give that illusion. In reality the PCB is 7.4" long, not longer than the full-height NVIDIA reference PCB, and should fit in most SFF cases that have two expansion slots. The PCB uses a simple 4-phase VRM driven by an ON-Semi controller, there are four GDDR5 memory chips on either sides of the PCB, totaling 1 GB. The clock speeds stick to NVIDIA reference: 783/1566/900(3600) MHz, display outputs include and are limited to one DVI and an HDMI. Power is drawn in from one 6-pin PCI-E power connector facing downwards à la Radeon HD 4870 X2. Gainward's card may charge a slight premium over the full-height cards, for the convenience it offers. More pictures at the source.

Following a recent exposé of pictures and performance figures of the Radeon HD 5750, another one covering that of the ASUS Radeon HD 5770 has surfaced. Using a test bed powered by an AMD Phenom II X4 945, 4 GB of DDR3-1333 memory, and Windows 7 64-bit, a member of the Chinese PC enthusiast portal community MyMyPC.com put an ASUS Radeon HD 5770 accelerator through 3DMark Vantage Performance preset (to yield its GPU score), 3DMark06, and FurMark (to check temperatures). It was compared to other popular graphics accelerators in (or around) the sub-$200 league, including Radeon HD 4890, GeForce GTX 260, and GeForce GTX 275. While in the 3DMark06 test the Radeon HD 5770 edges past the GeForce GTX 260, with 3DMark Vantage (GPU score), it lags behind the rest of the league, by at least around 1000 points. This gives an indication that as far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5770 could be comparable to the Radeon HD 4870, at least in these applications.

Here are the fist pictures of Sapphire's Radeon HD 5800 series offerings: Radeon HD 5870 1GB and Radeon HD 5850. The cards sport the usual sticker design of a CGI girl in a reddish background. With these cards having the cosmetic "red-streak" cleaving the cooler shroud in the center, the so is the sticker. This is also perhaps the first public picture of the Radeon HD 5850, and our size projections were right: While the Radeon HD 5870 maintains a long PCB, the HD 5850 is about as long as a Radeon HD 4870 (reference design). Both accelerators stick to the reference AMD design.

* Images removed at request of Sapphire * Google for alternate source

Eurocom, the world's leading developer of highly personalized, high-performance notebook PCs and LCD PCs, plans to launch its new mobile notebook line-up based on Intel Calpella in early October. The Calpella platform is based on Clarksfield processors with four cores that will be marketed by Intel under Core i7 trademark as well code-named Ibex Peak-M core logic that will be branded as Intel PM55.

There will be two notebook models available: 15.6-inch HD EUROCOM W860CU Cougar and 17.3-inch W870CU Cheetah based on Intel i7 Mobile processors, Intel PM55 chipset, DDR3-1333 Memory, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 2x0M or GTX 3x0M series upgradeable MXM 3.0 Type B VGA technology.

VERTEX3D, a new expected brand of AMD graphics card, today announced the partnership with leading cooling solution provider, ARCTIC COOLING, ready to bring a premium cooling solution of HD4870 series, provides a perfect combination of ultimate gaming performance and the coolest operating environment.

VTX3D HD4870 clocks in with a 770MHz core speed and 900MHz of memory speed that provides a superior gaming performance. In addition, VTX3D HD4870 is equipped with ARCTIC COOLING Accelero TWIN TURBO Pro cooling solution, with dual 92mm fans to increase air flow at low fan speed and 4 heatpipes to reinforce its cooling performance. VTX3D HD4870 cooling solution offers a surprisingly quiet operation for gamers to immerse themselves in the gaming world.

Thermalright is readying a couple of VRM area coolers for the AMD reference design ATI Radeon HD 4870 and Radeon HD 4890 graphics accelerators. The Thermalright VRM-R1 and VRM-R2 work in conjunction with the company's T-Rad series GPU coolers, and strive to provide a high level of cooling that allows better overclocking.

The cooler consists of an a heatsink that covers the VRM area of the accelerator. From this heatsink arise two nickel-plated copper heatpipes that convey heat to a small but dense aluminum fin block. This block is big enough to let you latch an 80 mm fan onto it for active cooling. Both VRM-R1 and VRM-R2 are essentially similar in size and shape of the components, except for that the two differ in the positioning of the aluminum fin block. For VRM-R1, the block propagates perpendicular to the plane of the motherboard, while that of the VRM-R2 propagates parallel to the plane. Both coolers weigh 160 g. They are compatible with most Thermalright GPU coolers, namely HR-03 Rev.A, HR-03 GT, HR-03 GT V2, T-Rad2, and T-Rad2 GTX. They will hit stores very soon.

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.

With NVIDIA lowering the prices of the GeForce GTX 260 almost at will, its partners are pushed to innovate their own designs that lets them make the most margins out of the tight market segment. At $170~$200, partners have come up with a newer breed of GeForce GTX 260 (55 nm, 216 SP) accelerators with some very interesting designs. MSI on its part has come up with a certain design that looks very familiar for the fact that it looks to be inspired to a large extent by the ATI Radeon HD 4870/4890. The MSI N260GTX-T2D896-OCv4 uses a red PCB, and a cooler design that takes inspiration from that of the reference Radeon HD 4870 to the extent that it looks pleasantly amusing. The heatsink over the card's VRM area coarsely resembles a shorter one on the reference-design Radeon HD 4850. Aesthetics apart, this card is factory overclocked, with speeds of 655/2100 MHz (core/memory). It packs 896 MB of GDDR3 memory. American retailer Newegg.com has it listed for $174.99, which further goes down to $154.99 with the optional rebate.Images Courtesy: Newegg.com

AMD clinched the performance crown from NVIDIA, and retained for a significantly long amount of time with the dual-RV770 based Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics accelerator. The company recently introduced the RV790 GPU, which went into making the Radeon HD 4890 graphics accelerator. Our reviews of this card, especially the AMD Radeon HD 4890 CrossFire review, brought forth some interesting findings with regards to how the accelerator works in tandem with another of its kind.

Holding significantly higher clock-speeds than the Radeon HD 4870, the accelerator managed to consume lesser amount of power in a pair than a single Radeon HD 4870 X2 accelerator. As a solution, it emerged faster than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295. The findings of several such reviews sparked of fresh speculations surrounding AMD planning a dual-RV790 accelerator with which it could potentially regain the performance crown. All such speculations were laid to rest by David Cummings, AMD's director of product marketing of discrete desktop graphics, under the graphics product group, in a recent interview with X-bit Labs (read here). Cummings claims that the company has no plans to create a "Radeon HD 4890 X2", at least not yet. The Radeon HD 4890 fills the gap between the HD 4870 and HD 4850 X2, while the HD 4870 X2 holds post at $399. A dual-RV790 card would not be feasible keeping the global economic climate in mind. The HD 4890 accelerators though, are capable of running in tandem with up to four cards of its kind, provided the system supports such a configuration.

Information from an industry source was misinterpreted by VR-Zone yesterday, which wrote in its original report that the ATI Radeon HD 4870 1 GB was going to get a price-cut from $199 down to $179. In reality, it is the GeForce GTX 260 that is expected to get the price cut, sending its price down to $179.

NVIDIA had implemented significant reductions in prices of GeForce GTX 260 accelerators as recently as today, setting its price to $199. AMD may react to this move with its own new pricing scales for the competitive Radeon HD 4870 accelerator. There is no word on when the new pricing would be implemented.

ATI Radeon specialist Sapphire is preparing a new SKU based on its recently unveiled cooler design based on its Vapor-Chamber technology. In an attempt to step up performance and spicing up specifications sheets, the company plans to load 2 GB of GDDR5 memory on an HD 4870 accelerator. To hold that much memory, GDDR5 chips are populated on both sides of the PCB. The chips on the back of the card are cooled by a heatsink, while the ones in the front are subjected to the fan's air-flow. The card uses reference AMD clock speeds of 750/900 MHz (core/memory). DVI, D-Sub and DisplayPort make for the card's connectivity. It is expected to be priced at 258 EUR.

With the release of ATI's next generation Radeon HD 4890 just a few weeks ahead, the company is going to cut the prices of its Radeon HD 4870 512 MB GDDR5 and Radeon HD 4850 512 MB video cards and thus balance its graphics cards product line-up. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB will drop $50, from $199 down to $149 and fight with NVIDIA's rebranded GeForce GTS 250 1 GB. The ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB will drop to $129, and will become main competitor of NVIDIA's GTS 250 512 MB version. Resellers and distributors are expected to start selling with the new prices this week.

Global graphics card leader, MSI International, has unveiled the R4870-MD1G and R4870-MD512 graphics cards. MSI designed these two cards to be perfect for gamers demanding performance, quality, and low-temperature operation by equipping them with an extra large fan, an extra cool cooling system, and extra long lifespan components. The entire card features best class solid capacitors and SSC (solid-state chokes) built-in to the design that helps to smoothly handle high-power levels and punch-out amazing performance. The solid design also helps to extend the cards total lifespan. Featuring all three - HDMI, DVI and D-Sub (VGA) - major display output, these two cards are sure to please those looking for big-screen LCD monitor or LCD TV display.

Having taped out late last year, samples based on the new RV790 graphics processor have been doing rounds in the industry. A few more details have surfaced about it. Earlier noted to have identical clock speeds to that of the RV770XT (Radeon HD 4870), the RV790 samples are now known to have higher memory clock speeds. While the Radeon HD 4870 has its memory frequency at 900 MHz GDDR5 (effective 3.60 GHz), the samples carry memory clocked at 975 MHz (effective 3.90 GHz). Interestingly the memory chips on the sample, labeled IDGV1G-05A1F1C-40X, made by Qimonda, are specified to run at 1.00 GHz, reaching the 4 GHz effective memory speed mark. The samples feature 1 GB of memory. The RV790 is AMD's new current-generation graphics processor built on the newer 40nm silicon fabrication process. The new process is expected to reduce the GPU's power consumption and thermal footprint. The RV790 is conceived to be an immediate successor to the RV770 GPU.

AMD started its marketing offensive against NVIDIA's new dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295, and single-GPU GeForce GTX 285 accelerators, in an attempt to put the Radeon HD 4800 X2 series accelerators ahead of its competition in terms of performance on a "broad scale", and used the cards' availability in non-reference designs as a USP against NVIDIA's offerings using a uniform company-specified design. All this, in an internal presentation leaked to Donanim Haber. As for those wondering why, ATI and NVIDIA have a history of picking on each others' flagship products by means of such presentations, with which they intend to influence OEMs and channel vendors, though it always happens so, that these presentations reach public domains. Viral marketing or something plausible? Find out for yourself:

Empowering consumers to get elite-level computing performance for under $900 U.S. dollars, AMD today launched "Dragon" platform technology for desktop PCs featuring the new AMD Phenom II X4 processor. Even the most demanding users such as enthusiasts and high-end gamers desire affordable systems capable of delivering HD entertainment, graphic-intensive game play at the highest settings their monitors can handle, as well as quick and easy transfer of video entertainment to and from mobile devices. Dragon platform technology provides the power to do it all by combining AMD's highest-performing CPU, the AMD Phenom II X4 processor, with award winning ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series graphics and AMD 7-Series chipsets. And it's offered at an incredible value with Dragon-based systems available for up to $1,200 U.S. dollars less than competing systems that deliver comparable performance.

Leading global PC manufacturers HP, Dell and Alienware plan to offer Dragon platform technology-based desktop systems in the first quarter of 2009, with Dell offering immediate availability in its Dell XPS desktop line. "The XPS 625 desktop powered by AMD's Dragon platform technology features new AMD Phenom II processors to enable a significant boost in speed for enhanced gaming, as well as the flexibility to enable multi-tasking and HD video capabilities free from delays, stalls and lags," said Arthur Lewis, general manager of Dell Gaming Group. "The XPS 625 gives gamers the unbelievable experience they expect at a price point that won't break the bank."

XFX seems to be ready with its initial lineup of graphics cards. Some European retailers have even begun listing their products and pricing. While there's nothing really interesting about the way XFX is pricing its cards, the way it's cards seem to be certainly interesting. Pictured below are its first two models based on the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and HD 4870 graphics processors.

Some surprises: Both use black coloured PCB, neither are 100% reference ATI design, and in fact, XFX designed its own cooler for the Radeon HD 4850 512 MB (model: XFX HD485X-YDFC). The Radeon HD 4870 in the picture is the 1 GB variant (model: HD487A-ZDFC). Both accelerators use AMD reference clock speeds. These cards will be released within the first two weeks of this month. More information as we come across.

Gigabyte today, has released a new graphics card based on the ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics processor (GPU), in a non-reference design. While sporting a thin and light appearance, the card retains high-grade electrical components such as digital PWM circuitry the reference PCB sports. The prominent features of the card include a DisplayPort connector alongside an HDMI port, both on the PCB. The card features 1 GB of GDDR5 memory made by Qimonda, across a 256-bit wide bus.

Being non-reference and Gigabyte, it's expected to have a blue coloured PCB. The GPU is cooled by a Zalman VF830 cooler, which features on several of today's graphics cards by Gigabyte. The memory is left to be cooled under its air-flow. The VRM area gets a heatsink of its own. The card is powered by two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors. It uses reference clock speeds of 750 MHz for the GPU and 900 MHz (effective 3600 MT/s) for the memory. It is yet to be priced.

A common feature with shopping seasons, namely summer and Christmas, is that consumer graphics giants, AMD and NVIDIA announce new products that push up the pure performance and performance per dollar envelopes. With this Christmas season however, nothing notably new is going to come out of their stables, making their existing products slog it out. This resulted in both companies resorting to some serious price-cutting with their existing mid-thru-high-end products.

In the wake of massive price-cuts by NVIDIA for the GeForce GTX 260, AMD has decided to prepare its own price-cuts for the one card that goes neck and neck with the GTX 260, Radeon HD 4870. Originally seated in the $299~$399 bracket, the GeForce GTX 260 and Radeon HD 4870 have become some of the key SKUs for both companies. These are the products we have seen going neck and neck, resulting in both companies refreshing them, and later resorting to price-cuts. NVIDIA refreshed GeForce GTX 260 with a 216 stream processor version that came with added shader compute power, while AMD responded with the 1 GB variant of the Radeon HD 4870. As on today, the company pricing for the Radeon HD 4870 has been set around US $199 for the 512 MB and $239 for the 1 GB variants. This roughly catches up with the pricing for GeForce GTX 260, with roughly $199~$219 for the 192 stream processor and $239~$249 for the 216 stream processor variant.

ASUS, the world's leading producer of top-quality graphics solutions, today unveiled the ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) EAH4870 MATRIX/HTDI/512MD5 and EAH4850 MATRIX/HTDI/512M graphics cards; which sport the Radeon HD 4870 and 4850 GPU respectively. These world's most intelligent cards are equipped with ROG-exclusive technologies and features that unleash the full power of graphics cards, allowing gamers to enjoy an unrivaled in-game visual experience.

ASUS seems to have finally made room for an ATI Radeon HD 4870 based graphics card to fit in its elite MATRIX series. Presenting: EAH4870 MATRIX. The card features ASUS' own-designed PCB with high-grade components to facilitate overclocking. The card comes equipped with a dual-fan cooler. The fans blow air directly onto circular aluminum fin arrays, to cool the various components of the card.

The card sports 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. The core is clocked at 770 MHz, with memory at 920 MHz (3680 MHz effective). One of the main selling points for the MATRIX series cards is the level of control it gives the users. Users are able to set and control clock-speed profiles, monitor the card's various thermal zones and voltages, set voltages manually, monitor and control fan speeds, and also end up with enhanced power-saving modes that reference-design cards don't come with. ASUS is yet to announce pricing and availability.

Alienware introduced its fleet of high-performance gaming PCs based on Intel's newest Core i7 processors. The range is branded as Area 51 X-58. Its range starts from US $1,349, with the base model using the Core i7 920 processor, which is configurable to Core i7 940 and the Core i7 965 Extreme Edition. Memory options go up to 12 GB of DDR3 1066 MHz memory, and base graphics card being the ATI Radeon HD 4870, configurable up to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 SLI or Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX.

There are options for up to 2 TB of storage, or the option to pick performance over storage, with two WD VelociRaptor 300 GB drives in RAID 0. Parallel to this brand is Alienware's other brand, the ALX X-58. The ALX comes with the same base CPU and memory, but ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 or two GeForce 9800 GTX, 2 TB of storage, along with the option of a Blu-Ray burner. The ALX X-58 starts at $3,699. These systems come equipped with 700, 1000 or 1200W power supplies depending on the hardware opted for.

The RV770 graphics processor changed AMD's fortunes in the graphics processor industry and put it back in the race for supremacy over the larger rival NVIDIA. The introduction of RV770-based products had a huge impact on the mid-range and high-end graphics card markets, which took NVIDIA by surprise. Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA has been quoted saying that they had underestimated their competitor's latest GPU, referring to RV770. While the Radeon HD 4870 graphics accelerator provided direct competition to the 192 shader-laden GeForce GTX 260, the subsequent introduction of a 216 shader variant saw it lose ground, leaving doubling of memory size to carve out the newer SKU, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB. Performance benchmarks of this card from all over the media have been mixed, but show that AMD isn't giving up this chance for gaining technological supremacy.

In Q4 2008, NVIDIA is expected to release three new graphics cards: GeForce GTX 270 and GeForce GTX 290. The cards are based on NVIDIA's G200 refresh, the G200b, which incorporates a new manufacturing technology to facilitate higher clock-speeds, stepping up performance. This looks to threaten the market position of AMD's RV770, since it's already established that G200 when overclocked to its stable limits, achieves more performance than RV770 pushed to its limits. This leaves AMD with some worries, since it cannot afford to lose the wonderful market-position its cash-cow, the RV770 is currently in, to an NVIDIA product that outperforms it by a significant margin, in its price-domain. The company's next generation graphics processor would be the RV870, which still has some time left before it could be rushed in, since its introduction is tied to the constraints of foundry companies such as TSMC, and the availability of the required manufacturing process (40nm silicon lithography) by them. While TSMC takes its time working on that, there's a fair bit of time left, for RV770 to face NVIDIA, which given the circumstances, looks a lost battle. Is AMD going to do something about its flagship GPU? Will AMD make an effort to maintain its competitiveness before the next round of the battle for technological supremacy begins? The answer is tilting in favour of yes.

AMD had released an updated hotfix to its ATI Catalyst 8.10 drivers the other day, with hotfix 71310. It succeeded hotfix 70517 for the said version of Catalyst. Hotfixes specific to certain games, are intended to selectively improve hardware performance and/or visual quality. When AMD released the older hotfix for version 8.10 of Catalyst, it aimed to improve performance in general. It was later found by keen observers, that the hotfix manipulated with visual elements of the game in an attempt to gain performance. A popular example of this, was noted in the "lost rocks" issue in Far Cry 2, where the hotfix 70517 caused the texture and/or geometric loss of certain rocks along a track from a scene, presumably reducing load on the graphics processor(s).

With hotfix 71310 issued yesterday, AMD seems to have fixed the issue. Expreview put the hotfix to test, where it was found that the "lost rocks" issue was fixed. The larger issue was of the driver interfering with visual elements the game has to offer. The fix however, came at the expense of performance. Expreview used a test-bed consisting of Core 2 Extreme QX9650 CPU, ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics, 2x 1 GB of DDR3 1066 MHz memory, all seated on an ASUS Striker II Extreme motherboard, running Windows Vista 32-bit operating system. The testers used Driver Sweeper to make sure a new variant of the driver installed on a purged environment. Testing Far Cry 2 revealed that the issue was addressed, but at a performance loss. The frame-rate dropped from 48.12 fps to 43.20, which is roughly a 10% loss in frame-rate.

French site Matbe, posted today photos of the first ATI video card produced by ASUS and branded as Dark Knight edition. This is the third card (correct me if I'm wrong) to go under this relatively new series of ASUS video cards. The EAH4870 DK/HTDI/512M is an ATI Radeon HD 4870 with 512MB GDDR5 memory, a PCI-Express 2.0 interface CrossFireX support and dual-DVI connectivity. Although the Dark Knight nickname suggests boosted clock speeds the card comes at the reference 750MHz GPU and 3600MHz memory speeds. It only features an improved cooling system, that consists of four heatpipes and bigger fan. Early European etailers already price the card at 263 Euro. A Dark Knight HD 4870 with 1GB onboard memory is also rumored to be in the works.