AMD today announced Rockwell Collins, a leader in innovative communications and avionics systems for the aerospace and defense industries, has selected the AMD Radeon E2400 embedded graphics processor for inclusion in its highly-intuitive, integrated flight deck solution, Pro Line Fusion. Chosen for its advanced 3D graphics rendering capabilities, the AMD Radeon E2400 helps generate realistic graphical models of the external aircraft environment to help improve awareness of terrain, obstacles and runways in low visibility conditions. With this technology, pilots can now have key information at their fingertips, enabling them to make informed decisions during every phase of flight.

"The rapid and accurate visualization of data and access to information are essential for professionals in the aerospace and defense industries," said Richard Jaenicke, director, Embedded Client Business, AMD. "The AMD Radeon E2400 was specifically designed to meet customers' demand for high-quality graphics with a stable, long-lasting supply, making it ideal for system designers such as Rockwell Collins."

Closely trailing the launch of NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680, and keeping up with its own streak of launching a new graphics card line each month since January, AMD will unveil its Radeon HD 7990 graphics card in April, or so it's reported. INPAI reports the clock-speed and chip-configuration of the upcoming dual-GPU monstrosity. The Radeon HD 7990 packs two 28 nm "Tahiti" GPUs as a "Crossfire on a stick" solution. The Tahiti chips will be clocked at 850 MHz (core), and 1250 MHz (5.00 GHz effective) memory.

The chip-configuration of each of the two Tahiti chips will be the same as that on the Radeon HD 7970, with 2048 Graphics CoreNext stream processors, 128 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 3 GB of memory, each. The total memory on the card will hence be 6 GB. With the Radeon HD 7970 refusing to budge from its US $549 price-point, it's quite natural that the Radeon HD 7990 will be priced very high. It is gunning to retain the performance crown that's currently disputed between the Radeon HD 6990 and GeForce GTX 590.

AMD is close to launching a new value accelerated processing unit (APU) in the FM1 package, the A4-3420. This model has been available in OEM/tray package to system manufacturers since January, but now AMD is releasing it to the retail channel, in the PIB (processor in a box) package. This chip has two x86-64 cores clocked at 2.80 GHz, and Radeon HD 6410D graphics with 160 stream processors, with its engine clocked at 600 MHz. The L2 cache size is 512 KB per core. It packs an integrated memory controller supporting dual-channel DDR3-1600 MHz memory, and a PCI-Express 2.0 root hub for discrete graphics. Its rated TDP is 65W. Expect a US $65 price.

A part of the reason why NVIDIA's performance-segment GK104 is gunning for the performance crown from AMD's Tahiti GPU could be hidden behind two of its key specifications: transistor count, and die-size. 3DCenter.org compiled these two specifications for the GK104 from reliable sources, which pin the transistor count at 3.54 billion, and die-area at 294 mm². This yields a transistor density of 12 million per mm², which is slightly higher than that of AMD Tahiti, slightly lower than that of AMD Pitcairn, and certainly higher than previous-generation chips from both AMD and NVIDIA. If GeForce GTX 680 does in fact end up competitive with AMD's Radeon HD 7900 series, it could serve as a tell-tale sign of NVIDIA's Kepler architecture being a more efficient one.

At CeBIT, AFOX showed off the industry's first single-slot, air-cooled graphics card based on the Radeon HD 7850 GPU. Carrying the model number AF7850-1024D5S1, AFOX' creation sports a similar cooling assembly as the one on the AF6850-1024D5S1, an HD 6850-based graphics card. The cooler uses a big lateral-flow blower that directs air through a dense aluminum fin-channel array, where heat gets dissipated onto it. Heat is drawn from key components such as the GPU, memory, and VRM, using a vapor-chamber plate.

There's a small catch with AFOX' design, though. The memory amount is halved to 1 GB, although it still sits across a 256-bit wide memory interface. We don't expect a significant performance penalty for that. Further, the memory clock speed is reduced from the reference speed of 1200 MHz to 1125 MHz (4.80 GHz eff. to 4.50 GHz eff.), although the core speed stays the same, at 860 MHz. The display IO is an interesting mix of one dual-link DVI, one full-size HDMI, one mini-DisplayPort, and one full-size DisplayPort.

The fact that Sapphire has been working on a Radeon HD 7970 graphics card with an obscene 6 GB of memory has been known since the end of 2011. The said card, the Sapphire Toxic HD 7970 6GB, has already taken shape, and was spotted running at CeBIT. Such as it is, AMD utilizes 2 Gbit GDDR5 memory chips in numbers of 12 to achieve 3 GB of memory across a 384-bit wide memory interface, on its HD 7970. Higher density GDDR5 chips are not available, at least not in bulk. So the only way Sapphire is doing 6 GB is by piggy-backing two 2 Gbit chips across 32-bit wide paths, each. As a result, these cards have memory chips on both sides of the PCB, obverse and reverse, and require a metal back-plate to keep the chips on the reverse side cool. The only reason we see consumers needing 6 GB of video memory today, is multi-monitor gaming. Even there, the impact of the increase to 6 GB memory (from 3 GB) is debatable.

An AMD presentation slide was scored by OBR-Hardware, the site did not vouch for the authenticity of the slide, but reveals a new GPU codename, "Tenerife". The slide rings many bells. First, we know from a recent report by VR-Zone, that a new family of GPUs succeeding "Southern Islands" is codenamed something along the lines of "Sea Islands". Second, the source speculates the stream processor count of Tenerife to be 2304, which falls in line the "actual" stream processor count of Tahiti, that was revealed by a leaked company document belonging to Sapphire, which created some controversy in early January, which AMD later went on to quash.

The slide mentions "Tenerife" as being based on "Enhanced Graphics CoreNext" architecture, probably a tweaked-up GCN, which will probably characterize "Sea Islands" family. Enhanced GCN is mentioned as having 20% higher performance over the current architecture. The next most interesting bit is the mention of a tentative launch, mentioned as Q3-2012, at the earliest. This falls in line with speculation of Radeon HD 8000 series making it to the market no later than this year. The question here is could "Tenerife" be the GPU AMD builds its "Radeon HD 8900" series on, or could AMD do a "Radeon HD X1900" by surprising the high-end segment with a new GPU in the current series? "Tenerife" is probably named after the biggest of the Canary Islands, Spanish offshore territory.

HIS kicked off its Radeon HD 7800 series with a trio of graphics cards under its coveted IceQ family. These include the HIS HD 7850 IceQ X, the HIS HD 7870 IceQ X, and HIS HD 7870 IceQ iTurbo. The first two use proven IceQ X cooling solutions that have been used on previous-generation graphics cards by HIS, which have just different cooler shroud color-scheme of black+silver.

The HD 7850 IceQ X features clock speeds of 860 MHz core and 1200 MHz (4.80 GHz effective) memory, in line with AMD reference clock speeds, while the HD 7870 IceQ X features 1000 MHz core and 1200 MHz (4.80 GHz effective) memory, also in line with AMD reference. Then there's the HIS HD 7870 IceQ iTurbo, featuring a gargantuan new cooling solution never before seen. This cooler uses an aluminum channel heatsink, to which heat is fed by four 8 mm-thick copper heat pipes, through which air is blown by a lateral-flow fan. Interestingly, this card, too, sticks to AMD reference clock speeds.

XFX announced its Radeon HD 7870 Double Dissipation graphics card. The card features the same large-version of the company's Double Dissipation cooling assembly that's also featured on some of its Radeon HD 7900 series products, making it a monster overclocker. The Double Dissipation cooler uses an aluminum fin stack to which heat is conveyed by copper heat-pipes, which draw heat directly from the GPU die. The fin-stack is then ventilated by two "GHOST" fans, which are whisper-quiet. The R7870 DD from XFX also features a 5-10% factory-overclock. Slated for market-availability on, March 19 like the rest of the Radeon HD 7800 series products launched today, the XFX HD 7870 Double Dissipation will charge a small premium over the reference design.

Japanese media has got a hold of the specifications table of AMD's Radeon HD 7800 series products, the HD 7870 and HD 7850. Hermitage Akihabara has not cited a source as such, so we assume it vouches for the accuracy of this table. The table reveals Radeon HD 7870 as having 1280 stream processors, a 256-bit wide memory bus width (derived from the memory bandwidth and clock speeds figures provided in the table), 80 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and clock speeds of 1.00 GHz core, with 1200 MHz (4.80 GHz effective) memory. This SKU has a typical board power of 175W.

The slide details the HD 7850 as having 1024 stream processors, 64 TMUs, 32 ROPs, the same 256-bit GDDR5 memory interface, with the same memory clock speed as the HD 7870, but with a lower core clock speed of 860 MHz. the board power for the HD 7850 is mentioned to be under 130W. Interestingly, 2 GB is standard memory amount for both cards. The Japanese site mentions the official launch date of HD 7800 series as being March 8, but also goes on to add that market availability (we're assuming they mean the Japanese market), is only expected on/after March 19.

Radeon owners can now download a fresh batch of Catalyst profiles bringing improved performance in the latest PC games. This new CAP release includes the following profiles:

- Mass Effect 3 - Improves CrossFire performance
- Path of Exile - Improves CrossFire performance
- Darkness 2 - Resolves flickering issues on single GPU configurations when Anti-Aliasing is forced on in the Catalyst Control Center
- Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - Resolves character texture corruption seen using single GPU configurations when Anti-Aliasing is forced on in the Catalyst Control Center
- Wargame: European Escalation (DirectX 9 version) - Improves CrossFire performance
- Wargame: European Escalation (DirectX 11 version) - Resolves flickering observed when running in CrossFire mode
- Mount Blade: Disables CrossFire to avoid corruption as the title has a capped Frame Rate
- L.A. Noire (DirectX 11 Version) - Improves CrossFire performance, and resolves flickering seen in shadows

The AMD 12.2 CAP 1 can be downloaded via this page.

AMD posted a new Catalyst driver (8.93.7 RC10) specifically for Windows 8 Consumer Preview. The driver is WDDM 1.2 compliant, and supports all launched AMD Radeon GPUs from HD 5000 thru HD 7000 series (except HD 7900 and HD 7700); AMD A-Series, C-Series, and E-Series APUs; FirePro, and FirePro 3D series products. Highlights include:

• Native Stereo 3D support: Windows 8 will natively support Stereo 3D for full-screen and windowed gaming, and video applications
• Unified Video API - Video playback is now integrated within the DirectX 11 API; enabling simultaneous high quality Video and 3D content, and the potential for enhanced video transcoding performance
• Optimized screen rotation
• Improved sleep / resume performance
• Optimized Power Consumption

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 8.93.7 RC10 for Windows 8 Consumer Preview

Chinese company Yeston thinks there's still room for factory-overclocked Radeon HD 6870 graphics cards in the market, it unveiled the R6870 Game Master, designed to have high overclocking headroom. The card uses a custom-design PCB with an 8+1+1 phase VRM to power the GPU. The VRM takes advantage of LFPAK MOSFETs and two NEC TOKIN Proadlizers, which condition power and enhance stability with voltage-assisted overclocking. Out of the box, the card ships with reference clock-speeds of 900 MHz core and 1050 MHz (4.20 GHz effective) memory, leaving it entirely to you to take the clock speeds where you want them to go, instead of being spoon-fed with factory-OC profiles.

Moving on to the cooling, Yeston gave the R6870 Game Master a zesty cooling assembly that spans three expansion slots. It uses a lateral-flow design with a blower pushing air through numerous aluminum channels where heat is dissipated to it. It appears like heat is conveyed to these channels using heat-pipes, and not a hot plate. As a nice cosmetic touch, Yeston gave the card a thick back-plate that is ridged. It helps reduce PCB bending and could assist heat dissipation just a little. Display outputs include two each of DVI and mini-DisplayPort, and one HDMI. Power is drawn from two 6-pin PCIe power connectors. Out now in the Chinese market, the Yeston R6870 Game Master is priced at 1,199 RMB (US $190).

An updated pack of Catalyst Application Profiles is now available for download and it includes profiles for the following five games:

- Alan Wake - Improves CrossFire performance
- Syndicate - Improves both single GPU and CrossFire performance
- Darkness 2 - Improves CrossFire performance
- Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - Improves CrossFire performance for the AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series to avoid negative scaling at low resolutions
- Natural Selection 2 - Fixes shadow map flickering issue seen with CrossFire enabled

To get the Catalyst Application Profiles v12.1 CAP 3 see this page.

Radeon users who can't/won't wait for a WHQL certification process can now get their hands (not literally) on the Catalyst 12.2 driver featuring support for Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000, HD 4000, HD 5000, HD 6000, and HD 7000 Series cards. Available here for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, this release brings the following goodies:

Windows 7 and Windows Vista support for the AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series and AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series

- Enables support for Windows 7 64-bit/32-bit and Windows Vista 64-bit/32-bit
- Windows XP support will be made available in AMD Catalyst 12.4

Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing is now available for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications

- Supported on the AMD Radeon HD 7900 and 7700 Series
- Users can now enable Super Sample Anti-Aliasing and Adaptive Anti-Aliasing through the AMD Catalyst Control Center for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications
- Applications must support in game Anti-Aliasing for the feature to work (Forced on Anti-Aliasing through the Catalyst Control Center is not supported for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications)

AMD's Radeon HD 7800 series performance GPUs that target cost-benefit sweet-spots will be launched in the first half of March. The launch will include Radeon HD 7870 and Radeon HD 7850. The two SKUs are based on a new 28 nm ASIC codenamed "Pitcairn". Little is known about its specifications at this point, from reliable sources at least.

In April, AMD's rival NVIDIA will get its GeForce Kepler family of GPUs, all guns blazing. In April alone, NVIDIA is expected to launch a high-end part, the GeForce GTX 690, a performance part, the GeForce GTX 660, and mainstream part GeForce GTX 640. The three will be based on three new ASICs built on the 28 nm process, the GK110, GK104, and GK106, respectively.

April will be the most interesting month for PC enthusiasts as Intel will launch its third-generation Core processor family, codename "Ivy Bridge". Little is known about AMD's high-end Radeon HD 7990 "New Zealand".

XFX launched a plethora of Radeon HD 7700 series graphics cards, 9 models to be precise. These are essentially based on two designs by the company, a single-fan Ghost Thermal Technology board, and a dual-fan Double Dissipation board, spread across both the HD 7770 and HD 7750 SKUs, and in a variety of factory-overclock bins such as Core Edition (AMD reference speeds), Black Edition (1095 MHz core for the HD 7770, TBD for HD 7750), and SuperOverclock Edition (1120 MHz core for the HD 7770, TBD for the HD 7750).Other specifications and a video presentation by XFX follow.

Today the internationally renowned graphics card and mainboard maker MSI released two new graphics cards. The R7770-2PMD1GD5/OC and R7750-PMD1GD5/OC feature the new Radeon HD 7700 GPU based on AMD's latest 28nm process with support for PCI Express Gen3. Core voltage adjustment is supported by the MSI R7700 graphics card. The R7770-2PMD1GD5/OC GPU core frequency can be overclocked by up to 32.4% using MSI's exclusive Afterburner graphics card overclocking utility to reach an amazing 1.35GHz*! MSI's R7700 series graphics cards also feature a customized dual-fan thermal design that effectively reduces the GPU operating temperature and ensures stable performance. Integrated support for 3D video, high-quality DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4a outputs, along with AMD's exclusive Eyefinity multiple display output technologies make these the perfect choice for enthusiasts.

TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer of AMD graphic cards, today introduces the most advanced graphics design for everyone: the PowerColor HD7700 series. Based on the revolutionary GCN architecture, PowerColor announced HD7770 GHz edition and HD7750 at once to deliver the outstanding DirectX 11 gaming on the system you have today.

The PowerColor HD7770 GHz Edition reaches 1GHz Core and 4.5GBps Memory speed; while the PowerColor HD7750 has 800MHz Core and 4.5Gbps memory clock; both models support with PCI Express 3.0, easily maximizing performance from GPU and simply offers the incredible experience that gamers pursued.

AMD has just launched the new Radeon HD 7700 series, in a bid to cement its competitiveness in the sub-$200 market-segment. The Radeon HD 7700 series, according to AMD, is designed to offer "the world's most advanced graphics for everyone." The series is based around a new ASIC built on the 28 nm fab process, codenamed "Cape Verde". The new chip takes advantage of the Graphics CoreNext architecture, and features 10 GCN compute units, amounting to 640 stream processors; 40 TMUs, and 16 ROPs; and a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface.

The Radeon HD 7770 has all components on the chip enabled, and features clock speeds of 1000 MHz core, and 1125 MHz (4.50 GHz GDDR5 effective) memory, yielding 72 GB/s memory bandwidth. This card draws power from a 6-pin PCIe power connecor. The Radeon HD 7750, on the other hand, features 512 stream processors, and 32 TMUs. The rest of the specifications are identical to the HD 7770, except core clock speed: 800 MHz. The Radeon HD 7770 is priced at US $159, while the HD 7750 is available as low as $109.

AMD released its latest Catalyst Application Profile update for AMD Catalyst, version 12.1 CAP 2, as it's called, adds application-specific CrossfireX optimizations to the driver, which lets the driver effectively use two or more AMD Radeon GPUs working in tandem optimally. It also fixes any bugs that exist with current optimizations. 12.1 CAP 2 includes profiles for the following applications:

• Star Wars: The old republic : Improves CrossFire performance and resolves flickering seen on Map
• Unigine Tropics - Resolves flashing shadow reflections with CrossFire enabled
• Wargame: European Escalation: Improves CrossFire performance

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst Application Profiles 12.1 CAP 2

A quick glance over Lenovo's web shop will confirm the availability of a new IdeaPad laptop, a model called Y470p which features a 14-inch (1366 x 768) LED-backlit display, a 2.2 GHz Core i7-2670QM processor, 8 GB of RAM, an AMD Radeon HD 7690 1GB discrete graphics card, a 750 GB hard drive, and a DVD writer.

Lenovo's mobile PC also has JBL stereo speakers, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, a 2.0 megapixel webcam, a HDMI output, and a 6-cell battery. The IdeaPad Y470p is backed by a one-year warranty and costs as low as $799 (thanks to a special offer).

In addition to releasing the Catalyst 12.1 suite, AMD has today rolled out another graphics driver, a preview version of the Catalyst 12.2 which is set to come in WHQL-tagged form next month. Recommended for 'gamers', this preview release includes all the updates of Catalyst 12.1 as well as the following:

- AMD Eyefinity 2.1 technology enhancements
- Additional resolution support: Users can now choose from a larger set of resolutions when running AMD Eyefinity
- Dynamic Configuration Changes: Switching between different display configurations will occur automatically when physically plugging/un-plugging displays
- HydraVision enhancements: The Windows Task bar can now be moved and resized based on users preference
- Profile Manager improvements: Increased support for Display Groups (including 5x1) and Extended configurations within the Profile Manager

The Catalyst 12.2 Preview Driver can be downloaded (for Windows 7 and Vista) from this page (Radeon HD 7970 users need not click, this driver doesn't support their card).

AMD has now made available the first WHQL-certified graphics drivers of 2012, the Catalyst 12.1. This release includes support for Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000, HD 4000, HD 5000 and HD 6000 series desktops (and mobile) cards (but not the HD 7970), for Radeon 3000 and HD 4000 chipsets, and features the following:

AMD HD3D technology support enhancement

- Enables support for AMD HD3D technology in conjunction with AMD CrossFireX configurations
- Delivers a new Stereo 3D mode over HDMI 1.4a connections - 1080p at 30Hz is now enabled on supported displays

To download the Catalyst 12.1 WHQL drivers just see these links: Windows 7/Vista 32-bit / Windows 7/Vista 64-bit / Windows XP 32-bit / Windows XP 64-bit

As AMD's Radeon HD 7900 series is finding ground in the market, and NVIDIA's competitive product line still without a concrete launch schedule, the mind games have begun. In an interview to NordicHardware, a senior NVIDIA official said that NVIDIA expected more from AMD's new GPU family. "Honestly, we expected more from our competitor's new architecture," the official said, indicating two interrelated things:

• AMD's Southern Islands GPU family's performance levels are well within NVIDIA's expectations
• NVIDIA's new architecture will be a lot more powerful than Southern Islands, because it was prepared keeping in mind a faster architecture from AMD than what Southern Islands ended up being

This latest comment could even release some pressure off NVIDIA to rush in a competitive product line.