Dataram Corporation, a leading international manufacturer of computer memory, storage and software products, is proud to announce its participation at the AMD inaugural Radeon ExtravaLANza event on October 20, 2012 in support of the launch of AMD Radeon RAMDisk.

The company recently announced a formal agreement with AMD to develop an AMD-branded version of its Dataram RAMDisk, marketing the product under the name Radeon RAMDisk and offering gaming enthusiasts the ability to improve load times for a substantially enhanced gaming experience.

AMD's Radeon RAMDisk software, launched along with its desktop A-Series "Trinity" APUs, is being pitched to consumers as a trial software. A combination of A-Series "Trinity" APUs and AMD-certified memory lets you use the software to create a RAMDisk which works in conjuction with the primary HDD/SSD much in the same way as Intel Smart Response tech or NVELO Dataplex, it's just that the cache SSD is replaced by the system memory, an infinitely faster and more durable caching medium. The software juggles data from the primary drive to the RAMDisk based on its heat (frequency of access). Used with DDR3-1600 MHz memory, users could see data access speeds of up to 25.6 GB/s (gigabytes per second), a 1,700-times speedup over conventional HDD. When off the trial, a license to use the software can be bought for $19.

AMD announced its latest entry in the performance tablet and small form factor PC market with the AMD Z-60 Accelerated Processing Unit (APU). The AMD Z-60 is AMD's lowest power APU, delivering unprecedented performance and AMD AllDay power for tablet form factors as thin as 10mm. A compelling combination of features, stunning graphics, support for the latest Microsoft Windows 8 applications and user interfaces, as well as compatibility with Windows 7 and the full-suite of legacy Windows applications, makes the AMD Z-60 APU an ideal solution for a range of designs.

The first tablets based on the AMD Z-60 APU are expected to launch globally this year in conjunction with availability of Windows 8.

Apparently, launch of AMD's Radeon HD 8800 series is close enough for some sources to come up with specifications. The HD 8800 series, according to one source, is based on a new silicon codenamed "Oland," which is built on the 28 nm process, packing 3.4 billion transistors with around 270 mm² die-area. According to the source, the two HD 8800 series models, the HD 8870 "Oland XT" will up performance per Watt and cost-performance ratios over current HD 7800 series, while maintaining current process technologies.

The Radeon HD 8870, according to numbers provided by the source, could offer performance comparable to today's high-end GPUs. The HD 8870 is clocked at 1050 MHz with 1100 MHz PowerTune Boost frequency; while the HD 8850 is clocked at 925 MHz with 975 MHz boost frequency. The memory of both SKUs is clocked at 6.00 GHz, yielding 192 GB/s memory bandwidth. The chips hence have 256-bit wide memory interfaces.

AMD today announced an investment in CiiNOW, a provider of cloud gaming technology that enables game publishers, retailers and carriers to tap into the growing video game market expected to reach $81 billion by 2016. AMD, through AMD Ventures, has invested in this innovative software company serving a large and growing market that can create better end-user experiences by taking advantage of AMD technologies. With the investment and strategic collaboration facilitated by AMD Ventures, AMD and CiiNOW will work jointly to enable the best online gaming experience possible through a vibrant worldwide developer ecosystem and differentiated hardware.

The cloud gaming industry, which was once thought of as technologically impossible, is now disrupting the gaming market for both consumers and game publishers as more and more casual and hardcore gamers are making the jump to playing games online. CiiNOW addresses this trend with the first cloud gaming solution powered by AMD Radeon graphics that offers a cost-effective, end-to-end solution that includes the full suite of required hardware and software components. CiiNOW delivers a high-speed, low latency streaming solution with up to eight HD streams per server blade, and up to 272 HD streams per server rack for HD-quality game streaming instantly from the cloud, providing ubiquitous game streaming across all subscribers, devices and access technologies.

AMD announced today that the visionary behind Gustafson's Law, John Gustafson, has joined the company as senior fellow and chief product architect, Graphics Business Unit. In this role, Gustafson will set the technical vision for the AMD graphics business unit, driving the technology roadmap and platform for the AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro product lines as well as new technology planning and execution of business objectives. Gustafson will be based in Sunnyvale and will help evangelize AMD graphics leadership internally and externally.

"Our industry-leading graphics technology predicates that we consistently deliver the most differentiated and superior graphics processor unit (GPU) architectures and products -- without compromise," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics. "With the growing importance of parallel compute in defining the computing experience, John brings the full package of industry experience and knowledge needed to help us expand and execute our AMD Radeon and AMD FirePro graphics technology programs, and will help forge an aggressive long-term roadmap that allows AMD to continue to lead and win with our gaming and virtualization technologies."

Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the industry's research and consulting firm for graphics and multimedia, announced estimated graphics Add-in Board (AIB) shipments and sales' market share for Q2'12. The JPR AIB Report tracks computer graphics boards, which carry discrete graphics chips. They are used in desktop PCs, workstations, servers, and other devices such as scientific instruments. They may be sold as after-market products directly to customers or they may be factory installed. In all cases, they represent the higher-end of the graphics industry as discrete chips rather than integrated processors.

We found that AIB shipments during Q1 2012 did behave according to past years with regard to seasonality, but in unit shipments was lower on a year-to-year comparison and on a quarter-to-quarter comparison for the quarter. Overall, for the AIB, and PC market in general, 2012 has been, and is forecasted to have a decline in shipments due to the popularity of notebooks and worldwide economic depression.

ZOTAC International, a global innovator and channel manufacturer of graphics cards, mainboards and mini-PCs, today refreshes the ZBOX nano with AMD Radeon HD 7340 graphics processing capabilities. The latest ZOTAC ZBOX nano with AMD Radeon HD 7340 graphics boosts graphics and CPU processing capabilities while maintaining energy efficiency to create a palm-sized home theater PC capable of high-definition video playback and lightning-fast system responsiveness.

"Our ZOTAC ZBOX nano series is a user favorite as it enables full-fledged PCs in all rooms and locations. The palm-sized form factor is extremely flexible and with the new AMD E2-1800 APU, we are able to deliver more performance and additional connectivity in the ZOTAC ZBOX nano with AMD Radeon HD 7340 graphics while maintaining the same footprint," said Carsten Berger, marketing director, ZOTAC International.

PowerColor showed off a handful of entry-level graphics cards that use the Radeon E6000 series GPUs. Designed for embedded systems, the E6000 series GPUs use multi-chip module packages, which seats the GPU die and memory on the same package, reducing board footprint. PowerColor's cards are targeted at productivity desktops, where reliable display connectivity, and responsive 2D display are priority. Among the cards shown by PowerColor, are full-height, half-height, and pseudo-half-height graphics cards, with a variety of display output configurations.

AMD is proud to announce that it has received Windows Hardware Certification (WHC) for an AMD Catalyst graphics driver (with full support for the new WDDM 1.2 driver model) on Windows 8. This landmark moment reflects both our commitment to AMD Radeon graphics customers, and our vision of providing quality hardware/software solutions for Microsoft Windows products.

Formerly known as the Windows Logo Program, WHC is a rigorous mark of compatibility and reliability for products intended for use with Microsoft Windows. It also allows AMD to serve as an official partner in the upcoming Windows 8 release, use the "Windows 8 Compatible" logo, and offer the drivers on Windows Update.

AMD will welcome attendees, customers and partners to COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2012 with system demonstrations of the second generation AMD A-Series Accelerated Processor Unit (APU) and the newest AMD E-Series APUs, both designed for best-in-class PC entertainment, gaming, and battery life. A debut event the morning of June 6 in Taipei will underscore the diverse range of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) supporting AMD's 2012 product offerings, provide updates on new products, and demonstrate the powerful applications leveraging the unique processing power of the APU. A live webcast of the "Life More Brilliant" event will be available.

"There could not be a better location than COMPUTEX in Taiwan to recognize our customers and technology partners, and celebrate their contributions to the rapidly growing APU ecosystem," said Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager, AMD Global Business Units and host of the upcoming event. "AMD saw consumers wanting a more visually-demanding, entertainment-focused PC experience long ago and created a product strategy to enhance those experiences. This week we will proudly share with the rest of the world the latest advances and accomplishments we have made with our customers."

In May, TechPowerUp teamed up with PowerColor to run this year's first GPU-Z Giveaway. Up for grabs were some groovy PowerColor Radeon HD 7000 PCS graphics cards, with Vortex series cooling solutions. Today, we are pleased to announce its winners. There is a slight change, though. The prize that was slated for the third-place, the PowerColor HD 7770 PCS+ Vortex II, is launching at a slightly later date than our contest permits, and so we have two second place winners, instead. Both second place winners get an awesome new PowerColor HD 7870 PCS+ Vortex II graphics card, each.

The Winners:

• Boris from Czech Republic - wins PowerColor PCS+ HD 7970 Vortex II
• Anurag from India and Rodrigo from Brazil - win PowerColor PCS+ HD 7870 Vortex II, each

Mad congrats to you guys from PowerColor and TechPowerUp! We hope to return with more interesting contests and giveaways to our readers!

Zalman entered the graphics card business in late 2011, by introducing its first products in the category, all of which are based on AMD Radeon GPUs. At Computex 2012, the Korean PC enthusiast components maker plans to launch its first GeForce graphics cards, along with a few new performance-thru-mainstream Radeon HD 7000 series parts. Among the GeForce parts launched Computex, are an NVIDIA reference design GeForce GTX 670 model, and custom-design GeForce GTX 550 Ti and GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics cards. These parts appear to be using custom PCB designs, and Zalman's very own Z-Machine GV1000 GPU cooling solutions.

Among the new Radeon HD 7000 series graphics cards slated for Computex, are the already-unveiled VF3000-cooled HD 7950, a VF3000-cooled Radeon HD 7870, a GV1000-cooled Radeon HD 7850, a VF1000-cooled Radeon HD 7770, and a VF900-cooled Radeon HD 7750. All five Radeon parts use custom PCB designs that are colored Zalman's signature shade of blue.

AMD today announced the widely anticipated launch of its 2nd-Generation AMD A-Series Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) for mainstream and ultrathin notebooks, All-in-One and traditional desktops, home theater PCs and embedded designs.

The 2nd-Generation A-Series APU, codenamed "Trinity", is a grounds-up improved design over the previous generation, enabling a best-in-class PC mobility, entertainment, and gaming experience. New features of the product design include:

● Double the performance per watt of the previous generation;
● The AMD HD Media Accelerator with a unique set of technologies designed to optimize video quality available with premium and Internet video content, and accelerate video file conversion;
● An increase in CPU performance of up to 29 percent with higher processor speeds thanks to the next-generation AMD "Piledriver" CPU core with 3rd-Generation AMD Turbo Core technology, where power is dynamically shifted between the CPU and GPU depending on application needs, effectively providing a more responsive experience that can boost CPU frequencies to up to 3.2 GHz;

ASUS launched a trio of Republic of Gamers TYTAN series gaming desktop models. These include the CG8580, CG8270 and CM6870. The TYTAN CG8580 utilizes ASUS' signature ROG chassis. It is powered by Intel Core i7-3770K quad-core processor overclocked to 4.60 GHz, with ROG Turbo Gear function that handles on-the-fly overclocking. Handling the graphics is NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680. Up to 16 GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory, and up to 10 TB of storage are available as options. A Blu-ray ROM + DVD-RW combo drive is part of the package.

Next up is the CG8270, with a refreshing new slanted chassis design. It comes with a variety of Core i5 and Core i7 "Ivy Bridge" processor options. NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 comes standard, higher GeForce GTX models can be opted for. Up to 4 TB of storage, and BDR+DVD-RW combo drive can be opted for. Lastly, there's the CM6870, which is designed to strike a balance between gaming and media creation/consumption. It packs similar hardware loadout as the CM8270, but with a media-optimized chassis that packs a multi-format card reader; and apart from NVIDIA GeForce, AMD Radeon graphics options are available. With the latter two, ASUS-branded monitors, keyboards, and mice can be opted for.

Here are some of the first pictures of Acer Aspire E1-421, which caught the eye of a shopper in Asia. Its most distinctive feature is AMD E1-1200APU "Brazos 2.0", driving the machine. The dual-core APU is clocked at 1.40 GHz, and packs Radeon HD 7310 graphics. Other vital components include 2 GB of DDR3 memory, and 320 GB HDD storage. A DVD SuperMulti drive handles removable storage. The notebook's 14-inch screen packs 1366x768 pixels resolution, the GPU utilizes 256 MB from the system memory. 802.11 b/g/n WLAN, and a 6-cell battery make for the rest of it.

HIS launched its newest custom-design Radeon HD 7770 graphics card, the HD 7770 IceQ X iTurbo X. The card comes with factory-overclocked speeds of 1170 MHz core, and 1250 MHz (5.00 GHz effective) memory, against AMD reference speeds of 1000/1125 MHz (core/memory). Based on the 28 nm "Cape Verde" silicon, Radeon HD 7770 packs 640 Graphics CoreNext stream processors, and is wired to 1 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 128-bit wide interface.

The card features HIS IceQ X cooling solution, which is a slight variation of the one featured on its previous-generation HD 6770 IceQ X (changes in color, heatsink shape, heat-pipe shape). Apart from a mostly black-colored cooler shroud, the card also appears to feature a black-colored PCB. The card draws power from a single 6-pin PCIe power connector. Display outputs include two each of DVI and mini-DisplayPort, and an HDMI port.

AMD has today let loose the newest Catalyst release, the WHQL-certified Catalyst 12.4 which includes the 8.961 graphics driver and features support for the Radeon HD 2000, HD 3000, HD 4000, HD 5000, HD 6000 and HD 7000 Series desktop cards.

Download links Windows 7/Vista (32-bit) | Windows 7/Vista (64-bit) | Windows XP (32-bit) | Windows XP (64-bit)

Catalyst 12.4 Release Highlights

New Features

Windows XP support for the AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series
- In addition to Windows 7 and Windows Vista support, Catalyst 12.4 now also introduces Windows XP (64-bit/32-bit) support for the AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series

Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing: Level of Detail (LOD) Image Quality enhancements
- Supported on the AMD Radeon HD 7900, AMD Radeon HD 7800, and AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series
- LOD Image quality enhancements have been improved when enabling 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 will conclude driver updates for pre-Evergreen, or pre-Radeon HD 5000 (that's HD 2000, HD 3000, and HD 4000) series GPUs, starting this summer. The change could take effect with Catalyst 12.7 (around July). Users of these older GPUs can use the (then) latest driver (Catalyst 12.6) to run their older DirectX 10/10.1 graphics cards. The elimination of pre-Evergreen GPUs could also slim down the driver package a bit, in terms of file-size.

Leading international graphics card maker MSI today officially released three R7000 Power Edition graphics cards: the R7850 Power Edition 2GD5/OC, R7770 Power Edition 1GD5/OC and R7750 Power Edition 1GD5/OC. The MSI Power Edition cards all support MSI's exclusive Triple Overvoltage function and improved PWM to boost over clocking potential up to 45%1. The R7850 Power Edition 2GD5/OC is equipped with MSI's new Twin Frozr IV Thermal Design recently exclusive to the R7970 Lightning.

The dual 8cm Propeller Blade technology fans create powerful airflow and rapid heat dissipation to reduce GPU temperature by up to 22℃2. The R7770 Power Edition 1GD5/OC and R7750 Power Edition 1GD5/OC feature the all new MSI TransThermal thermal design. The MSI TransThermal thermal design allows customization of their graphics cards fan setup: Single fan, Dual fan and Stacked fan setup3. MSI's TransThermal comes with both Dust Removal and Propeller Blade technologies. Fans can also The MSI R7000 Power Edition series graphics cards' exceptional overclocking performance, all-new cooling module design and the latest Military Class III components make it the best choice for gamers.

AMD reportedly finalized the adjusted prices. The price cuts were first reported in a little earlier this month. The price of Radeon HD 7970 was slashed by as much as US $70, sending it down to $479, $20 behind that of the GeForce GTX 680. That of the Radeon HD 7950 was cut by $50, which will send its price down to $399. Lastly, the price of Radeon HD 7770 went down by $20, it is priced at $139. Although not formally part of these price cuts, the Radeon HD 7870 is now available for as low as $330.

A report in the the latest issue of Xbox World print magazine suggests that developer kits (devkits) of Durango (next-generation Xbox console), were implementing a "state of the art" 16-core IBM PowerPC CPU, its companion graphics processor is AMD-made, spec'd equivalent to AMD Radeon HD 7000 series, as previously reported. The 16-core CPU is said to have been implemented with a far-sight on the platform's longevity. "It's a ridiculous amount of power for a games machine - too much power, even. But remember, Kinect 2 could chew up four whole cores tracking multiple players right down to their fingertips, so it'll need a lot of power," the Xbox World article commented.

Eurocom has unleashed the beast, the Panther 4.0 is here! The most powerful mobile computer ever conceived. It is powered by the Intel X79 Sandy Bridge-E Core Logic and Core i7 3960X Processor Extreme; RAID 0/1/5/10, with NVIDIA GeForce SLI and AMD Radeon CrossFireX support. The Eurocom production team has recently finished the EUROCOM Panther 4.0 teaser video, with information about the specs, innovations and technologies, along with a look inside the beast.

FinalWire today released the latest version of AIDA64, version 2.30. This release is set around enhancing the desktop gadget, improving the UPS and smart-battery monitoring capabilities, and adding support for newly-released hardware, such as the latest GPUs from AMD and NVIDIA; and the latest Intel SSDs. AIDA64 is proprietary software, and is available through FinalWire's online store.DOWNLOAD: FinalWire AIDA64 2.30 EXE (installer), ZIP Package

The condensed change-log follows.

The Arctic team has now confirmed that a new Accelero Xtreme VGA cooler is in the works and will reach stores in late May. Known as Accelero Xtreme III, the incoming product has a cooling capacity up to 300 Watts, it measures 288 (L) x 103 (W) x 50 (H) mm, and has 84 aluminum fins, five 6 mm copper heatpipes, three 92 mm (Fluid Dynamic Bearing) fans working at 900 to 2000 RPM, and a copper base with pre-applied MX-4 thermal compound.