It’s finally happened (and it was about time!). The graphics processor has finally reached the gigahertz plateau thanks to the introduction of the new factory over-clocked ATI Radeon HD 4890 GPU from AMD. While many computer enthusiasts have broken the gigahertz barrier with their respective GPUs, this is the first commercially available GPU to hit 1GHz using standard air-cooling techniques. Yes.. no need to break out some fancy schmancy cooling techniques here folks. Couple several of these 1GHz GPUs together and you’ve got yourself one fast graphics powerhouse of a system!  Maybe it’s time for me to revisit PC gaming again!

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Technorati Tags: AMD, ATI Radeon HD 4890

Other features of the FirePro 2450 include:

• 512MB on-board graphics memory
• Max digital resolution of 1920 x 1200
• Full support of Windows Vista Aero
• Supports PCI Express 2.0
• Two VHDCI connectors with breakout cables for quad DVI-I/VGA
• Hardware acceleration of DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 2.1 advanced features
• Unified Driver Architecture
• Consumes a max of 32 watts with avg of 17 watts on 2D business usage

Designed to replace the ATI FireMV workstation graphics card, the ATI FirePro 2450 is available now for a price of $499.

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Technorati Tags: AMD, ATI FirePro 2450, graphics accelerator

So that’s nice and dandy but is this all marketing fluff or is there something to what ATI is saying when it comes to multi-processor graphics cards? Luckily, there are a number of first hand reviews on the net so let’s see what they’re saying online.

First off, we have the folks at ExtremeTech:

ATI takes the performance crown by a good margin with the 4870 X2, but we expect future products to solve the common multi-GPU problems.

Over at Guru3D:

Money aside, what a true pleasure it has been testing the 4870 X2 cards. Personally I play my games at 2560×1600, I’m one of those lucky bastards to own a 30″ Dell screen, and playing games like Call of duty 4 or Mass Effect with framerates over 80 FPS in that resolution with the highest Image Quality settings available .. that’s just amazingly impressive .. well even that might be a slight understatement. Astounding is likely the right word for this product.

At the TechReport:

However, if you want the absolute ultimate graphics subsystem, you’ll find it in a pair of Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards, which unspooled a fluid ribbon of track in front of us in GRID at over 100 FPS at 2560×1600 resolution.

HotHardware has this to say:

In the end though, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 simply rocks.

Good ol Anandtech says:

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is good, it continues to be the world’s fastest single card solution, provided that you’re running a game with CrossFire support.

Yes, those are certainly good reviews for the new Radeon.. but if you read the reviews yourself, you’ll notice a common theme – these cards are expensive! Heck – they’re more expensive than some low end PCs out on the market. Now if money is no object, then it appears the HD 4870 X2 is certainly the fastest card out there – also assuming you run the right games.

However, if money is something of a concern, you might be interested in the other new ATI product announced today – the ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 graphics card. The 4850 will be priced under $400 dollars (which is still darn expensive in my eyes) and offer 2GB of DDR3 memory and two GPUs clocked at 625MHz.

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Technorati Tags: ATI, AMD, Radeon HD 4870 X2, Radeon HD 4850 X2

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Technorati Tags: Blizzard, AMD, ATI Radeon

If there’s one problem with today’s notebook systems, it’s the generally under-whelming performance of their graphics subsystems. Graphics vendors usually strike a balance between performance and power consumption – with power consumption often winning due to the sheer fact that you’ve got yourself a mobile device. Well, AMD is looking to change all of that with the introduction of the new ATI XGP Technology. XGP stands for eXternal Graphics Platform and that pretty much says it all. The ATI XGP is designed to be an external graphics solution that connects to your notebook system using an external PCI Express 2.0 connector. The initial launch of the ATI XGP features the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3800 Series Graphics solution and delivers features such as:

• ATI Avivo HD technology for smooth HD playback via full hardware acceleration
• Integrated Digital Outputs enable viewing standard and high definition content
• Support for ATI CrossFireX technology multi-GPU capabilities
• Independently powered and cooled external graphics solution
• Enthusiast class graphics performance for notebooks
• ATI XGP with a single ATI Radeon graphics processor and a notebook PC can drive up to 4 displays
• Dedicated USB 2.0 connector enables attachments of TV tuners, Blu-ray devices, etc

So how does this all work exactly? Well when you’re home or in the office, just connect the ATI XGP to your specially designed notebook with PCI Express 2.0 connector and experience high end graphics performance great for multimedia playback and high end gaming. When you need to go on the road, disconnect the XGP from your notebook and work with the integrated graphics on the notebook – allowing you to perform basic activities as well as efficient power management.

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Technorati Tags: ATI XGP, PCI Express 2.0

The new Turion X2 Ulta Dual-Core Mobile processor features enhancements such as AMD’s Independent Dynamic Core Technology, a new mobile-optimized memory controller, and power-optimized HyperTransport 3.0.

If you want discrete graphics, you can also pair the new processor/chipset with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 Series GPU. The series includes the previously announced Mobility Radeon 3400 and 3600 Series as well as the new ATI Mobility Radeon 3800 Series graphics. The 3800 features:

• Support for PCI Express 2.0
• DirectX 10.1
• Integrated digital output support for HDMI, DVI, and DisplayPort
• Native support for up to 4 monitors

New notebook designs featuring the new processor/chipset from AMD will be coming out from the likes of Acer, ASUS, Clevo, Fujitsu, HP, MSI, NEC, and Toshiba.

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In case you missed it last week, Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, did a little rant (or shall we say whining?) about Intel Corporation. To no one’s real surprise, Mr. Huang was a bit defensive about the state of the graphics industry and was pretty peeved about how an Intel graphics and gaming "technologist" was calling discrete graphics cards "unnecessary."  Jen-Hsun used NVIDIA’s financial analyst day last Thursday as a way to dish it out against Intel and their marketing machine. Here’s a quote from News.com cited:

"We don’t typically like to do this. It’s just that we’ve been taking it and taking it and taking it. Every single frickin’ day. Are you allowed to say that word? Every day all over the world. Enough is enough."

So NVIDIA isn’t planning to take it anymore. OK.. but is there something more to this perhaps? Why take time out from a financial analyst meeting to go complain about your partner/enemy in Intel? I mean, come on now, we’re talking about Intel’s integrated graphics solutions. Does NVIDIA really have something to worry about? Well.. in a word, yes. Why you might ask? It’s not your younger self’s graphics world anymore. It’s certainly not a world where it’s NVIDIA against ATI or any other smaller vendor. NVIDIA finds itself suddenly very much alone in the graphics market with ATI now belonging to AMD. It’s now NVIDIA vs. Intel/AMD ironically enough. Yet, NVIDIA has chosen to set it’s sights on Intel. Why? because of the path that Intel is working towards.

First a little background. I was part of the original Intel 740 team way back when Intel was still trying to figure out how to compete against NVIDIA, ATI, and 3dfx (remember them?). At that time (around ‘97/98), Intel had teamed up with Real3D and Chips and Technologies to design and create the Intel 740. The 740 was actually Intel’s third attempt at getting into the graphics market and there was much hope in the company that it would indeed succeed.

After a few delays, the Intel 740 came out to less than stellar reviews yet it did do one important thing to the graphics market – it paved the way towards cheap graphics. With a large inventory of 740 processors, Intel realized the only way to clear things out would be to sell them for low prices to third party board manufacturers which of course led to super cheap 3D graphics boards. The other effect the 740 and the follow-on projects created was the realization by Intel that it needed to bring graphics to the motherboard chipset – paving the way for Intel’s integrated graphics efforts that would eventually make them the largest supplier of graphics in the world.

Why take the integrated graphics route? It boiled down to economics really.

1. Intel makes a ton of money selling chipsets and I do mean a ton. Most of you think of Intel as a general processor company but consider the following – for every Intel processor sold, it’s very likely you’ll also find an Intel motherboard chipset inside. Selling graphics is no sure thing. Selling motherboard chipsets is a far easier task for Intel to accomplish so why not fold graphics into the chipset.

2. Intel discovered long ago that it could not compete from a design, development and manufacturing standpoint with the likes of NVIDIA and ATI. The smaller companies are more nimble and can execute on newer designs much more quickly. Yet being fast and nimble also means you might not have the best optimized processes in place. Intel executes well on established processes which ultimately results in higher profit margins. If a product doesn’t deliver roughly 40-50 percent profit margins, you likely won’t find Intel in it.

3. Finally, Intel realized that the CPU had much more room to spare in terms of processing capabilities. Let’s face it – today’s (or yesterday’s) applications really don’t stress the CPU. (That’s why Microsoft has Vista – an OS that can only run reasonably well on a modern processor!) It’s a conspiracy of course but most of you know that already. Intel, AMD, and Microsoft are constantly looking for ways to get consumers and businesses to upgrade their hardware and software. How do you convince consumers of this? Push the existing computing platforms to the limit which results in consumers saying "Gee.. I need a new computer." So what can Intel do to increase the load on a CPU? Make the processor do more graphics chores by integrating graphics to the chipset. As Intel adds more and more cores to their CPU, there becomes less of a need for a secondary graphics processing unit (GPU).

OK.. so this brings us back to the original rant from NVIDIA’s CEO. Was it justified? Perhaps.. perhaps not. Yeah he’s sick of Intel’s claims and marketing hype. We all know integrated graphics can’t keep up with discrete graphics right now. Yet people (a.k.a. regular consumers) aren’t aware of this so they’ll stick with whatever comes with their systems. So what’s a CEO to do? I suppose in NVIDIA’s case, it’s to whine but NVIDIA needs to continue pushing the envelope and in many ways, play the same games that Intel and AMD plays.

NVIDIA needs to continue executing at a rapid clip. It needs to stay ahead of Intel while at the same time convincing consumers to add in NVIDIA graphics to their systems. This translates to a much larger marketing presence for NVIDIA. It means working with many more graphics software vendors and constantly staying two to three steps ahead of Intel.

It’s going to be hard of course because as Loyd Case points out in this article, software based shaders will only get faster as CPUs get faster. Someday, a general purpose processor with multiple cores and integrated graphics will be all a consumer needs unless important graphics applications and games have a specific need for NVIDIA capabilities (hence why NVIDIA hopes people will program to their GPUs).

So NVIDIA – stop complaining and execute in a timely manner. Things will certainly get harder for NVIDIA but the company needs to stay ahead by innovating and creating useful products.

Technorati Tags: Intel, NVIDIA

• 65 nm process technology
• Unified Shader Architecture
• Support for Microsoft DirectX 10
• 128MB of on-chip GDDR3 memory

AMD is also offering the ATI Radeon E2400 MXM-II module based solution for systems that are space constrained. The E2400 MXM-II follows the open standard MXM-II specifications and comes with 256MB of GDDR3 memory.

AMD states that the new ATI Radeon E2400 is scheduled to ship this month in production quantities.

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Technorati Tags: AMD, ATI Radeon E2400, Embedded Systems

Apple Mac owners have a new way to capture television broadcasts on their computers thanks to the newly announced ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo USB for Mac. The TV Wonder 650 Combo USB features two TV tuners capable of receiving over-the-air ATSC/HDTV broadcasts as well as analog television programming. Using the included ATI tvPORTAL TV application, users get full DVR functionality right on their Mac – including the ability to watch, pause, or record high definition television. Features of the ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo USB for Mac include:

• Two built in tuners offering combo tuning for ATSC and NTSC
• ATI Theater Video Processing Technology with Hardware MPEG-2 Compression, Motion Adaptive 3D Comb Filter, Automatic Color Control, Automatic Gain Control, Noise Reduction, and Edge Enhancement
• ATI tvPORTAL application with ability to watch TV and DTV on your Mac, full PVR and time shifting functionaloty, fast forward, rewind, or pause live analog TV and DTV, record MPEG-2 videos with ease to your hard drive, and built in electronic programming guide (EPG)
• USB 2.0 support
• Input connectors include F-Type Coax input for analog TV, F-Type coax input for ATSC(HDTV), S-Video input, Stereo audio input, Composite video input
• Requires Mac OS X 10.4.10 or higher

The ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo USB for Mac has an MSRP of $149 and is scheduled to be available later this month. The product will be distributed by VisionTek

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Technorati Tags: ATI TV Wonder 650 Combo USB for Mac, Mac OS X, TV Tuner, ATI

It’s SIGGRAPH 2007 time and AMD’s using this conference as the stage for launching five new ATI FireGL workstation graphics accelerators. The five new boards are the ATI FireGL V8650, the FireGL V8600, the FireGL V7600, the FireGL V5600, and the FireGL V3600. All of these boards include the next generation ATI GPU with a unified shader architecture featuring up to 320 individual stream processing units. ATI claims that the new boards produce performance enhancements up to 300 percent over previous generation boards.

Here are some of the key new features of these workstation class graphics accelerators:

• Industry first 2GB of on-board memory
• ATI FireGL unified shader architecture
• AMD AutoDetect feature automatically optimizes the graphics driver based on the user’s specific software applications – even when running multiple applications simultaneously
• Powered by scaleable ATI FireGL GPU with parallel processing unified shader architecture
• 2 dual link DVI-I outputs
• HDR rendering with 8-bit, 10 bit and 16-bit per RGB color component support
• Full Shader Model 4.0 support for vertex and pixel shaders
• Stereoscopic 3D output connector with quad buffer support
• CAD and DCC application certification
• 128 bit full floating point precision
• Drive four 3D displays with multi-card support

Here are the prices to the new boards:

ATI FireGL V8650 with 2GB of memory – $2799

ATI FireGL V8600 with 1GB of memory – $1899

ATI FireGL V7600 with 512MB of memory – $999

ATI FireGL V5600 with 512MB of memory – $599

ATI FireGL V3600 with 256MB of memory – $299

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Technorati Tags: ATI FireGL, FireGL V8650, FireGL V8600, FireGL V7600, FireGL V5600, FireGL V3600

ATI TV Wonder 600 USB:

This is basically a USB 2.0 compatible stick featuring the ability to tune into free over-the-air digital and analog TV. Features include:

• Hybrid TV tuner stick for: OTA HDTV, Off-the-air/cable analog TV, Off-the-air digital TV
• ATI Catalyst software suite
• AMD LIVE! CD featuring AMD LIVE! On Demand
• Remote control
• Telescopic antenna to receive free-to-air TV channels
• Capture from VCRs, camcorders with included audio/video input cable
• With AMD LIVE! On Demand, you can access your DVR from a broadband-connected computer
• Input connectors include: F-Type coax connector for analog TV (NTSC) or HDTV (ATSC) , S-Video input with adapter , Stereo audio input with adapter, Composite video input with adapter

ATI TV Wonder 650 PCI Express:

The TV Wonder 650 PCIe card is a full featured two tuner card providing a wealth of HD features including the following:

• Two built in tuners offering combo tuning for: Off-the-air Digital TV/HDTV, ClearQAM Digital TV/HDTV, Off-the-air/Cable Analog TV, FM Radio
• ATI Avivo Video Processing technology: Hardware MPEG-2 compressions, Motion Adaptive 3D Comb Filter, Automatic Color Control, Automatic Gain Control, Noise Reduction, Edge Enhancement
• ATI Catalyst Media Center
• AMD LIVE! CD featuring AMD LIVE! On Demand
• Input connectors: F-Type Coax input for analog TV/FM Radio, F-Type Coax input for HDTV (ASTC or ClearQAM), S-video input, Stereo audio input, Composite video input

Technorati Tags: ATI, TV Wonder, TV Wonder 650 PCI Express, TV Wonder 600, HTPC