(05/07) GDDR4 COMING TO 2900XT AT THE INQUIRER - "RUMOURS REACH US from Old Taipei to insinuate that 1GB GDDR4 versions of the Radeon 2900 XT may tip up at Computex."
(05/07) VALVE GIVES FREE GAMES TO ATI RADEON OWNERS AT THE INQUIRER - "This deal includes all ATI Radeon cards ever produced, so if you own an ATi Radeon card you bought at the time when big bells pants were popular, you can get these two games. While there are still complaints about Steam, one cannot overlook just how easy it is to backup games - a regular nightmare for owners of DRMed games. ATI has been partner with Valve for years, and now - you can expect this relationship to continue in the future."
(05/07) UNREAL 3 THINKS THREADING AT THE INQUIRER - "EPIC'S Tim Sweeney rattled on about technology in Unreal Engine 3, which will debut on the PC with Unreal Tournament 2007. On the graphics front, Sweeney said that the game will run well on anything from Nvidia or ATI produced since 2006, which means X1k and GeForce 7 hardware."
(05/07) MORE DETAILS ABOUT AMD's GRIFFIN AT THE INQUIRER - "On the surface, Griffin is a ground up reworking of the K8 to be a mobile component. All the enhancements you would expect are there, and it looks a lot like the normal K8. It isn't a question of what AMD did but more how it did it. Let's look at the parts that didn't change all that much, the cores. There was no circuit-level reworking of the core, it is almost exactly the same as the older K8s. The changes came in with the power management and related infrastructure, the so called uncore."
(05/07) ASUS RADEON HD 2900 XT REVIEW AT TECHSPOT - "Today we have in our hands a pre-production Radeon HD 2900XT board, which is of course based on the R600 core using an 80nm design process. This version features just 512MB of onboard GDDR3 memory clocked at 1656MHz using a 512-bit wide memory bus. Combined with a core clock of 757MHz, the Radeon HD 2900XT can theoretically produce a memory bandwidth of 102.4GB/s, which is greater than that of the GeForce 8800 GTX."
(05/07) ECS AMD690GM-M2 AMD 690G MOTHERBOARD REVIEW AT PCSTATS - "The ECS AMD690GM-M2 supports AMD Sempron and Athlon64 X2/FX processors which use the Socket AM2 form factor. There are two DDR2 DIMM slots for a maximum of 4GB of DDR2-800 memory. Onboard video encompasses both a DVI and analog monitor connection, but regrettably not HDMI. HDMI is supported by the chipset, but if the manufacturer does not implemented a jack you're going to have to find a DVI-to-HDMI converter cable yourself. Integrated goodies include Gigabit network card, 7.1 channel High Definition Azalia compatible sound card, ten USB 2.0 slots, four Serial ATA II ports which support RAID modes 0, 1 and 0+1."
(05/07) MSI GEFORCE 8500 GT REVIEW AT HARDWARE SECRETS - "GeForce 8500 GT is the simplest video card in the new GeForce 8 family from nVidia, meaning this is the cheapest video card based on DirectX 10 available today. We reviewed this model manufactured by MSI, also called NX8500GT-TD256E, and we will compare it with other mid-range products from both nVidia and AMD/ATI."
(05/07) ATI RADEON HD 2900 XT GAMING PERFORMANCE REVIEW AT XBIT LABS - "ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card undeniably has a lot of interesting capabilities, as we revealed in our article dedicated to the architecture of the Radeon HD 2000, the long-awaited sixth-generation of ATI’s Radeon. We also discovered several weak points of the new solution by the graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, but how will they affect real-world performance? We will find it out later in this article, but before that, let us remind you several key peculiarities of the Radeon HD 2000, certain facts about the Radeon HD 2900 XT as well as several findings about the new graphics card."
(05/07) ALBATRON GEFORCE 8600 GTS REVIEW AT AMDZONE - "When the GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS hit almost six months ago they brought quite a shockwave to the grahics card market. The 8800 GTX not only offered superior graphics quality and technology such as DirectX 10 support but also was faster than two 7900 GTX video cards running in SLI. Only recently have ATI (now of course owned by AMD) released their DirectX10 product and it is unable to dethrone the 8800 GTX and unlike earlier rumors there are no mid-range DX10 cards from the company. Nvidia of course launched their mid-range DirectX10 cards recently and we looked at one previously from Foxconn, today we have another GeForce 8600 GTS to look at from the company Albatron."
(05/07) ECS AMD690GM-M2 AMD 690G REVIEW AT BJORN3D - "With the purchase of ATI, AMD also got their hands on ATI’s expertise in chipsets and thus it is no surprise that AMD’s first own chipset, the AMD 690, is the chipset that ATI would have released last year if the acquisition hadn’t happened, the RS690. Today I am reviewing the ECS-690G, a very competent small form factor motherboard which uses the RS690 chipset."
(05/07) SAPPHIRE RADEON X1950 GT REVIEW AT TECH ARP - "ATI certainly has a curious strategy. Even though they knew they were coming out with the new Radeon HD 2000 series of graphics cards to replace the X1950 series, they launched the Radeon X1950 GT. Perhaps it is to help clear off their current VPUs before the new graphics cards are launched."
(05/07) LOST PLANET BENCHMARKS AT AMD ZONE - "When released earlier this year on Microsoft's XBox 360 console, Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, was a surprise hit from Capcom in a normally very boring mid-January season. Produced by Keiji Inafune, the creator of the Onimusha and Mega Man series, it combines on foot action, first-person shooter controls, third-peron adventure elements as well as piloting mechs. The game also boasted some of the best visuals on the XBox 360 and luckly not long ago Capcom announced that the game was coming to the PC with DirectX9 and also DirectX10 support. This makes Lost Planet one of the if not the first retail game to support DX10. We were able to spend some time with the DirectX9 demo and benchmark it on a number of GeForce 8 video cards."
(05/07) AMD RADEON HD 2900 XT REVIEW AT TRUSTED REVIEWS - "The Radeon HD 2900 XT is an immensely complex piece of hardware, with no fewer than 700 million transistors squeezed onto the die. Although AMD was keen to talk about how the HD 2000 series of chips will be based on a new 65nm process, the first GPU to break cover is actually based on an 80nm manufacturing process. I’m in no doubt that eventually the HD 2900 XT will transition to a 65nm process, and when that happens we could see increased clock speeds and lower power draw. As things stand, the GPU has a core clock speed of 742MHz, and the fact that the lower specced 65nm HD 2600 XT card has a core frequency of 800MHz, lends weight to the idea that we can expect higher clocks when the HD 2900 XT drops to a 65nm process."
(05/07) ATI RADEON HD 2000 ARCHITECTURE REVIEW AT XBIT LABS - "In this article we’ll talk about the special features of ATI’s new architecture and Radeon HD 2900 XT chip. We will also try to understand what is the cause of ATI being so late with its DirectX 10-compatible GPUs. Have they been preparing something revolutionary or just correcting software/hardware problems and bugs?"
(05/07) ATI RADEON HD 2900 XT REVIEW AT THE INQUIRER - "We have to give one up to ATI than GeForce 8800GTS. We were shocked to see that 8800GTS starts trailing behind or this inexpensive card or HD2900XT even leads the trio as soon as visual goodness is unlocked. Playing World of Warcraft with 16xCFAA and 16xAF in 2560x1600 is doable with a single card, and yours truly found himself lost in world of Outlands, with 40 or so frames per second. In comparison, price competitor cannot even come near. Bear in mind that our 8800GTX from EVGA beat 8800Ultra in a lot of benchmarks, so when compared to default 8800GTX with 9.6 GB/s less bandwidth and 51 MHz faster GPU clock (100 MHz shader clock), you would see far greater number of tests where default 8800GTX would be threatened by HD2900XT."
(05/07) ATI RADEON HD 2900 XT REVIEW AT LEGIT REVIEWS - "We have been hearing for many moons that the successor to the X1950XTX has been in the works, but only rumors that it existed and would be launched. Finally, just hours after many of you have pampered your mother, AMD is launching their next generation video cards. Dubbed the HD 2000 series, we have in our hands a HD 2900XT which was developed under the code name “R600.” To say that AMD has some ground to make up is an understatement; NVIDIA has a six-month head start on them with the launch of their DirectX 10 ready 8800 series in November."
(05/07) ATI RADEON HD 2900 XT REVIEW AT PC PERSPECTIVE - "The R600 architecture is a major step beyond the R580 architecture we saw in ATI's X1900 XT graphics cards and lineup that jumps down the road of unified shaders, a route required by Microsoft's Direct X 10 and first implemented in the G80 architecture from NVIDIA. AMD claims that the new HD 2000 series of graphics cards will take the best features of the X1000 series (like dynamic branching and stream computing) and combine them with advantages from the Xbox 360's Xenos GPU (such as unified shaders and stream out) and add new technology (like DX10 support, a superscalar shader processor and updated dispatch processor) to make a truly amazing product."
(05/07) ATI RADEON HD 2900 XT REVIEW AT BJORN3D - "As you may have noticed, today the 14th of May 2007 is the day when AMD is announcing, and in one case releasing, their new HD2000 GPU’s. This launch is filled with “firsts” for AMD: It is the first GPU’s from AMD since the acquisition, it is their first DX10 GPU’s and it is their first GPU for the PC market that feature an unified shader architecture. In addition to our big article on the whole HD2000 series, Jetway was kind enough to make sure that we would have a retail HD2900XT from them in time for the launch. In this review I have put the Jetway HD2900XT to the test to see how well it stacks up against the rivals from NVIDIA."
(05/07) ATI RADEON HD 2900 XT REVIEW AT TBREAK - "With the release of the HD 2900 XT today, the company formerly known as ATI is doing things a little differently. I'm not sure if this is the effect of ATI being a part of AMD now or something else, but different can be good. First of all, the Radeon series has changed the model numbering slightly. Instead of being modelled as X-something, the new GPUs from AMD will now be called HD-something. The one I'm looking at today is the HD 2900 XT."
(05/07) ATI RADEON HD 2900 XT REVIEW AT TECH REPORT - "We've all heard the stories about AMD's new GPU, code-named R600, and wondered what manner of chip it might be. We've heard whispers of jaw-dropping potential, but--especially as the delays piled up--doubts crept in, as well. Happily, R600 is at last ready to roll. The Radeon HD 2900 XT graphics card should hit the shelves of online stores today, and we have spent the past couple of weeks dissecting it. Has AMD managed to deliver the goods? Keep reading for our in-depth review of the Radeon HD 2900 XT."
(05/07) ATI RADEON HD 2900 XT REVIEW AT TWEAKTOWN - "AMD's long awaited R600 DX10 GPU finally arrives It has been a long time coming but today AMD is finally set to release its massively anticipated GPU codenamed R600 XT to the world with the official retail name of ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT. It is a hugely important part for AMD right now, who recently posted massive profit loss figures. It is counting on all these new models, along with the high-end 512MB DDR-3 DX10 part with 512-bit memory interface to kick ass and help raise revenue reports against the current range from the green GeForce team, which is selling like super hot cakes."
(05/07) ATI RADEON HD 2900 XT REVIEW AT HOT HARDWARE - "We have a plethora of information related to today's launch available on our site that will help you get familiar with ATI's previous GPU architectures and their key features. The Radeon HD 2900 XT and its derivates in the Radeon HD 2000 family are totally new, but they do have a number of features in common with some members of the Radeon X1K family of products."
(05/07) ATI RADEON HD 2900 XT REVIEW AT ANANDTECH - "The Radeon HD 2900 XT is the highest end graphics card in the lineup and it's priced at $399. While we appreciate AMD's intent to keep prices in check, the justification is what we have an issue with. According to AMD, it loses money on high end parts which is why we won't see anything more expensive than the 2900 XT this time around. The real story is that AMD would lose money on a high end part if it wasn't competitive, which is why we feel that there's nothing more expensive than the 2900 XT. It's not a huge deal because the number of people buying > $399 graphics cards is limited, but before we've started the review AMD is already giving up ground to NVIDIA, which isn't a good sign."
(05/07) ATI RADEON HD 2900 XT REVIEW AT THG - "Is R600 worth the wait? That is the question that has been on our minds ever since ATI first delayed R600. In November, Nvidia unveiled G80 in the form of GeForce 8800 GTX and GTS models. Three months went by and the only thing we heard out of ATI was that R600 was delayed. As a pre-emptive strike in February, Nvidia launched its 320 MB version of the 8800 GTS, figuring ATI was ready for its launch. By the end of the month, the world was let down by yet another message telling us R600 would be delayed until May. Last month, Nvidia made its third DX10 offering in the form of GeForce 8600 and 8500 cards. Having struck first, Nvidia has a hat trick with G80, G84 and G86, and it seemed to be game over for AMD/ATI. Today, we finally get to see ATI's counter strike against Nvidia after a six-month-long hiatus."
(05/07) ATI RADEON HD 2900 XT REVIEW AT GURU3D - "What we'll be doing today is take a look at their new high-end product. As we speak, AMD is launching no less than five desktop graphics cards, but it is however not a hard launch. Worldwide you'll only see the one product released and available based on a 80nm fabrication process; the Radeon HD 2900 XT, a product that is going to be discussed and has been discussed a lot for sure. So there are four other products as well. ATI is also launching an all new Radeon 2400 and 2600 series (low- and mid-range). These products will be based on the newer 65nm fabrication production process."
(05/07) ATI RADEON HD 2900 XT REVIEW AT EXTREMETECH - "So what's new? Just about everything. R600 (the codename for the graphics processor in the HD 2900 XT) borrows quite a bit from the GPU built into the Xbox 360, also designed by ATI. It's certainly much more than just "the PC version of the Xbox GPU" though. We have broken the details of the 3D architecture down in a separate article. Here we provide performance details in a full review of the Radeon HD 2900 XT."
(05/07) ATI RADEON HD 2900 XTX REVIEW AT HARDWARE SECRETS - "The new ATI Radeon HD 2900 XTX runs at 740 MHz and access its 512 MB GDDR3 memory at 1.65 GHz (825 MHz x 2), using a new 512-bit memory interface, with boosts the memory maximum theoretical transfer rate to 105.6 GB/s – Radeon X1950 XTX has a memory maximum transfer rate of 64 GB/s and GeForce 8800 GTX, of 86.4 GB/s, but the new GeForce 8800 Ultra reaches 103.6 GB/s."
(05/07) MSI K9AGM2 AMD 690G MOTHERBOARD REVIEW AT VIPER LAIR - "The MSI K9AGM2-FIH motherboard we'll be reviewing today is based on AMD/ATI's 690G chipset. The 690G features the Xpress 1250 graphics controller and this particular board features both RGB and HDMI output. Designed for the AM2 platform, this board supports all current AMD AM2 CPUs and is Vista ready."
(05/07) AMD BARCELONA IN ACTION REVIEW AT HARD OCP - "These pictures were taken only a few minutes ago. AMD showed off their Barcelona quad-core processors in action today in Monterrey, California. What you see in the pictures below are single processor and dual processor configurations, so a true "4x4" is now realized by AMD that looks very comfortable on an enthusiast desktop. And yes, those are Radeon X2900 XT video cards in the systems. Ian McNaughton showed off both systems encoding a 1080P trailer of Spiderman 3 to an H.264 format. On the dual quad-core Barcelona machine the encoding nearly ran real time. Extremely impressive."
(05/07) ASUS EN 8800 GTS HTDP 320MB REVIEW AT PCSTATS - "In this review PCSTATS tests the awesome Asus EN8800GTS/HTDP/320M PCI Express videocard. This Geforce 8800GTS-320 lives up to the hype, and comes with one of the best software packages available for its class. In the box is a full copy of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter, which just happens to be one of the hottest shooter titles of 2006. The game looks particularly splendid when played over the Asus EN8800GTS/HTDP/320M videocard too. Take my advice, turn up the resolution to 1600x1200 and kick in AA and AF to get the full affect."
(05/07) ALBATRON GEFORCE 8600 GTS REVIEW AT LEGIT REVIEWS - "Just a couple of weeks ago NVIDIA launched their 8600 series of cards with the 8600 GTS and 8600 GT. Aimed at the bread and butter price segment of the market, $150-$230, they produced a solid card that has great HD DVD / Blue-Ray Disc playback and will able to play upcoming DirectX 10 games. Today we are looking at the higher end model 8600 GTS from Albatron. Though they aren't one of most well known add-in card partners here in the states they do sell and support some great hardware. Let's take a look at what we got from them."
(05/07) FOXCONN GEFORCE 8600 GTS REVIEW AT BJORN3D - "The 8600GTS/8600GT is actually based the G84 core, a derived version of the G80 core. Rather than going through the detail of the core, I will simply direct you to the Bjorn3D’s G80 introduction on the technology and background. The G84 comes with only 32 stream processors onboard is a big drop from the 128 stream processors in the G80. In addition, the memory interface has been dropped from 384-bit to 128-bit. To compensate for the loss of the stream processor and the memory interface, NVIDIA has clocked the 8600GTS at a higher clockspeed than the 8800GTX to keep up with the performance against other cards in the same price segment. The fact that the G84 can be clocked at a much higher clockspeed is partially due to the 80nm fabrication process as oppose to the 90nm processor used on the G80."
(05/07) OFFICIAL RADEON HD 2900 XT 3DMARK 2006 SCORE AT FUDZILLA - "We wrote a few times about the Radeon HD 2900XT DDR3 scores. The card clocked at 745 MHz core and 1656MHz memory. This is the card that ATI plans to launch on Monday the 14th afternoon. It scores 10650 in 3Dmark on a Core 2 Duo 6700 CPU and 2 GB of memory. With this score the card is comparable with the 8800 GTX but not with Ultra. In Shader model 2.0 it scores 4542, in Shader mark 03 / HDR test it scores 5071. In 3Dmark06 the card is clearly faster then the Geforce 8800 GTS 320 or 640 MB versions and it can even compete with the 8800 GTX scores. Well enough said, here is the picture."
(05/07) SAPPHIRE RADEON X1950 XT REVIEW AT ULTIMATE HARDWARE - "This is a review of the Sapphire Radeon x1950 XT which uses the R580 Core made by ATI. The Sapphire Radeon x1950 XT will be compared to the Connect3D Radeon x1950 Pro, Sapphire Radeon x1800 GTO, Sapphire Radeon x800 GTO and the Sapphire Radeon x1650 Pro. We have selected a mixture of benchmarks including 3dmark 2005, 3dmark 2006, ATI Double Cross, PowerVR Fable, Rightmark, Shadermark, Doom III, Prey and Quake 4."
(05/07) AMD ATHLON64 3000 OVERCLOCKING AT MAD SHRIMPS - "We overclock a golden oldie, the Athlon 3000+ was a favorite among hardware enthusiasts back in May 2005, now-a-days it´s Core 2 Duo, but with the help of some Dry Ice we can extract a bit more power from this AMD CPU. Read on to find out if we reach our 100% overclocking goal."
(05/07) XP VS VISTA - A TALE OF FRAMERATES AT HARD OCP - "A hotly debated and often-lamented issue with Vista is that it doesn’t appear to perform as well in 3D gaming as its predecessor, Windows XP. While some have reported no change in performance, we’ve seen poor driver support in Vista cause serious problems with performance and overall compatibility in various gaming titles. While we’d like to take readers’ testimony at face-value, we felt the need to go and find out what the hub-bub is about and put hard numbers on this supposed performance discrepancy."
(05/07) GIGABYTE N680SLI-DQ6 MOTHERBOARD REVIEW AT TECH REPORT - "I was somewhat mystified, then, when Gigabyte's N680SLI-DQ6 arrived on my doorstep. With a little help from Nvidia's nForce 680i SLI chipset, this board packs a whopping ten Serial ATA ports and four Gigabit Ethernet options—more SATA and GigE than my last three workstations put together. Add in loads of Firewire ports and onboard audio that boasts Dolby Digital Live and DTS encoding, and the DQ6 easily boasts the most impressive array of onboard peripherals on the market."
(05/07) AMD TO OFFER SPEED BOOSTS ON BARCELONA AT THE INQUIRER - "So what do you end up with? A massive gain in frequency. How massive? Almost 500MHz. Instead of the much touted launch parts, look for five SKUs at launch, AM2 quads at 2.6GHz, 2.7GHz and 2.9GHz, a dual at 2.7GHz and a quad on socket F at 2.8GHz."
(05/07) AMD'S TSUNAMI OF PRODUCTS TO CHANGE COMPETITIVE PICTURES AT THE INQUIRER - "Ruiz said that AMD will introduce 45 nanometre chips in the middle of 2008. He said AMD has acknowledged it could have done things in Q4 and Q1 better. "We have a tsunami of new products coming down the pipeline over the next 12 months," he said. The next shareholder asked how things were going down with Dell. Ruiz said AMD is "thrilled" to have Dell as a customer but is in the earliest stages of the relationship. The future promised more."
(05/07) AMD K10 GETS A NAME : PHENOM AT THE INQUIRER - "AMD IS PREPARING a major overhaul of its branding conventions. For the launch of long-expected K10 marchitecture, AMD decided to rebrand its desktop line-up, and finally decided to drop the PR ratings - which quite frankly, make equal sense as the ratings offered by Intel's Pentium and Core 2 line-ups."
(05/07) NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 ULTRA REVIEW AT TECH REPORT - "WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU take the fastest video card on the planet and turn up its clock speeds a bit? You have a new fastest video card on the planet, of course, which is a little bit faster than the old fastest video card on the planet. That's what Nvidia has done with its former king-of-the-hill product, the GeForce 8800 GTX, in order to create the new hotness it's announcing today, the GeForce 8800 Ultra."
(05/07) NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 ULTRA AND SLI REVIEW AT HARDOCP - "The “GeForce Ultra” branding is back, and we are happy to see it once again. We have fond memories of highly clocked GeForce based Ultra cards over the years. The Ultra name has always been synonymous for just flat out fast performance and higher clock speeds. As such, that is exactly what the GeForce 8800 Ultra is, a faster GeForce 8800 GTX. The core architecture is exactly the same, 128 streaming processors and 768 MB of GDDR3 memory on a 384-bit bus."
(05/07) NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 ULTRA REVIEW AT FIRINGSQUAD - "Born out of the need to compete with the perceived threat of ATI’s upcoming R600 GPU, the GeForce 8800 Ultra isn’t an all-new graphics chip, it’s actually based largely on the same G80 GPU that’s already been inside the GeForce 8800 GTX and GeForce 8800 GTS lines for the past 6 months now."
(05/07) NVIDIA GEFORCE 8800 ULTRA REVIEW AT GURU3D - "Today NVIDIA is launching its GeForce 8800 Ultra. Now, NVIDIA tried to keep this product as secret as can be, why? Two reasons. First to prevent technical specifications leaking onto the web. Secondly, obviously to change specs at the last minute. See ATI is releasing their R600 graphics card soon and the Ultra is the product that NVIDIA prepared to counteract it in the market, an allergic reaction to the R600 so to speak."
(05/07) 3DMARK 2007 GOES DX10 AT THE INQUIRER - "3DMark will only be available for Windows Vista and DirectX 10. In a bog post to the Futuremark website, Nick Renqvist says that "the next generation 3DMark will be Windows Vista only, and will require DX10 compliant hardware."
(05/07) ATI RADEON HD 2900XT KEY FEATURES AND SPECIFICATIONS - "The ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT has some powerful advanced features including 320 stream processor units, high speed 128bit HDR, 512bit 8 channel memory interface, ATI AVIVO HD, 24x Custom Filter AA, Built in HDMI and 5.1 audio, Dynamic geometry and Physics processing capability."
