It’s officially the end of an era. AMD has confirmed what has been rumored for a few months now, that it plans to drop the ATI brand name. AMD says it’s doing so because consumers are more familiar with AMD, so it makes no sense to try to keep pushing the ATI brand. Pour one out for ATI when you have a moment. → Read More
AMD has released the latest version (10.12) of its Catalyst Control Center driver suite, and there’s something missing: ATI branding! You’ll recall that AMD had decided to phase out the ATI brand name on its Radeon graphics cards (AMD bought ATI several years ago), with the thinking that “Radeon” means more to consumers than “ATI.” Starting with this driver suite, ATI is nowhere to be… → Read More
AMD mentioned in its earnings call that its next-generation graphics cards will be released next week. Details are non-existent, so don’t even bother asking. I do know that the codename of the architecture is “Northern Islands.” → Read More
ATI, we hardly knew ye. Word on the street is that AMD, which bought ATI for a cool $5.4 billion some four years ago, will phase out the ATI name later this year. Apparently AMD’s research indicates that people prefer the AMD name to the ATI name, but that, above that, the name that really sells is Radeon. Goodbye ATI Radeon Pro, hello AMD Radeon Pro. → Read More
This is just a heads-up for any ATI folks out there looking to add a little anti-aliasing to your StarCraft II-ing. ATI has released an updated driver, version 10.7a, that includes a hotfix that enables forced AA for the game. You have to activate AA inside the Catalyst Control Thingamajig outside of the game. End transmission. → Read More
How long did Blizzard spend developing StarCraft II? Since 2003, give or take some time here and there when the company needed all hands on deck for World of Warcraft. So you’d think that would be enough time to figure out how to implement anti-aliasing into the graphics engine, right? You see where I’m going with this. → Read More
Have you launched VLC today? If so then you’ll already know that it has been updated to version 1.1.0. The biggest feature in this version is the addition of GPU decoding for Windows (Vista and 7 only) and Linux users. That is, you can use that fancy GPU of yours to help decode that 1080p MKV you’ve got there, leaving your CPU with enough room to breathe, or whatever. Fair warning: if you’re on… → Read More
Remember back when anti-mac fanboys use to say that “the Mac doesn’t have gaming, it’s not 1337”. Then Apple entered the gaming world as a noob, and now look, OS X is running Steam. → Read More
Damn you, Sapphire. Three weeks ago I bought your vanilla Radeon 5970, and now you release the Radeon 5970 4G TOXIC Edition? What a load of bunk. Fastest video card on the planet, you say? Well I say FE$%Fxtgredth. → Read More
MSI announced the latest in their stable today, the GX640. Built around the Intel Core i5 processor and ATI Radeon HD5850, it’s definitely a contender in the gaming notebook arena. In fact, it’s been selected as the notebook of choice by the number one pro-gaming team in North America. → Read More
The ATI Radeon HD 5970 is essentially two 5870s slapped together, but underclocked a little bit so as not to melt a hole through your carpet (but will melt a hole through your bank account~!) Asus saw that and was like, “Pfft, wait till you see what we’ve come up with.” It’s called the Asus Ares 5970, a true-to-life dual 5870 solution that doesn’t downclock nothin’ for nobody. Slight problem: it… → Read More
Last week at PAX East, Nvidia showed off for the first time its GTX 480. Reviews were kind, but noted that the card runs at approximately 8 million degrees, and that the performance isn’t as crazy as you’d expect for the $500 you’re going to pay—an ATI Radeon 5870 is nearly as good, for $100 cheaper. So, make your own decisions! That’s part of the fun of PC gaming: spending weeks on Newegg… → Read More
Well, it looks like XFX packaging is going to be a little more secure then the stuff that Amazon uses. You’ll have to be careful leaving the store with this stuff, XFX appears to be packaging their version of the ATI HD 5970 in a replica of a H&K P90. Catchy, but hopefully they don’t lose any customers to gunfire. → Read More
Man alive, how great would it be to be rich? You could afford crazy things like, I don’t know, new shoes, healthy food, and six 20-inch monitors to play Modern Warfare 2 with. That’s the dream. → Read More
AMD is finally looking to get into the netbook game for real. Forget about the thin-and-light NEO chipset that’s been out for a while—we’re talking about an honest, netbook-specific chipset based on the company’s Fusion initiative that’ll blend power-sipping CPUs with ATI graphics. The platform will draw between 10 and 15 watts of power and will be designed for screens 12 inches and… → Read More
ATI just released a new, super entry level graphics card that should placate, well, not hardcore gamers, but most regular people. It’s the Radeon 5450. Like other 5000 series cards, it works with Eyefinity, meaning that you can spread the image across several screens, as this image swiped from Tom’s Hardware shows. → Read More
Building upon the success of the custom ATI Xenos GPU that’s found in the current Xbox 360, Microsoft and ATI have apparently already struck a deal to continue using ATI chips in the next generation of Xbox consoles, according to Fudzilla. → Read More
What’s the matter with AMD? The number two chip maker in the whole world just posted some numbers that don’t reflect too kindly on its performance over the last few months. The big, bad Sunnyvale, Calif.-based corp lost $416 million last quarter; about $195 million of that was related to a corporate spinoff (see: GlobalFoundries). When put into scary percentages, AMD’s sales fell off 21 percent. → Read More
As much as we like the giant-killing 4870 graphics cards from AMD, they have been around for quite a while now. It’s past time when more needs to be done than tape two together and call it “X2.” Luckily, they’ve had the successor to the 4870 in the pipe for a while now, and someone’s just gotten their dirty hands on one. → Read More
A Dutch retailer briefly lists a “Radeon 5870 X2,” along with specs — conspiracy? Coincidence? Sham? Legit? Or just a typo?
Well, check out the specs and then… you be the judge. → Read More
I’ve been trumpeting Radeon superiority in this video card generation for months, but it seems that the seesaw is tipping the other way now and NVIDIA is back on their game. Doubtless the cost-for-performance of the 48xx series early on caused NVIDIA to panic and drop prices, but now that the platforms have matured a little bit, drivers have been updated, and new games are being tested, it… → Read More
I think you have to be a real hardware geek to find this stuff funny, so it’s no surprise that it made me smile. Although it’s not exactly credited, it’s pretty clear that this is a low-key effort by AMD to discredit NVIDIA — the cartoon casts a bediapered dinosaur as NVIDIA’s troubled last generation of video cards and makes fun of their limited and faulty hardware. → Read More
AMD’s 4000 series has been exceptional in that not only has it exceeded NVIDIA at the high end while keeping the price down, but the budget offerings going all the way down to <$100 are good performers for the money as well. The new HD 4830 slots right in between the 46XX series ($70-80) and the 4850 (~$170). At around $130 or less, the Radeon HD 4830 provides DirectX 10.1 support and… → Read More
In systems where both energy limitations and heat flow are major considerations, passive cooling has been an increasingly popular solution, though not always the best one. Heatsinks are often just not enough to do the job, but as they become more sophisticated they are closing the performance gap with active heat reduction like fans or piping. Celsia has made the heatsink into something more… → Read More
Every so often, hardware makers strike out in a new direction, improving their product in an almost random manner — double the shader processors! stick two cards together! — and sometimes it actually has good results. The big move happening right now is a vast increase in the amount of RAM available to the video card, even though that’s not really what’s limiting game… → Read More
Direct X 11 is on track for a 2009 release, according to AMD’s little slide up there. You’ll also note that the company expects Windows 7 in 2009, too. That’s cute. And how many Direct X 10-only (or even DX10-enhances) games have there been since its release, what, two years ago? Doesn’t look like too many to me. Also, just what is “HD+” supposed to mean? via Gizmodo → Read More
AMD’s ATI Radeon HD 4550 and 4350 graphics cards are a wet dream for gamers on a budget by delivering DirectX 10.1 graphics and an HDMI port with 7.1 channel audio while keeping the price low. The $55 HD 4550 is equipped with 512MB of DDR3 memory with a 96 GFLOPS of power. The smaller but still potent HD 4350 packs 256MB of memory for $39. ATI claims that this type of power has previously… → Read More
When a serious hardware problem occurs, the buck always passes a few times before it finds a solid resting place. In the recent case of NVIDIA, it was remarkably simple, as the company itself (it seems) was responsible for pushing the bad solder that was cracking. But now we have several thousand Radeon 3800 cards that are faulty, and the finger is not quite so easy to point. Of course, first we… → Read More
The ATI Radeon HD 4600 is out of the gate and already talking a big talk. Allegedly the new, low price card can outperform both the HD 3650 and the 9500GT while still keeping the cost under 80 bones for the GDDR3 flavor. Plus, the HD 4600 is now one of the least expensive DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 2.x supported graphics card. The graphic-creating power comes from a 55nm manufacturing process… → Read More
While the world oohs and ahhs to tiny laptops and green benchmarks, there is a sort of blind eye turned to the excesses of extreme gamers. This interesting article points out that as everyone else is going lighter, smaller, and more efficient, video cards are getting bigger, guzzling power, and even multiplying themselves. A cutting edge card will draw nearly 300W at maximum, which is what we were… → Read More
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