AMD's upcoming A10 and A8 "Trinity" APUs will be built in the new FM2 package for desktop PCs, requiring new motherboards. These APUs will be launched towards the end of Q2, and into Q3 (June-July). A ComputerBase.de report suggests that sources in the motherboard industry it spoke to, at CeBIT, say that socket FM2 motherboards will arrive in June. Further, these motherboards will be based on the new AMD A85 FCH chipset. Not much is known about the A85, except that with the USB-IF certification, it could incorporate native USB 3.0 controllers.

World's Top3 motherboard maker, ASRock Inc, presented its multidimensional products at CeBIT 2012, including a wide range of motherboard, HTPC and IPC mobo series. For AMD section, the most shining motherboard would be the A75 Pro4/MVP. This is the first AMD motherboard supporting Lucid Virtu Universal MVP technology in the world. It allows gamers to take advantage of this new technique and enjoy the amazing performance boost from HyperFormance and Virtual Vsync.

AMD finally posted Catalyst 12.2 WHQL driver suite, the one package that installs drivers and system software for AMD/ATI Radeon GPUs, AMD APU graphics, AMD chipset-integrated graphics, etc. Catalyst 12.2 WHQL brings official support for Radeon HD 7700 series, and Radeon HD 7900 series (for Windows 7/Vista only, for Windows XP it will be added with Catalyst 12.4). Super-sampling AA (SSAA) is now available for DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 applications, supported on the Radeon HD 7700 series and HD 7900 series. It must be enabled through Catalyst Control Center, and application profiles, and games should support in-game AA modes.

AMD also introduced enhancements for Eyefinity 2.1, including custom-resolutions, dynamic configuration changes (switching between different display configurations will occur automatically by loading the appropriate profile, when plugging/unplugging displays); Windows Taskbar re-positioning, and improvements with the Eyefinity Profile Manager. For more information, please refer to the Release Notes document.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst 12.2 WHQL

Toshiba UK today announces the launch of its latest generation Satellite C series - a collection of high quality notebooks offering powerful features, a new slim line design and comprehensive connectivity at an affordable price. Ideal for users such as students or families, the Satellite C series provides essential features such as large storage capacities, high power processors and flexible connectivity in two screen sizes.

Available with a choice of the latest Intel or AMD processors, and dedicated graphics with up to 2 GB VRAM, each model lets users enjoy movies, browse the internet or run multiple applications with ease. An integrated hard disk drive (HDD) of up to 1 TB also provides huge storage capacity that's ideal for storing large music, video and large image libraries, removing the need for external storage devices.

PowerColor's still-unreleased Radeon HD 7970 Vortex II graphics card has finally taken shape at CeBIT, it was pictured dismantled, and without a GPU in January. We are now learning about the clock speed this card will ship with, 1100 MHz core (compared to 925 MHz AMD reference), and an unknown (but higher than reference) memory clock speed. The Vortex II cooler allows users some control over the air-flow of the two fans on this card's cooling assembly, which could impact cooling performance and noise. The cooler uses a large heatsink to which heat is fed by four 8 mm-thick nickel-plated copper heat pipes.

A report by 3DCenter.org, which takes into account the specifications of NVIDIA's GK104 GPU, based on clock-speed and specs. leak estimated its shader compute power to be 17% higher than that of AMD's Tahiti in its Radeon HD 7970 avatar (4.46 TFLOPs single-precision floating point). Based on the said specifications, the report also hypothesized things such as memory bandwidth, ROP performance, and texture performance; and compared it to those of the Radeon HD 7970 and Radeon HD 7950.

Enermax showed off the ELC-120, one of its first closed-loop (self-contained) CPU liquid coolers. While the cooler looks very similar to several other products in its class, Enermax claims to have dropped in some innovations of its own, such as a unique copper micro-channel base, which improves heat dissipation to the coolant, a powerful ceramic bearing pump for higher coolant flow, and Enermax' very own 120 mm Twister Bearing fan, that's silent, and comes with a very long life. The ELC-120 supports all current CPU socket types, Intel LGA775-thru-LGA2011, and AMD AM2-thru-FM1.

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.

AMD today announced it has invested in Nuvixa, Inc., a developer of gesture-based video communication and presentation solutions, through AMD Ventures (formerly the AMD Fusion Fund program). Leveraging depth-sensing camera technologies, the Nuvixa StagePresence immersive video presentation tool extracts a presenter from virtually any background environment, and embeds their live video persona within any compatible digital desktop or slide content. Image processing enhancements only available via OpenCL and AMD accelerated processing units (APUs) create immersive performance and quality improvements that deliver close to double the frame rate1 and a more immersive experience to online audiences.

CyberpowerPC Inc. www.CyberpowerPC.com, a global manufacturer of custom gaming machines, today announced it will feature AMD's new Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition and AMD Radeon HD 7850 GPUs across its entire desktop gaming PC line.

CyberpowerPC thinks it's time to broaden your horizons and tap into the full potential of your GPU. The AMD Radeon HD 7870 and 7850 have been engineered to be the world's most advanced graphics cards. They feature the award-winning GCN Architecture - the industry's first 28 nm GPU design with full support for DirectX 11 to power the next generation of high-def games and multimedia.

ASUS is readying five new Eee PC netbooks for launch at CeBIT, these include the Eee PC X101CH, Eee PC 1011CX, two variants of the Eee PC 1015BX, and the Eee PC 1025C. The X101CH and 1011CX are driven by Intel Atom N2600 processor, the 1025C by Atom N2800, while the 1015BX has two variants, driven by AMD Vision C50 or C60 APUs. All of these are 10.1-inchers. Also common between these models are 1 GB RAM, 320 GB storage, and Windows 7 Starter Edition operating system. The five Eee PCs also feature ASUS Express Gate, a lean web-oriented operating system. In related news, ASUS is also working on 11.6-inch Eee PC 1225B/C, which feature larger screens, with 1366x768 pixels resolution.

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.

AMD today announced that it entered into an amendment to its Wafer Supply Agreement (WSA) with GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc. In this amendment, AMD and GLOBALFOUNDRIES agreed to a negotiated wafer price mechanism for 2012. AMD also agreed to transfer its remaining ownership interest in GLOBALFOUNDRIES to GLOBALFOUNDRIES and, as a result, AMD will no longer hold an equity stake in GLOBALFOUNDRIES.

"The amended wafer supply agreement demonstrates that AMD and GLOBALFOUNDRIES remain committed as long-term strategic business partners," said Rory Read, chief executive officer, AMD. "We made significant progress last year to strengthen our relationship, and we're pleased with GLOBALFOUNDRIES' recent performance in meeting our delivery requirements across our product line."

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.

VTX3D, a leading brand of graphics card maker today adds the latest HD7800 series to its premium graphics cards selection. Being a new force of HD7000 family, both models of HD7800 series feature revolutionary GPU design, the latest PCI Express 3.0 platform, also advanced DirectX○R 11.1. All these cutting-edge technologies make VTX3D HD7800 series as a perfect choice for PC enthusiasts.

Based on the AMD 28 nm processor, the VTX3D HD7800 series includes two models with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory. VTX3D HD7870 GHz Edition runs at clock speed of 1000 MHz, and HD7850 are clocked at 860 MHz, both together with 4.8 Gbps for the memory delivering class leading performance. What's more, the VTX HD7800 series is ready for CrossFire mode, gamers can get exceptional performance scaling with a second GPU.

PowerColor joined the Radeon HD 7800 series launch party, with a trio of new graphics cards, two of which stick to AMD's reference designs, while the third is a new non-reference PCS+ model based on the Radeon HD 7870. The first card (below), is a reference design Radeon HD 7850 graphics card by PowerColor, which also sticks to reference clock speeds of 860 MHz core and 1200 MHz (4.80 GHz effective) memory. The second card is a reference-design Radeon HD 7870, which also carries with it AMD reference clock speeds of 1000 MHz core, and 1200 MHz (4.80 GHz effective) memory.

The third and most fascinating of the three is the HD 7870 PCS+, which uses a reference-design PCB, but augmented with a single-fan PCS+ cooler. This cooler uses a dense aluminum fin array, to which heat is conveyed by five heat pipes. It is ventilated by a single 80 mm fan. As a PCS+ variant, the card features 5-10% factory-overclocked speeds. One will also notice that PowerColor made use of the second DVI connector on the PCB. Expect a small premium for this card over AMD's target pricing of US $349.99 for the HD 7870.

Club3D announced its lineup of Radeon HD 7800 series graphics cards, the Radeon HD 7850 (model: CGAX-7856), and Radeon HD 7870 (CGAX-7876). Both models follow AMD reference design to the letter, there's little AIB vendor branding on these cards. The cards stick to AMD reference clock speeds, that's 1000/1200(4800) MHz (core/memory(effective)) for the HD 7870, and 860/1200(4800) MHz for the HD 7850. Based on the 28 nm "Pitcairn" silicon, the Club3D HD 7870 packs 1280 stream processors, and 2 GB of GDDR5 memory, over a 256-bit wide memory interface. The HD 7850 has 1024 stream processors. In all likelihood, Club3D's cards also stick to AMD's target pricing of US $349 for the HD 7870, and $249 for the HD 7850.

AMD just launched the Radeon HD 7800 series graphics cards, consisting of two models, the Radeon HD 7870, and the Radeon HD 7850, targeting crucial price-points that appeal PC gamers. The two models are based on new 28 nm silicon by AMD, codenamed "Pitcairn," which packs 2.8 billion transistors. The new chip takes advantage of AMD's Graphics CoreNext architecture.

The Radeon HD 7870 packs 1280 GCN stream processors, 80 texture memory units (TMUs), 32 raster operations units, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 2 GB of memory. This card is AMD's second "GHz Edition" model (after the Radeon HD 7770), sporting a core clock speed of 1 GHz. The memory is clocked at 1200 MHz (4.80 GHz GDDR5 effective).

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.

A fresh (and funky?) new version of CPU-Z has today been released and it brings support for Intel's incoming Ivy Bridge processors, as well as for the Core i5 2550K, 2450P and 2380P, the Xeon E3, the Z77 platform, and for AMD's FX-8140, FX-4150 Bulldozers. Moreover, there's Windows 32/64-bit info in the About tab, and preliminary support for the Piledriver-powered Trinity APUs (from AMD).

To get CPU-Z 1.60 check out this page.Thanks to stasio for the heads up.

RAID Incorporated, an end-to-end customized solutions provider in HPC, Big Data, and virtualized environments, today announces its new range of FusionAMD server solutions based on AMD Opteron 6000 Series Processors and DDR3 memory support.

Optimized for 16/12/8-Core AMD Opteron Processors, this latest comprehensive line of solutions offers unrivaled levels of performance and flexibility. The solutions boost I/O performance with PCI-Express 2.0 to double throughput, increase performance and reduce power with DDR3 memory, and also reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) with high levels of integration and energy-efficient components.

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 today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SeaMicro, a pioneer in energy-efficient, high-bandwidth microservers, for approximately $334 million, of which approximately $281 million will be paid in cash. Through the acquisition of SeaMicro, AMD will be accelerating its strategy to deliver disruptive server technology to its OEM customers serving Cloud-centric data centers. With SeaMicro's fabric technology and system-level design capabilities, AMD will be uniquely positioned to offer industry-leading server building blocks tuned for the fastest-growing workloads such as dynamic web content, social networking, search and video.

AMD's server technology combined with SeaMicro technology provides customers with a range of processor choices and platforms that can help significantly reduce data center complexity, cost and energy consumption while improving performance. AMD plans to offer the first AMD Opteron processor-based solutions that combine AMD and SeaMicro technology in the second half of 2012. The company remains firmly committed to its traditional server business, and will continue to focus and invest in this area.

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

AMD has really went on a slashing spree this week as in addition to making the FX-6100 and FX-8120 cheaper, it also updated (read lowered) the pricing of nine Phenom II processors. As seen in the chart below, the Phenom cuts range from 2% to 15%, the biggest drop being seen on the Phenom II X4 965 which went from $135 to $115.

Double-digit cuts were also made for the X4 955 (10.3%), X4 975 (11.4%) and X4 980 (10.8%) while the X6 1055T and X6 1075T went down by 6.1% and 8.8%, respectively.