Just when you thought Mini-ITX would mean extremely compact system components for great HTPC builds, came in the limitations of integrated graphics and relatively weak processors. VIA for example, have had ITX boards for quite some time. Just that the features most essential for HTPC builds such as graphics capable of high-definition video output, processors capable of decoding them at acceptable rates lacked, and hence those older ITX solutions from VIA remained a niche solution for embedded computing or thin-clients.

Picture this: a Mini-ITX board, AM2+ socket, AMD 780G (one of the fastest integrated graphics embedded), four SATA II ports, video output as HDMI (with digital audio pass, HDCP compliant) DVI-D / D-Sub, 8-channel audio with SPDIF optical and co-axial pass, all rolled into one? Awesome, isn't it? Several sources point out that J&W Technology is planning the release of such a board next week, the MINIX-780G-SP128MB.

With the launch of AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2 flagship knocking at the front door, a couple of hardware sites have managed to get their hands on early engineering samples of the card and post preliminary results, dropping a hint at what's coming next month. From what I saw today, AnandTech and [H]ard|OCP are the first two web sites to drop unofficial benchmark results. PC Perspective and The Tech Report are also among these sites. To make their previews even more interesting they have added performance results from GeForce GTX 280 in SLI and other popular cards that can work in pairs.

Please let us know what you think about ATI's fastest single card.

HardOCP previewed the ATI Radeon HD4870 X2. In the preview it was pitted against a single BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC (overclocked) and Crossfire X setup using two cards was pitted against two GeForce GTX 280 cards in SLI. Across variable settings, the HD4870 X2 was compared to the GTX 280. In Crysis the competition was neck-to-neck while the ATI cards returned marginally lower average frame rates. In Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, the ATI cards outclassed the NVIDIA cards significantly, where the Anti-Aliasing (AA) performance of the cards proved to be a trump-card, with the cards returning over 30% performance increments in both single and Crossfire X configurations over the GeForce GTX 280 OC and its SLI configuration. With the AA bottleneck reduced, the R700 is a monster. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures shows what this card is truly capable of, the author of the preview goes on to use "AMD AA Performance FTW" to head a write-up on the AA system. AMD has reworked AA and also a new mode that doesn't tax the video memory as much has been added. The total of 2 GB GDDR5 memory only helps this cause.

The card in Crossfire X peaked 700W though not much is revealed with the power-testing. You can read the article here.

The ATI Radeon HD 4850 has been a success so far and Sapphire decides to expand their product range with Sapphire Radeon HD4850 1GB. Chinese website ITOCP released fresh pictures of this new card. It looks promising. This follows the release of pictures of the Toxic Radeon HD4850 we covered here.

The pictures show the card in the usual blue Sapphire PCB, and a heatsink covering in a similar fashion to that of some NVIDIA cards.

Fudzilla released the first pictures of an upcoming ATI Radeon HD4850 model from Sapphire, the Toxic Radeon HD4850. This card looks very familiar. It reminds us of the successful Radeon X1950 Pro custom-design by Sapphire using the familiar Zalman VF900-Cu cooler. It uses small aluminum heatsinks over the memory chips, a copper heatsink is used to cool the card's VRM. Expect this card to come with overclocked parameters.

Intel launches the Centrino 2 mobile plaform this Monday, the 14th. Centrino 2, codenamed Montevina is behind launch-schedule owing to issues detected in the integrated graphics controller. The chipset released will be that which supports discrete graphics controllers from ATI or NVIDIA.

Intel Centrino 2 for now is targeted towards the business-class and enterprise segments. The chipset supports DDR3 memory which brings in a certain level of energy efficiency with added performance. At the heart of it would be a 45nm processor based on the Penryn architecture. Initially dual-core processors, with quad-core based notebooks later. The wireless network controller supports the newer 802.11n and WiMAX standards. Security and management features come in through the vPro technology.

These 45nm dual-core processors are said to run at 25W, an efficiency increment over previous generation running at 35W.

Presenting the fastest IGP to date. The upcoming AMD 790GX chipset, unlike preliminary reports suggesting it was going to be an extreme performance competitor to the GeForce 8200 IGP incorporated NForce 780a, is a high-end chipset armed to compete with the likes of NForce 750a, Intel G35. It supports ATI Crossfire multi-GPU technology.

In two new company slides published by the Chilean website CHW.net, early performance evaluations of the 790GX IGP were conducted, where the AMD chip beat the GeForce 8200 IGP by a very significant margin. It outperformed the Intel G35 by nearly 300 per cent margins in some tests. Apart from this ferocious little IGP, the 790GX supports ATI Crossfire with the energy-saving Hybrid-Crossfire feature. When not gaming, the display is handled by the IGP, depending on the load, the graphics card(s) are powered and speeds are adjusted. So when playing a game that the graphics card(s) can churn out 300 fps from, the GPU parameters can be lowered so you still get say, 100 fps while the GPU power is reduced significantly.

Eran Badit of the NGOHQ ATI PhysX driver fame now joins the NVIDIA developer program. In a more assertive statement, he believes that NVIDIA wants to "take on Intel with CUDA and to deal with the 'latest' Havok threat from both AMD and Intel.".

In a conversation with TG Daily, Roy Taylor, vice president of developer relations for NVIDIA says: "Eran and I have been talking via email and we have invited him to join NVIDIA's registered developer program. We are delighted at his interest in CUDA and in GPU accelerated physics using PhysX. Eran joins a long line of developers who are now working on using the GPU to run physics and who are doing so with the world's leading physics software - PhysX. "

Derek Perez, in charge of Nvidia's PR department, joined Taylor with this statement:
"We'll help any and all developers are using CUDA. That includes tools…documentation…and hands on help. We're delighted with the interest in CUDA and PhysX; and that includes the news on www.ngohq.com."

Once feared by many for aggressively defending its intellectual property, NVIDIA seems to have changed its approach towards things. In a bid to popularize their technology, it is willing to give the 'PhysX advantage' to even its competitor, AMD. But it still remains to be seen if PhysX performs on Radeon "the way it's meant to perform", now with Eran Badit working in close collaboration with NVIDIA. He says he still awaits samples from AMD so he could devise PhysX drivers for them. Surely NVIDIA has brought in good days for small developers with big aspirations.

NVIDIA Plans to Nuke R700?

Let's face it, the ATI RV770 and its derivatives have become a rage. Everybody loves this chip and wants a card based on this, be it the card that made NVIDIA slash their prices, the HD4850 or the HD4870 which rivals the GeForce GTX 260 at a decent price. In surveys conducted by several websites, be it TweakTown or Hexus.net, majority community members chose ATI as a brand over NVIDIA, rougly indicating that the HD4000 series has done an excellent repair job with ATI and its brand value.

Nothing (exciting) is going NVIDIA's way these days, their notebook graphics division has taken a beating over the recent faulty parts issue. The NVDA stock is a little volatile at the stock market these days, after the company announced it predicts weaker earnings this quarter financial year. Here's something to ponder: If NVIDIA predicts weaker earnings, how come talks are they have something to counter the R700, which AMD already made statements about, saying it will "overwhelm the GeForce GTX 280"?

As of today, AMD is close to over a year and a half behind Intel with the implementation of the DDR3 system memory standard, and it doesn't look like we are going to see a DDR3 AMD platform only until late this year or early next year. Chilian website CHW.net published slides of the roadmaps for AMD chipsets in the months to come, also published are slides refering to the details of the next generation southbridge by AMD, even though the latest entry, the SB700 is only teething and only the latest motherboards with 7-Series chipsets feature this.

In a dramatic turnaround of events, NGOHQ.com, the creators of a special system software that allowed users of the ATI Radeon graphics accelerators to use proprietary features of NVIDIA graphics accelerators such as GPU-accelerated version of the NVIDIA PhysX game physics API, claim that in fact NVIDIA wanted to help them with this effort. On June, the 26th we had covered reports of the said outfit improvising a driver after proving that NVIDIA's proprietary GPGPU architecture, CUDA was flexible enough to work on a ATI RV670 graphics processor.

If you own one of the latest ATI Radeon HD 4850 cards and you're not satisfied with the reference single slot cooling and more specially with the temps you're getting in both idle and load, here's a quick workaround which might help you until better solution is available. A Guru3D forum member has found that if you make a profile in catalyst after turning on Overdrive, you can then edit it and manually change the fan speed. All steps to make it work are written here. Here's also a direct link to the full Guru3D thread. I'm not exactly sure, but this workaround should also work with ATI Radeon HD 4870 cards.

I spotted some new nude shots of the upcoming ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics card today and decided to share them with you. Little is known about the card's specs at the time, but what's apparent from the pics is the black PCB, the two 55nm-built RV770 GPUs and the PLX PCI-Express 2.0 bridge chip situated between the GPUs. On both sides of the PCB there are 16 Qimonda GDDR5 chips for a total of 1GB video memory. Also one 6-pin and one 8-pin PCI-E connectors will be needed for proper operation.

Diamond Multimedia (www.diamondmm.com), a leading manufacturer of PC graphics cards, sound cards and communications products, launched today along with boutique system builder Smoothcreations, and Water cooling mavens, Danger Den the ATI Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition graphics card. This card offers exquisite gaming capabilities combined with state of the art efficiency.

The HD 4870 is a smoking gun dual slot card, PCIE 2.0, with 512MB of DDR5 memory and a clock speed of 800 MHz. The memory speed is 1100 MHz and is designed with 800 stream processors. The HD 4870 provides plug-and-play ATI CrossFireX upgradeability with up to quad-GPU support. Continuing with ATI's Power Play and 55nm processing technology, this card is the fastest and efficient. "The Diamond Radeon HD 4870 XOC Black Edition was clocked to kick some ass". We didn't just want a fast card out in the market, we wanted the fastest card that could kick the living daylights and bust some performance records, say Mario Gastelum, Director of Product Development & Engineering. "we wanted a card that kicked the competitions teeth into the curb", and that's exactly what our engineers accomplished". "The firmware was custom designed to enable end users to go beyond the normal over clocked speeds and allow them to push their cards for higher performance via the catalyst control center." The GPU's custom firmware has been unlocked to push cards to GPU settings of up to 950 MHz and Memory of up 1200 MHz.

Update: Diamond has decided to make "these cards available in ecommerce in the next few days".

ATI has released new Catalyst drivers for all Linux OS users, that bring major performance enhancements to ATI FireGL professional graphics cards. The enhanced 8.49.7 Linux driver represents a significant leap for Linux customers seeking improved performance of CAD and digital content creation applications, offering up to 33% faster OpenGL performance than the previous 8.433.1 driver. If you need them, you can grab them here at any time.

DigiTimes reports that with AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4800-series graphics cards successfully cutting into the US$200-300 mainstream market forcing Nvidia to cut the price of its previous generation GeForce 9800 GTX down to US$199, sources at graphics card makers see AMD's discrete graphics card market share as having a chance to increase to 40% in the third quarter this year from around 30% at the beginning of 2008.

Since Nvidia's GeForce 9800 GTX does not provide advantages in power consumption or performance over the same priced Radeon HD 4850, graphics card makers are more optimistic over AMD's upcoming performance.

During AMD's recent Cinema 2.0 event, TG Daily caught up with representatives of JulesWorld. They are associated with the video production process of an unnamed movie studio and adopted components that are standard in the FX industry (AMD Opteron + Nvidia Quadro). Ray-tracing was an early focus of the company and they were told that JulesWorld started experimenting with a 100% ray-traced pipeline on a GPU with the arrival of ATI's R600 (2900XT) chip. And the results were impressive.

JulesWorld will be releasing OTOY and LightScape, two distinctive technologies that could shape the future of movie and games production. The company developed a ray-tracer that uses elements of the DirectX 9 API as well as its own high-level code that uses Tessellation and anti-aliasing algorithms.

Eran Badit of NGOHQ.com successfully modified NVIDIA CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) to operate on an ATI GPU and has been able to run the NVIDIA PhysX layer on an RV670, the Radeon HD 3850.

He tells that enabling PhysX support on Radeon cards is not particularly difficult, leading us to believe that physics on graphics cards may not so much be a technology problem but an issue of corporate dynamics.

On his first run, Eran got a 22,606 CPU score in 3D Mark Vantage, enhancing the overall score to P4262. A comparable system without PhysX-support will cross the finish line at about P3800.

AMD Releases ATI All-In-Wonder HD Series Card

AMD today expanded The Ultimate Visual Experience for North America with the ATI All-In-Wonder HD, combining award-winning ATI Radeon Premium graphics and ATI TV Wonder HD tuner technology card in one PCI Express 2.0 solution. As the newest multimedia powerhouse to join the long line of All-In-Wonder offerings, ATI All-in-Wonder HD transforms the PC into a highly immersive digital video recorder for HDTV and analog TV, plus expands the realm of exceptional gaming with cinematic HD graphics for mainstream PCs. Blu-ray disc playback can be enjoyed in full HD glory (1080p) thanks to ATI All-in-Wonder HD's unified video decoder (UVD) technology, ensuring movies play back smoothly and with incredible detail.

The graphics core is derived from the Radeon HD 3650, 55 nm, clocked at 725 MHz (memory: 600 MHz DDR2). AMD claims that the graphics performance of the card will beat a standard Radeon HD 3650 by 5 to 15% in popular games. The card incorporates the ATI Theater Pro 650 chip. Other prominent features include ClearQAM, a hardware MPEG-2 encoder and full hardware acceleration for H.264 and VC-1. The Adaptive Comb-filter provides better image quality.

For more information, please visit this page.

Asetek's industry-leading, LCLC liquid cooling solution is now available for AMD's latest ATI Radeon HD 4870 family of graphics cards. The unique, single-slot liquid cooling approach provides OEMs with an extremely high overclocking capability enabling them to design and produce outstanding gaming and entertainment products with virtually no noise.

To meet the demands of advanced gaming or graphics-intensive applications, Asetek's highly integrated solution lowers the GPU temperatures found on the 4870 by as much as 26 degrees, enabling it to run significantly cooler in extreme performance modes of operation. And, since the Asetek solution is totally liquid cooled, the graphics card can run completely silent, except for the system heat exchanger fan that typically runs at a quiet 30 dB(A).

With advancements in visual-computing technologies on an all-time high, and graphics processing units with immense 3D computational power coming out by the fortnights, consumers benefit the most. In the process of evaluating graphics processors' abilities using the latest 3D games and synthetic 3D benchmark software alone, we are probably missing out on other primary uses of a GPU which when tapped, show just how potent a GPU can be. Both NVIDIA and ATI have had video-transcoding features that until exploited by software are close to rudimentary.

Cyberlink, have been working on technologies that enable their software to harness the video-transcoding abilities of GPU's. Shuichi Takagi, CyberLink's vice president of of business development ran a demonstration of PowerDirector 7 that is capable of GPU-accelerated video-transcoding, on a recently launched ATI Radeon HD4850 512 MB, proving that the hardware and software is capable of converting four HD MPEG-2 movies into MPEG-4 simultaneously, in real time. According to Shuichi, it will take about 30 minutes to process four full-length movies and compress them into handheld-friendly 200+ MB files.

MSI, a leading manufacturer of computer products, proudly unveils its latest R4800 series graphics cards for the game ethnic groups. MSI R4870-T2D512 and R4850-T2D512 support the DirectX 10.1 framework of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and both have the 800 stream processor, which achieves the unprecedented levels teraflop (1000Gflops) computing capability. It is ten times higher than any high-end CPU. MSI R4800 series graphics card comes with the superb computing capability which can be converted to high-definition games special effects, and provide the extreme gaming experience.

MSI R4800 series graphics cards are based on the latest 2nd generation of 55nm GPU. Integrated with the ATI PowerPlay power-saving technology, MSI R4800 provides twice the performance enhancement with the same watt. It conforms to the environmental energy conservation worldwide initiative with MSI (ECOlution) environmental protection ideal. In addition, MSI R4800 series graphics cards also have built the enhanced version of UVD 2.0 video decoder core. "High performance", "energy efficiency", and "HD video experience" are the main features of MSI R4800 series graphics cards.

TG Daily is reporting that AMD is preparing to stoke up its GPU war with NVIDIA by unleashing overclocked HD 4850 powered solutions, in order to parry against rival NVIDIA's 9800GTX+. Apparently, by removing overclocking restrictions, AIB's will be able to offer a range of overclocked SKU's, with higher core and memory clock speeds, together with up-rated cooling solutions not being a stretch of the imagination. It is claimed that senior ATI officials anticipate overclocked SKU's to offer an increase of 50 MHz to the core clock speed, compared to currently available HD 4850 parts. Company names on the proverbial grapevine and, set to offer these solutions are, unsurprisingly, HIS, together with Sapphire Technology and Diamond. The upcoming HD 4870 isn't expected to escape pre-overclocking treatment either.

Catering to users who require top notch graphics cards, ASUS, world-leading producer of quality graphic solutions revealed today the world's first 1GB onboard memory version of the latest ATI Radeon HD 4850 GPU with the ASUS EAH4850/HTDI/1G. The unparalleled large onboard memory size is specially designed for feature-rich DirectX 10 gaming, and the best multimedia playback at ultra-high resolutions and maximum quality settings.

ATI today issued a hotfix for all owners of the new Radeon HD 4800 series cards. This patch applies to both Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870 and improves overall performance and stability. Also note that this hotfix includes the Display Driver and Catalyst Control Center.

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