VR-Zone has learned that Radeon display driver 8.45 v1.3 will improve performance and compatibility on the Radeon HD 3870 X2 over the current 8.45 v1.0 driver. The current set of drivers is facing game performance issues so benchmarks on it are not reflective on the actual gaming performance of the card. The new Catalyst will be out before 28th January according to AMD.

I'm afraid that all potential ATI HD 3870 X2 buyers will have to wait one more week until they get their hands on the new cards. TweakTown alerts that the launch of AMD's Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card has been pushed back to January 28th. AMD's new dual GPU graphics card was supposed to launch tomorrow but for unknown reasons, the launch has been pushed back. One possible version could be due to the fact that AMD is looking to have good stock quantity for this launch as it probably is a product that could do well for the struggling company.

The guys over at PConline.com.cn have managed again to be the first to post a full review of a graphics card that should be available later next month, the ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB (R680). First thing you'll notice is that the card beats NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 Ultra in every Futuremark benchmark and almost every game by quite a margin. Have a good time reading the full story here.

A Dutch site called Salland Automatisering has started to accept pre-orders for AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics card, which has an expected release date of 23rd of January. Earlier reports suggested a retail price of $449 US, although the Dutch site has set a price of €425 which works out at around $615. Admittedly taxes in Europe are higher, and this site may have added a premium as it is the first to allow pre-orders, so $449 in the US isn't completely out of the question.

Although plenty of Radeon HD 3870 X2 pictures have found their way onto the internet, there has been relatively little to look at when it comes to cooling. CHIPHELL has managed to get hold of some nice close-ups, which you can see below. Based on initial impressions, the cooler doesn't look too impressive, but at the end of the day it's real world performance that counts so we'll have to wait and see.

ASUS, producer of top quality graphic solutions has today introduced another top performance overclocking solution - the ASUS EAH3850 TOP/HTDI/512M. Being the world's first EAH3850 TOP model to be equipped with the fastest upgraded DRR3 0.8ns memory modules, users can expect up to 12% improvement in gaming experiences. This powerful graphics card is also equipped with the newest thermal solution - the Glaciator Fansink; that utilizes a unique fansink design to keep GPU temperatures cool.

The latest and official ATI Catalyst driver package version 8.1 is ready to be tested. Catalyst 8.1 introduces MultiView support. This feature provides for hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering across multiple graphics adapters. MultiView will provide hardware accelerated 3D rendering in a system containing multiple graphics cards on an extended desktop arrangement. It will allow for the rendering performance and additional frame buffer resources to be evenly shared with the second and third graphics adapters. This feature will be supported under Windows XP (32 and 64 bit versions), Windows Vista (32- and 64-bit versions), and the Linux operating system. For more information on Catalyst 8.1, including all of the resolved issues in this release, please see the Catalyst 8.1 release notes.

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Thanks to Asian website ITOCP, we can get an idea of how fast the first ATI Radeon 3 series dual GPU graphics card will be. Benching on Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 processor at 2.4GHz and 2GB of RAM, the system managed to score 9573 marks (SM2.0: 4494, SM3.0/HDR: 4476) on Futuremark 3D Mark 2006 set to 2560x1600 resolution. The GPU Core/Memory of this card is rated at 770MHz / 2250MHz (2x512MB). Lower resolution benchmark numbers are not mentioned in the original article.

AMD's turn at CES announcements has added the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series, its latest graphics chipset for notebooks. Similar to what standard Radeon HD 3000 line did for desktops, the Mobility version is said to bring visual and interface features that have never been seen for portables; it adds new graphics shader support for games and other 3D apps that can use the new features of DirectX 10.1 or more recent updates to OpenGL 2.0, such as new lighting techniques. The HD 3000 range also adds PCI Express 2.0 as well as the first-ever option of relaying video to DisplayPort monitors such as Dell's recently announced Crystal LCD, AMD says. The HD 3000 series is also more power-efficient than before while still maintaining useful extras such as full hardware decoding of 1080p video when exposed by software. AMD says it is already shipping a low-end HD 3400 chipset with 40 stream processors and a mid-range HD 3600 sibling with 120 stream processors in notebooks as of today, beginning with ASUS' M50 gaming notebook. Future versions, such as a likely HD 3800 version, are also expected in the first half of 2008.

Not aiming to break any world records, here's a little bit of info on ATI Radeon HD 3400 series of graphics cards. The HD 3400 will be replacing the HD 2400 series in January 2008. The cards will utilize 55nm core and support DirectX 10.1, PCIe 2.0, UVD, PowerPlay and Hybrid Crossfire.

AMD recently unveiled plans to put out R680, RV635 and RV620 chips, which would power high-end, mid-range and budget cards, respectively. While this is all well and good, AMD said that the anticipated R700 series of graphics chips would not be put out until at least 2009. This decision will hopefully give AMD a chance to return to profitability. The long wait for a new graphics family will also give AMD more time to ensure that they're putting out a high-quality product that will dominate the market. During the event that this was discovered at, AMD also put out some details of the upcoming Leo platform. For more about the Leo platform, please check the source link.

Here are some leaked pictures from ATI R680, courtesy of ChipHell. What you'll see on the PCB are 2x RV670XT GPUs and one PLX chip for communication between the two cores. All the sixteen memory chips (8 on the front and 8 on the back side) are missing from the board, probably because of the early development stage (that's not a finished product). Source said the card is using 0.7ns GDDR4 memory.

HotHardware already posted some images earlier this month when it revealed that AMD's upcoming RV635 cards would feature DisplayPort, and now Expreview has managed to find a couple more pictures of the card. It looks quite similar to the current HD 2600, although one major difference is that it doesn't have a CrossFire connector as it will use software CrossFire instead. This card is expected to retail under the name HD 3650, although no firm release date is available yet.

Club3D has silently listed two new cards in its HD 3800 series lineup. Both of the new cards are labelled Overclocked Edition and both of them use the same Zerotherm cooling solution which already features on PowerColor's HD 3800 PCS series.The HD 3870 works at 800MHz for the core and has 512MB of GDDR4 memory working at 1170MHz (2340MHz effective). The HD 3850 works at 720MHz for the core and has 512MB of 900MHz (1800MHz effective) GDDR3 memory.

TUL Corporation today announced the PowerColor HD 3870 512MB SCS3 silence edition; the best performing noiseless graphic card for HD 3870 series. While running passively, this model maintains the original specifications with core engine of 775MHz, 2252MHz effective memory speed, 512MB GDDR3 and 320 stream processing units; it has also built-in HDMI with 5.1 surround audio, supports Microsoft DirectX 10.1, PCI Express 2.0, and ATI CrossFire X technology. This silent cooling solution is expected to launch in January 2008.

Expreview claims to have pictures of a version of the Radeon HD 3850 which uses GDDR4 memory instead of the GDDR3 found on current models. Dubbed the HD 3850 512MB Infinity, this card is built by Unika and uses Hynix 0.8ns memory - and you may notice it also has a non-reference PCB and quite an unusual cooler, which has been designed by Triplex. Apparently this card is clocked at 700MHz core and 2200MHz RAM, and according the Expreview the price will remain at around $200.

SAPPHIRE Technology, the pioneer of alternative cooling solutions for PC graphics, has just launched a new ULTIMATE Edition in its exciting new HD 3000 series, to deliver the fastest performing passive cooled graphics card in the World - ever!

After being late to market with high-performance graphics offerings for a number of times, ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, is reportedly considering high-end graphics solutions that utilize more than two or, perhaps, even more physical dice. The method has been successfully utilized by Intel Corp., but will it be feasible for graphics processors too? ATI Radeon HD 2900 (R600) graphics chip, which contains about 700 million of transistors had power consumption of 160W, or even more, but still did not manage to demonstrate performance on par with Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX, a solution that also demands high amount of power and is rather expensive to manufacture. But ATI Radeon HD 3800 (RV670) graphics processing unit, which is made using 55nm process technology, has the same amount of horsepower as R600, but is cheaper to build and consumes less amount of energy. While two of such ATI RV670 chips would still consume quite a lot of power, they will be able to offer performance and features that were not available before without necessity to develop a chip that would have about 1.3 billion of transistors, the amount of elements that would require very thin process technology - so that the GPU would stay cheap enough to manufacture - and quite a lot of time to design it and verify the lack of bugs.

According to benchmarks which technology site Expreview claims to have carried out, ATI/AMD's new RV620 core could outperform the HD 2400 Pro by as much as 35% despite the two having the same core frequency. On the rather unusual test rig, which featured an Intel Celeron processor, the HD 2400 scored 1123 points in 3DMark06, with the upcoming RV620 scoring 1514 points. If these benchmarks are real, this would suggest that the architecture on the RV620 chip has been significantly improved over its predecessor, although bear in mind that 3DMark scores are by no means conclusive. The RV620 is expected to be named as the Radeon HD 3400 graphics card when it is released to consumers, which is planned to replace the current Radeon HD 2400 cards.

ATI has just released Catalyst 7.11 for Windows Vista and Windows XP and Linux platforms. This month's Windows Catalyst posting focuses on stability. For more information, please check the Release Highlights.

Note: Crysis players should continue using the Crysis hotfix driver even with this release.

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While the current RV670 chips are selling like hotcakes, AMD is working on putting out mid-range and low-end parts for those market segments. The successor to the HD 2600 series, according to graphics card manufacturers, will be called the HD 3600 series (big surprise). The 3600 series will come in two versions, an XT model and a Pro model. The XT will be clocked at 800MHz, and the Pro will be clocked at 600MHz. Both will be attached to 128-bit VRAM, which will run at an unknown clock speed. The Pro will have GDDR2, while the XT will have GDDR3. Both will support DirectX10.1, and the micro-architecture itself is codenamed "RV635". The RV635 should be launched with the RV620, the successor to the HD 2400 series. The RV620 should be dubbed the HD 3400 series.

HIS today unveiled its HIS Radeon HD 3870 512MB/256bit GDDR4 (H387F512) and Radeon HD 3850 256MB/256bit GDDR3 (H385F256) video cards, advancing to the next generation of HD graphics with incredible performance, low cost and support for the latest Microsoft DirectX 10.1. Both video cards feature the same 55nm fabricated RV670 GPU and come clocked to 775MHz/2.4GHz core/memory and 668MHz/1656MHz core/memory for the HD 3870 and HD 3850 model respectively. Both cards also support the soon to be released ATI CrossFireX technology.

As the title says, here are some more pictures of AMD's new 3870 X2 graphics card. Each of the graphics cores has its own memory controller, and each has its own CrossFire bridge. The cards are expected to be released in January.

ATI has released 737-30533 hotfix for Radeon HD 3800 and 2000 series of video cards. This update is intended for Crysis and Windows XP or Windows Vista 32/64-bit. It fixes:

• DirectX 10: Fixes texture flickering in bushes, clouds, trees
• DirectX 10: Performance improvements
• DirectX 9: Fixes Anti-Aliasing corruption seen on the ATI Radeon 2900 Series
• DirectX 9: Anti-Aliasing performance enhancements
• DirectX 9: Crossfire performance improvements
• DirectX 9: Fixes random graphics corruption during game play

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After taking the market by storm with the launch of the HD2900XT in mid-May, GECUBE launched today this year's heavyweight graphics card - the HD3800 Series. The product that reviewers and gamers have all been waiting for is now finally here. Equipped with the latest RV670 (55nm) graphics chip from AMD, the HD3800 series marks the first time that the PCI-Express 2.0 interface has been used on a graphics card and incorporates the latest ATI CrossFireX technology. With support for DirectX 10.1, it delivers next-generation 3D graphics performance for ultimate realism. You can now enjoy both high resolution and superior image processing technology at the same time!