SAPPHIRE Technology, industry leader in alternative cooling solutions for PC graphics, has just launched a new ULTIMATE Edition of the top of the range HD 3870 - topping it's previous claim for the fastest passive cooled graphics card in the World by delivering even more performance. The SAPPHIRE HD 3870 ULTIMATE Edition has 512MB of GDDR4 memory, running at 1125MHz (2.25GHz effective) and has a core clock speed of 775MHz, delivering the same exciting levels of graphics performance as the standard model - but featuring a totally fanless and silent four heatpipe cooler.

Owners of ATI's Radeon HD2xxx/HD3xxx series cards who are experiencing intermittent stuttering when running various 3D applications can now make use of the new Catalyst hotfix which is said to fix the problem. Available now for Windows XP (32/64-bit) and Windows Vista (32/64-bit), the 737-33033 hotfix can be downloaded here.

DigiTimes, citing unnamed industry sources claims that somewhere between April and May, we should expect ATI to launch new Radeon HD 3830 graphics card. The 3830 will have 128-bit memory interface, 320 stream processing units, 16 texture filtering units and 16 ROPs, and will support memory capacities of up to 256MB. The card will be positioned between AMD's Radeon HD 3850 and HD 3650 and will target the gap between NVIDIA's GeForce 9600GT and 8600GTS with a price lower than US$129. The release of Radeon HD 3830 may also lead to price reduction of several other members of the HD 3 series, the Radeon HD 3870 and HD 3850. AMD didn't comment on the story.