AMD released the latest version of the ATI Catalyst software suite. Version 10.9 WHQL comes rather early for this time of the month, when normally it's out towards the end or last week. ATI Catalyst installs drivers and system software for ATI Radeon graphics processors (HD 2000 series and above), AMD chipset integrated graphics, and other ATI multimedia products. Although Catalyst 10.9 does not mention any notable feature changes, it does offer some game-specific performance improvements across the board, as well as CrossFireX profiles that make the graphics driver take advantage of CrossFireX specific to games. Notable improvements include up to 20% in STALKER: Call of Pripyat Benchmark on Radeon HD 5800 series, and up to 6% on The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, when running Radeon HD 5970 single or CrossFireX. A usual load of bug fixes goes with this version.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 10.9 WHQL for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit, Windows 7/Vista 32-bit, Windows XP 32-bit, Windows XP 64-bit

A complete list of changes follows.

AMD announced the availability of ATI Catalyst version 9.6 driver suite, that provides driver support for ATI Radeon series graphics processors (driver version 8.62), Hydravision, AMD Southbridge/Chipset driver, and Catalyst Control Center (version 8.62). The new version brings along the following application-specific performance increments:

• Company of Heores - performance gains of up to 25% for the ATI Radeon HD 4600 Series, and performance gains of up to 10% for the ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series.
• Crysis Warhead - performance gains of up to 11% for ATI CrossFireX configurations.
• Crysis - performance gains of up to 13% for ATI CrossFireX configurations.
• World in Conflict - performance gains of up to 30% for settings are were previously CPU limited.

The Linux version of this driver suite adds production support for SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) and SLED 11. It also provides early support for RedHat Enterprise Linux 4.8.

DOWNLOAD: ATI Catalyst 9.6 for Windows XP 32-bit | Windows 7/Vista 32-bit | Windows XP 64-bit | Windows 7/Vista 64-bit

Release Notes can be read here

AMD is expected to introduce a series of price-cuts next month, for its ATI Radeon HD 4800 series graphics products. The price-cuts may amount to as much as US $50, perhaps taking advantage of the low manufacturing costs. The cuts also come ahead of the time-frame in which the company will introduce a DirectX 11 compatible future-generation of ATI Radeon, to sync with the commercial launch of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system.

When implemented, the price of the high-end Radeon HD 4890 is expected to be $199, down $50 from its current price of $249. Radeon HD 4870 will sell for $149 from its current listing price of $199, although there needs to be some clarity on how the 1 GB and 512 MB variants are positioned. Finally, the Radeon HD 4850 will enter the $100 realm, to substitute the Radeon HD 4770, which seems to be suffering an acute stock shortage.

Empowering consumers to get elite-level computing performance for under $900 U.S. dollars, AMD today launched "Dragon" platform technology for desktop PCs featuring the new AMD Phenom II X4 processor. Even the most demanding users such as enthusiasts and high-end gamers desire affordable systems capable of delivering HD entertainment, graphic-intensive game play at the highest settings their monitors can handle, as well as quick and easy transfer of video entertainment to and from mobile devices. Dragon platform technology provides the power to do it all by combining AMD's highest-performing CPU, the AMD Phenom II X4 processor, with award winning ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series graphics and AMD 7-Series chipsets. And it's offered at an incredible value with Dragon-based systems available for up to $1,200 U.S. dollars less than competing systems that deliver comparable performance.

Leading global PC manufacturers HP, Dell and Alienware plan to offer Dragon platform technology-based desktop systems in the first quarter of 2009, with Dell offering immediate availability in its Dell XPS desktop line. "The XPS 625 desktop powered by AMD's Dragon platform technology features new AMD Phenom II processors to enable a significant boost in speed for enhanced gaming, as well as the flexibility to enable multi-tasking and HD video capabilities free from delays, stalls and lags," said Arthur Lewis, general manager of Dell Gaming Group. "The XPS 625 gives gamers the unbelievable experience they expect at a price point that won't break the bank."

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.

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.

DOWNLOAD

I'm afraid I have some bad news for you. Tom's Hardware has learned that ATI is going to delay the launch of its ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 cards a bit to June 23th. Originally the cards were slated to come on June 18th. The GDDR5 equipped ATI Radeon HD 4870 cards will now launch at the same time as the 4850 512MB GDDR3, but it is unclear whether there'll be enough GDDR5 chips to ship the 4870 in volume right after its official launch. The report also claims that although the cards are delayed, add-in-board companies have them available right now. NVIDIA plans to launch the GeForce GTX 200 series on June 17th. In case there are no more "unexpected" delays, NVIDIA will be first this year to show its GeForce GTX 280 and GeForce GTX 260 cards, a week later AMD should follow with ATI Radeon HD 4870 GDDR5 and Radeon HD 4850 GDDR3.

The ATI Radeon HD 4850 cards are reportedly already shipping to OEM partners and retailers. According to TG Daily everything is going as planned and AMD/ATI is aiming for a sizable launch of the new product generation, with Radeon 4850 512MB boards leading the charge. The final prices for all Radeon HD 4 series cards will be officially declared during the Computex 2008 tradeshow which will open doors on Monday. Higher-end Radeon 4870 cards with 512MB of onboard GDDR5 memory are expected to ship in volume sometime this summer, with flagship Radeon HD 4870 X2 to follow soon after that.

The Taiwanese website version of Tom's Hardware is hosting a brand new first look at ATI's Radeon HD 4800 series cards. Unfortunately, if you want to read something more than the posted pictures and the "Redefine HD Gaming" marketing charts, you'll need someone or Google to translate from Taiwanese for you, as you might have already guessed. What's interesting are the pictures below, that show the upcoming cards in all their glory. They also confirm our previous story about the cooling solutions that will be used on both cards. The first card pictured is ATI Radeon HD 4870, the second one is Radeon HD 4850.

Various photos of the coolers that will prevent ATI's next gen Radeon HD 4800 series cards from overheating have recently emerged over the Internet. Below are the picture of ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2, Radeon HD 4870 and Radeon HD 4850 respectively.

AMD today announced the first commercial implementation of Graphics Double Data Rate, version 5 (GDDR5) memory in its forthcoming next generation of ATI Radeon graphics card products. The high-speed, high-bandwidth GDDR5 technology is expected to become the new memory standard in the industry, and that same performance and bandwidth is a key enabler of The Ultimate Visual Experience, unlocking new GPU capabilities. AMD is working with a number of leading memory providers, including Samsung, Hynix and Qimonda, to bring GDDR5 to market.

Thanks to TG Daily we can now talk about the very soon to be released ATI HD 4800 series of graphics cards with more details. One week ahead of its presumable release date, general specifications of the new cards have been revealed. All Radeon 4800 graphics will use the 55nm TSMC produced RV770 GPU, that include over 800 million transistors, 480 stream processors or shader units (96+384), 32 texture units, 16 ROPs, a 256-bit memory controller (512-bit for the Radeon 4870 X2) and native GDDR3/4/5 support as reported before. At first, AMD's graphics division will launch three new cards - Radeon HD 4850, 4870 and 4870 X2:

• ATI Radeon HD 4850 - 650MHz/850MHz/1140MHz core/shader/memory clock speeds, 20.8 GTexel/s (32 TMU x 0.65 GHz) fill-rate, available in 256MB/512MB of GDDR3 memory or 512MB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1.73GHz
• ATI Radeon HD 4870 - 850MHz/1050MHz/1940MHz core/shader/memory clock speeds, 27.2 GTexel/s (32 TMU x 0.85 GHz) fill-rate, available in 1GB GDDR5 version only
• ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 - unknown core/shader clock speeds, available with 2048MB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1730MHz

The 4850 256MB GDDR3 version will arrive as the successor of the 3850 256MB with a price in the sub-$200 range. The 4850 512MB GDDR3 should retail for $229, while the 4850 512MB GDDR5 will set you back about $249-269. The 1GB GDDR5 powered 4870 will retail between $329-349. The flagship Radeon HD 4870 X2 will ship later this year for $499.