In a recent interview with EWeek, Henri Richard was quoted as saying that leaving AMD any later than he did would have made him look terrible, and would have gotten him a lot of bad press. Richard instead chose to leave AMD while it entered what he thought was a strong Christmas/2008 season. Henri Richard is currently working at a company called Freescale.

While we have been hearing rumors of the HD2900Pro for some time now, and AMD has just recently released the card to the public, all that press does no good if customers can't even get the card. Fortunately, American online PC part retailer Newegg thought ahead, and made sure to stock plenty of the HD2900. You can now buy three variants of the 2900Pro, from a Sapphire model with 512MB of VRAM for $265USD, to one with an impressive 1 GB of VRAM for a reasonable $330USD.

Someone at Coolaler forums has leaked pictures and details about the upcoming RV670-XTX card. The leaked card has 256MB of memory on a 256-bit interface. It has a 55nm GPU that runs at 600 MHz. The eight Hynix memory chips are rated to run at 900 MHz.

AMD Announces AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition

Advanced Micro Devices has announced its new central processing unit (CPU) that is officially aimed at enthusiasts and gamers who dare to overclock and tweak their systems. The new processor from the Black Edition lineup comes with unlocked multiplier, which allows to easily set it working at higher clock-speed, getting additional performance virtually for free.

The AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor 5000+ Black Edition is an affordably-priced, dual-core processor targeted to the consumer channel, boasting a customizable clock multiplier for tunable performance, enabling mainstream end-users to reap the benefits of setting their own speed limits, a statement by the world's largest maker of x86 central processing units maker reads.

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Black Edition microprocessor works at 2.60GHz, features dual-channel DDR2 memory controller, 1MB of level-two cache (512KB per core) and is compatible with socket AM2 mainboards featuring 1000MHz HyperTransport bus. The chip has 65W thermal design power and is made using 65nm process technology.

As we all know, AMD has had a hard year thusfar. And so, AMD's move to cut costs is just short of expected. AMD employees, as of November 1st, 2007, will no longer be able to spend 20% of their salary on AMD stock at a 15% discount. Stock perks are not the only things we'll see leaving. There are noticeably fewer bonuses and charity-matchings this year, and there are a couple rumors of lay-offs.

AMD's RX780 chipset, a cut-down version of the similarly AMD-oriented RD790, has won the approval of the PCI SIG, the organisation behind the PCI Express standard. So has the reference motherboard. Both certifications are key steps towards the release of the product. The RX780 closely matches the RD790's specs, but it is a cheaper and cut down version of RD790 with a single PCI-e x16 slot. It supports HyperTransport 3 and Socket AM2+ and will be paired on motherboards with AMD's SB600 southbridge chip.

Just take a look at this page.What is AMD about to release on September 25, 2007?

At the Embedded Systems Conference this week, AMD announced the addition of three new low power AMD Athlon 64 processors to its embedded product lineup, giving systems designers the benefits of AMD64 technology in a thermal envelope as low as 8 watts. The single core AMD Athlon 64 processor models 2000+, 2600+, and 3100+ adopt Socket AM2 and feature power envelopes of 8, 15, and 25W maximum thermal design power, respectively. They support ECC memory for high reliability data applications and are especially applicable for systems such as Network Attached Storage (NAS), Advanced Mezzanine Cards (AMCs) for the telecommunications market, and various single board computing and industrial implementations. These models will be generally available in Q4.

Delivering a multi-core triple threat, AMD today announced the addition of AMD Phenom triple-core processors to its desktop roadmap. AMD Phenom triple-core processors, expected to be the world's first PC processors to integrate three computational cores on a single die of silicon, can help deliver the visual experience, performance and multitasking capabilities of true multi-core technology to a broader audience. Offering state-of-the-art platforms and a next-generation architecture with expected availability in Q1 2008, the industry's only x-86 triple-core desktop processor shows why AMD's the smarter choice, with its expanded portfolio for customers to offer platforms with unique multi-core options. AMD Phenom quad-core processors remain on schedule to ship in 2007.

AMD today announced expanded industry support and customer adoption of AMD "Torrenza", the company's accelerated computing initiative designed to help technology partners deliver open, flexible and scalable silicon designs. Torrenza solutions significantly boost performance in compute-intensive applications designed for industries like securities and life sciences, as demonstrated today at the HPC on Wall Street Event in New York.

AMD today announced it will license unique 2D and 3D graphics technology to Freescale Semiconductor, a global leader in mobile and multimedia platform solutions. Freescale will incorporate AMD's best-in-class, industry-standard OpenGL ES 2.0 and OpenVG 1.0 graphics core technologies in its i.MX applications processors. AMD's graphics technology is optimized to deliver superior battery life and visually stunning performance for key mobile applications such as gaming, navigation and user interfaces. i.MX processors with this graphics technology will be available for portable media players, portable navigation, home electronics and automotive infotainment applications.

MSI Announces Motherboards and Server Barebones Supporting AMD Quad-Core Opteron

Along with the new generation AMD Opteron processors (code-named Barcelona), MSI has launched its new server products - K9NU Speedster server board and K1-106 rack server.

Based around the nForce 3400 chipset, K9NU-Speedster Series motherboards and K1-106 Series server barebones support single AMD Opteron 2200 series quad-core processors. K9NU-Speedster Series also provide memory bandwidth up to 8.5GB/s (DDR2-533) or 10.5GB/s (DDR2-667). XGI Volari Z7 graphic processor with 16MB video memory can meet users' needs without adding a graphics adapter. However, both motherboards have two PCI-E x16 slot supporting NVIDIA SLI technology for future expansion.

AMD has officially unveiled its new Phenom and Phenom FX processor logos (see below). You can all now change your avatars.

After a few tough months for AMD following the release of Intel's new Core 2 Duo processors, sales are finally starting to pick up again for the company. During the second quarter of 2007 AMD is estimated to have gained 2.5% in the CPU market, giving it an overall share of 13.4%of total CPU revenues. Meanwhile, Intel has seen its market share fall by 2%, leaving it with a 78.8% share of revenues, still comfortably ahead of AMD. However, AMD has still lost a 3.1% share of the market compared to this point in 2006, with Intel up by 5.4% year-on-year. The recent improvements for AMD are due to increased shipments of notebook, desktop and server processors following a fall in the average CPU selling price.

Today, AMD announced a limited edition of the X2 6000+ which is rated at TDP of 89W. There is no physical differences between the 125W and 89W 90nm SOI processors, except the new labelling: ADA6000IAA6CZ. Both CPUs operate at 3.0GHz and have 2x 1MB L2 cache. The 89W edition operates 1.3v in contrast to 1.35V on the 125W version.

Gateway, Inc., the nation's third largest PC vendor, will offer the powerful new Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors in its entry-level tower server and complete line of rackmount servers. The new AMD processors feature four cores on one piece of silicon in the same thermal envelopes as the previous generation of dual-core AMD Opteron processors, for an increase in performance without an increase in heat generation.

AMD is planning two new graphics chips, the RV635 and RV620, upgrades of its entry-level and mid-range ATI Radeon HD 2000 series products. The RV635 and RV620 are upgrade versions of the Radeon HD 2400 (R630) and 2600 (R610). The new chips will adopt a 55nm process, compared to 65nm of the previous chips, and will have core frequencies increased to 800MHz. The chips will be manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). In addition, the new video cards will also support DirectX 10.1, Shader Model 4.1 and PCI Express 2.0, while output will be upgraded to include Display Port. AMD schedules to provide EVT (engineering validation test) samples of the RV635 and RV620 chips in October and will launch in January next year. RV635 and RV620 will each come in XT and Pro versions. Although the official market names are not yet set, the cards are likely to be named Radeon HD 2650 and 2500.

AMD today introduced the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, the world's most advanced x86 processor ever designed and manufactured and the first native x86 quad-core microprocessor. Designed from inception for the most demanding datacenters, Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor-based servers from global OEMs and system builders can deliver breakthrough capabilities to customers in a time of dramatically escalating performance-per-watt emphasis.

While Intel is preparing to move on to a 45nm micro-architecture, AMD is preparing true quad-core processors, and working on a quad-graphics card solution. The technology that will allow for four graphics cards to be stuck in one system will be called "QuadFire", and there are no major details out at this time, other than the name and pictures of supporting motherboards. The chipset supporting "QuadFire" is AMD's own RD790, which is pictured below in MSI's K9A2 motherboard. The RD790 is designed to work with a Phenom processor, has six SATA ports, and two E-SATA ports.

Pictures courtesy of OCWorkbench.

It seems as though hardware manufacturers finally got tired of being forced into AMD products if they bought an AMD motherboard, or NVIDIA products if they bought an NVIDIA board. And so, Voodoo PC (owned by HP) decided to fix that. Using an unknown method, Voodoo is giving customers the option to get either CrossFire or SLI in a computer built around an NVIDIA SLI platform.

You can read the full interview, where Voodoo PC discusses the new technology and makes some "rather unflattering" remarks over the Dell XPS here.

AMD today announced that it will hold its Premiere Event for the launch of the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor at approximately 6:30 pm Pacific Time (9:30 pm ET) on Monday, Sept. 10, 2007. The event will be webcast live and can be accessed here. A replay of the webcast can be accessed at this site approximately one hour after the conclusion of the live event and will be available for 10 days after the event. The webcast will also be available at AMD.com.

Fudzilla claims AMD's Suzuka K11 CPU will use desktop socket AM3 and will be the last CPU to support DDR3. Both dual and quad core Suzuka-cored CPUs will be based on 45 nanometer process type with 1MB of L2 cache per core and 6MB of L3 cache.

Barcelona should be available next week and when compared with Intel's Clovertown, Barcelona is 30% faster than Clovertown at floating point instructions. However, at integer instructions, Clovertown is approximately 30% faster than Barcelona. Dell also says they will continue to use AMD processors in their line up to give their customers a variety of choices to choose from.

Today AMD has unleashed a brand new gaming microsite to provide a forum for gamers to communicate, collaborate and stay in tune with the latest developments in PC gaming. Gamers will have the ability to access exclusive game content and contests while customizing aspects of the site to fit every user's preferences. The site is now available on game.amd.com.

AMD plans to launch nine new quad-core processors later this month with clock speeds ranging from 1.7 GHz to 2.0 GHz. The initial launch will only have two thermal bins, 68-Watt and 98-Watt TDP. AMD's two-way capable quad-core Opteron 2300 series launch with five new models. Pricing for the two-way capable models start at around $206 and go up as high as $372. On the multi-way side of things, AMD has four quad-core Opteron 8300 models starting at a $688 entry price all the way up to $1,004. Desktop users will have to wait until Q4 of 2007 for AMD's Phenom to experience quad-core.