ATI has updated the Catalyst display driver for all 9500 series and newer cards, taking the version number to 7.6. Numerous issues have been resolved, and there are also significant performance improvements for Half Life 2: Episode 1 and Dark Messiah Might and Magic when using a dual 2900 XT setup. Full release notes are available on the ATI website, with the download links as follows:

• XP 32-bit - download
• XP 64-bit - download
• Vista 32-bit - download
• Vista 64-bit download

AMD has decided to start pulling out some of its single-core Athlon 64 CPUs, which will be replaced by the 45W (single-core) Semprons that will be released in September this year. The soon-to-be phased out CPUs are the 65nm-built Athlon 64 3500+, 3800+ and 4000+ while their replacements are the upcoming 65nm Sempron LE-1300 (2.3GHz), LE-1250 (2.2GHz) and LE-1200 (2.1GHz), all boasting 512KB L2 cache and the 256KB L2 cached LE-1100 (1.9GHz) and LE-1150 (2.0GHz) models.

AMD schedules to launch its 45nm process socket AM3 family processors in the second half of 2008. The processors will support HyperTransport 3.0 and will have a built-in DDR2/DDR3 memory controller. The processors will be backwards compatible with the previous AM2 and AM2+ socket motherboards, according to sources at motherboard makers.

AMD's AM3 family will include the quad-core Deneb and DenebFX, dual-core Propus and Regor, and single-core Sargas. Shipments of 45nm products are predicted to surpass those of 65nm products within half a year from launch, noted the sources.

Although Socket AM3 processors will be backwards compatible with previous socket AM2 and AM2+ motherboards, socket AM3 motherboards will not be able to support the previous socket AM2 and AM2+ processors. Therefore shipment volumes of socket AM3 motherboards will depend on the speed of transition to DDR3 memory, added the sources.

In a keynote address this morning to the American Antitrust Institute in Washington, AMD CEO Hector Ruiz gave attendees what he described as "an idea of what it's like to do business day in and day out when you are competing against an abusive monopolist." Although he also invoked the phrase "illegal monopoly," he left a convenient 846-word buffer zone between that phrase and his first invocation of the term "Intel."

AMD has scheduled to release its new 7 series chipsets in the second half of 2007. The 7 series chipsets will introduce support for HyperTransport 3.0 and will include the high-end RD790 which will adopt PCI Express 2.0, mainstream RX780, and two models with integrated graphics (IGP): the RS740 which supports DirectX 9, and RS780 which will add support for DirectX 10 and AMD's UVD (Universal Video Decoder) technology. The RX780 and RS740 will launch in the third quarter while the RD790 and RD780 will follow in the fourth quarter of 2007. Initially the chipset will be matched with the SB600 southbridge but AMD also plans to release the SB700 in the fourth quarter. Plans to release chipsets which support Intel CPUs, RD700, RS700 and RC710, have all been aborted.

Ok, a Sempron is never going to win any prizes for performance, but AMD's latest addition its embedded processor line is a new Sempron 2100+ with a TDP rating of a mere 9-watts. The embedded CPU uses socket S1 and will be ideal for low-cost fanless systems that require moderate processing power without overheating or running up a huge power bill. Admittedly it won't be of much use in gaming machines or servers, but it should be capable of simple office tasks and web browsing, plus it's the first embedded CPU to feature AMD64 technology which may give it a slight edge in some environments. The new processor is compatible with AMD's M690T chipset, with AAEON and Arbor offering boards that are compatible with the CPU. No details of pricing or availability are given, although this will be mainly intended for manufactures to integrate into products rather than end users.

AMD expects to reposition its Athlon 64 X2 processors towards entry level users, below the upcoming Phenom processors. The repositioned Athlon 64 X2 model lineup does away with the performance rating, which made its debut with the Athlon XP, in favor of a new model number system - the Athlon 64 X2 BE-2000-series.

AMD began sampling its upcoming Athlon 64 X2 BE-2000-series processors. The new Athlon 64 X2 BE-2000-series remains based on AMD's 65nm Brisbane-core, but with lower thermal ratings. AMD Athlon BE-2000-series processors will arrive with 45-watt TDP ratings, equaling that of the energy efficient single-core processors.

Three AMD Athlon 64 X2 BE-2000 series models will be available - the BE-2400, BE-2350 and BE-2300. AMD has set the clock speeds of the new BE-2000-series at 2.3 GHz, 2.1 GHz and 1.9 GHz, respectively. As with other Brisbane-based processors, the AMD Athlon 64 X2 BE-2000-series feature 2x512KB of L2 cache, 2000 MHz HyperTransport speed and AMD Virtualization technology.

Expect AMD to debut its Athlon 64 X2 BE-2300 and BE-2350 next month. The Athlon 64 X2 BE-2400 will arrive later, in August.

Intel has been creating waves with the new Centrino Pro/Duo plattform (although they dropped the "plattform" part) and AMD is trying to stay in the news. They have now shown off the upcoming Griffin CPU at the Microprocessor Forum 2007. The CPU itself is about as big as a compact flash card. I will come in combination with the RS780 Chipset, which features up to 14 USB 2.0 port & 6 SATA ports. Intel's Robson (or Turbo Memory) will be taken on by AMD's Hypermemory offering. There will be support for HDMI and DisplayPort as well. All this should be available in mid 2008.

Based on the K8 core, AMD's next generation mobile processor will be released mid-2008. The 65nm core socket S will receive Barcelona's Hyper transport 3 and will boast better power efficiency and management than its predecessor with its ability to limit the power consumption of the memory interface. The RS780/780G chipsets will combine with Griffin to include Hyperflash and Puma, which competes directly with Intel's Turbo Memory.

Delivering a four-core foreshadowing of innovations to come for PC enthusiasts worldwide, AMD today unveiled the upcoming AMD Phenom processor family name and publicly demonstrated the first all-AMD enthusiast platform, codenamed "FASN8." The industry's only true quad-core client processors are expected to deliver the ultimate visual experience, especially when paired with AMD's new DirectX 10 ATI Radeon HD 2000 series, which began shipping today. AMD expects true quad-core and dual-core AMD Phenom-based desktop systems will ship in the second half of 2007.

[H]ard|OCP has taken a few snaps of AMD's Barcelona system, displayed at AMD's event in Monterey, California.

What you see in the pictures below are single processor and dual processor configurations. Take note, those are Radeon X2900 XT video cards in the systems. Ian McNaughton showed off both systems encoding a 1080P trailer of Spiderman 3 to an H.264 format. On the dual quad-core Barcelona machine the encoding nearly ran real time.

GPU Clock Tool - Works on R600 !

Ever since R600 samples were handed out by AMD, people have been asking me for R600 support in ATITool. It's coming along nicely, but is not quite ready yet.
In the meantime you can use this nifty little tool from AMD. It can change 2D/3D clocks and lets you monitor temperatures of the card. It also works on RV610, RV630 and all previous products like the R5xx Series. It works under 2k, XP, Vista, 32-bit & 64-bit.Download (440 KB)

Over the next two weeks AMD will slowly begin to introduce its new brand name for the next generation high end desktop K10 architecture. The brand, Phenom, will succeed Athlon on all K10 offerings. Dual-core Agena processors will be labeled as Phenom X2 while quad-core Agena CPUs will receive the name Phenom X4 or Phenom FX. Phenom is pronounced as an abbreviated version of the word "phenomenal." The company will still retain its Athlon and Sempron brand names - Athlon on its mid-range products and Sempron on up the low-end.

HIS - Hightech Information System Limited jumped the gun when preparing their website for the upcoming AMD R600 graphics cards. The following link leads to their online product presentation website for the HIS Radeon HD 2900XT 512MB GDDR3 VIVO PCIe and pretty much confirms nearly all the rumors we heard about this particular chip during the last few weeks and months.

IMAGES AND INFORMATION REMOVED AT REQUEST OF HIS

Chip maker AMD is struggling financially at present, largely due to the $5.4 billion acquisition of ATI last year. The company had already reported a net loss of $611 million for the quarter ending March 31st, but it has now been forced to raise finance by offering Convertible Senior Notes to investors. These differ from stocks because AMD will have to pay back the money it has raised once its stocks hit a price of $42.12 (the current price is at $14) which is essentially plunging the firm further into debt. Analysts are now worried that AMD could run out of cash by the forth quarter of this year if it doesn't borrow more money, with an estimated figure of just $1.1 billion in the bank. Meanwhile, AMD's closest rival Intel is in it's strongest market position since 2005, with profits of $1.6 billion in the first quarter of 2007. AMD will be banking on the new Barcelona core and the R600 series of graphics cards to help it back onto its feet.

AMD will be launching ten DirectX 10 capable products towards the end of May 2007. They will be "covering the entire stack" - affordable to high-end - with their series. AMD's Chief Sales and Marketing Officer also commented that "we do not do soft launches," so there will be no waiting for retail stores to have the video cards in stock.

AMD's main competitor regarding video cards, NVIDIA, already has had a series of discrete DirectX 10 cards available to consumers. Although NVIDIA's line does span from entry-level to high-end, they do not have ten DirectX 10 products.

According to DailyTech: there will four entry-level/home-theater and three affordable mid-range cards. Which leaves three possible products, out of the ten, for the high-end niche.

Source: AMD Earnings Transcript via X-bit labs

The Dell Plant a Tree for Me fund has just gotten a large benefactor: AMD. AMD is donating $1 for every employee they have, which just so happens to be 16,000 people. This means that Dell will have $16,000 worth of trees to plant. The Plant a Tree for Me fund is a fund-raiser that tries to negate the environmental impact of their computers. By donating two to six dollars with your desktop or laptop purchase, Dell will plant a tree that will properly negate the environmental impact of your new computer.

After impressive benchmark results for the Radeon HD 2900 XT, the Radeon HD X2900 XTX (AMD's flagship DirectX 10 card) has failed to impress in the same way. When compared to NVIDIA's 8800 GTX, the 2900 XTX is lagging behind in frames per second when it comes to games such as Company of Heroes, F.E.A.R., Half Life 2: Episode 1 and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. You can see the results for yourself (as well as pictures of the card) by clicking the images below - all tests were run on an ASUS P5N32-E SLI motherboard with a Core 2 Extreme QX6800 processor and 800MHz Corsair XMS2 RAM. The HD 2900 XTX is based on the same GPU as the HD 2900 XT, but uses GDDR4 memory running at 1010MHz instead of GDDR3 memory running at 800MHz. There aren't any comparisons between the cards when they are overclocked, nor is there any data on DirectX 10 performance, but at present it looks like NVIDIA could be a step ahead of AMD. The card used by DailyTech was a sample released to board members in the second week of April, and the benchmarks were made with the drivers AMD plans to provide when the new cards hit retail.

AMD is claiming that its new quad-core Barcelona processors could outshine Intel's Xeon processors by as much as 50% in floating-point performance, as well as having a 20% advantage when it comes to integer performance. However, despite this claim, the actual benchmarks for the SPECcpu2006 test seem difficult to come across on AMD's website - despite AMD supposedly giving a link - so it's difficult to verify at present.

Luckily, it's much easier to find the results comparing AMD's new Opteron 2222 processor and Intel's 3.0GHz Xeon 5160. These show AMD enjoying greater performance by as much as 15% in some SPUCcpu2006 tests, which it credits to its Direct Connect Architecture and DDR2 memory. Obviously it would be a good idea to take these results with a pinch of salt considering they come directly from AMD, but Barcelona certainly looks promising. Read on for the complete press release.

techPowerUp! doesn't tend give much news attention to other site's reviews, other than listing them just under the date each day, but this is perhaps more interesting than most. Legit Reviews has posted an quite thorough comparison between the AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ and the Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 when it comes to gaming - two very similarly priced processors at $184 and $185 respectively. The conclusion by the author is that when running games with AA and AF at normal resolutions, the performance difference it too hard to call, which is somewhat justified. However, when you look deeper into the benchmarks it becomes quite clear that, on two very similar systems, AMD's offering is certainly victorious in the majority of benchmarks, often by quite a noticeable margin (15+ frames per second). In fact, the Core 2 Duo only outperformed the X2 on two tests: it had 0.1 more FPS in Call of Duty 2 with 4 x AA and 16 x AF, and 1 FPS more in Quake 4. Although this test doesn't allow for overclocking potential, it would certainly suggest that AMD may still offer more bang for your buck when it comes to gaming with CPUs costing around $200 at stock speeds.

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- April 19, 2007 --AMD (NYSE: AMD) today reported financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2007. AMD reported first quarter 2007 revenue of $1.233 billion, an operating loss of $504 million, and a net loss of $611 million, or $1.11 per share. These results include ATI acquisition-related and integration charges of $113 million, or $0.21 per share, and employee stock-based compensation expense of $28 million, or $0.05 per share. In the fourth quarter of 2006, AMD reported revenue of $1.773 billion and an operating loss of $529 million. In the first quarter of 2006, AMD reported revenue of $1.332 billion and operating income of $259 million.

Fuad has word that the upcoming K10 server processor codenamed Barcelona is 50 percent faster in specfp_rate2000 then Intel's quad core Kentsfield. As the CPU speed was not disclosed it will be near the stated 2.5GHz which applies for its fastest desktop counterpart, the Agena FX. The slowest Agena's will however start at 1.9GHz and will have the 95W TDP for sure.

The crew from Gear Live slipped through the doors of AMD's performance testing labs and recorded their latest show of The Bleeding Edge over there. Mark Welker, who is the chief of the Client Analysis Performance Management department, explained in-depth what he and his team are doing. They showcase a Quad FX system running several applications and games at the same time, explain what you need a dual or multi core CPU for, how to properly benchmark a system and what will change if you switch from a single to a multi core CPU. Welker further adds details about the purpose of such a department, thorough testing of current hardware, the latest applications and games and as a conclusion the monthly summaries he has to deliver which you can find over here for example: AMD Processor Performance Evaluation Guide.
During such an investigating on Supreme Commander, one of the first few games that is stated to use four cores, they found out that it is not utilizing more than two cores at the moment in their labs. It remains to be seen if it's the fault of the AMD guys or a software glitch which has to be fixed by Gas Powered Games.
While you might think I am joking to bother you with a 40 minute video I can guarantee you it's worth every single one of it. The best thing is that you can download it in several formats in order to get a compatible file for your mobile video player:iPod-formatted H.264 (M4V) | Apple Quicktime TV High Resolution (MOV) | DivX (AVI) | MPEG-4 (MP4)

With all the recent and not-so-recent processor releases Intel has made, and all the recent-but-buggy NVIDIA graphics card releases, it's no wonder that AMD (which owns ATI) is losing some of its market share. All AMD can do to try and maintain market share in the USA is to continue to cut prices of existing products, while Intel and NVIDIA enjoy the performance crowns. However, all this is bound to change when AMD unleashes Barcelona. AMD told TGDaily that the Barcelona processor core is on schedule. However, to ensure enough stock at launch, we may not see the Barcelona core until Q4 2007, or maybe even Q1 2008. AMD is likely to regain some graphics card market share back with the HD 2x00 series.

Besides the usual R600 and K10/Barcelona talk that keeps us busy all day long there is another side of AMD that many people don't seem to realize: the financial part. If you are interested on being reading some well written thoughts I would suggest a recent two-part article at Overclockers.com. There Ed Stroligo explains AMDs actual financial situation with all the losses of revenue during the last quarter and gives some forecasts on how AMD will react to this.

Get to the first part here and don't miss the second part.

Btw.: There are several other interesting articles about various subjects of the computer sector at their front page.