cinema-2.0 posts

AMD's launch earlier today of its new ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics chip was previewed in a press event in New York City on Monday night and our sister site Joystiq got to see a demo of what might (and we emphasize "might") be seen in PC games in the next few years. AMD's "Cinema 2.0" graphics program helped to create the image you see above you; that's not a photo but a 3D CGI model.

Joystiq goes into more detail on how AMD was able to create such a realistic looking 3D image (basically a real woman was photographed in a room full of cameras and the data from the photos was translated to the 3D image) and while it's not exactly gaming related it's very possible such realistic looking human models could find themselves into CGI cut-scenes in games in the next few years.

On Monday Nvidia officially announced their newest and most powerful PC graphics chip yet, the GeForce GTX 280. Today it's time for their main rival AMD to toot their own horn. While the company did not officially announce an actual graphic chip just yet they did showcase what that chip, code named RV770, will be able to do at a press event late on Monday night. AMD claims that the RV770 chip will be able to process one teraflop of info and used it to show a live graphics demo that ran on a single PC with two such chips in place along with a AMD Phenom X4 quad-core processor and 790 FX Chipset.

As you can see from the screenshots from the graphics demo the visuals that AMD generated are pretty impressive. According to the press release the chip, once it becomes available, will be "more powerful than every generation of video game console ever brought to market combined." That's pretty strong words but we will soon see if AMD can match those words when the chip is officially announced and launched later this summer.