radeon posts

Bigfoot Networks has been releasing its gaming PC-specific network cards for some time. While these products are a tad expensive, they have been proven to have positive effects on latency while playing PC games. Now the company has gone a step further and has teamed up with graphics card maker VisionTek to combine its network card with a graphics card after showing a prototype of such a product earlier this year.

The result is the newly announced VisionTek Killer HD 5770, which allows gamers to combine an AMD Radeon HD 5770 graphics chip and a Killer E2100 networking card onto one PCI slot on their gaming PC rig. The price for this unusual combo card is $199 It's currently due for release sometime next week.

Nvidia has mostly been behind its main rival AMD of late in terms of claiming the title of fastest PC graphics card in the world. Today Nvidia makes its new bid for that title with its newest product, the GeForce GTX 580 graphics card. Compared to its last flagship card, the GeForce GTX 480, this new card has more CUDA cores and a rise in its clock speed to 1.54 Ghz.

Nvidia says that makes the new card 15 to 20 percent faster than the 480. It's also been redesigned to actually use less power, to use less heat and be quiete than the older card as well. Online reviews from various hardware sites seem to prove that this new product beat Nvidia's previous best. It also beats AMD's new Radeon HD 5870 card although not by much. The card is now on sale at some retailers for $499.

[Via Engadget]

While Blizzard released a "day one" patch for StarCraft II when the game was first launched last Tuesday, today Blizzard issued its first patch for the sci-fi RTS sequel since its released. Patch 1.01, which can be downloaded via the game's auto updater, "addresses a few technical issues and makes some server-side optimizations," according to the game's official web site. In addition, "campaign saves have been optimized" for the patch and it also "fixed an issue with sound not playing on some 7.1 systems."

In related news, AMD has issued a hotfix for its ATI Catalyst drivers for the Radeon graphics cards. Among other things, the hotfix enables anti-aliasing features in StarCraft II for PCs with Radeon based graphics chips (thanks Blue's News for that link).

On the evening of March 26th, NVIDIA's GeForce General Manager Drew Henry officially announced the launch of the cutting edge GeForce GTX 470 and 480 video cards in front of packed crowd at PAX East in Boston. The 400 series ushers in the next generation of PC gaming as the company's most powerful graphics cards to date. The GPU includes 3 billion transistors, which equals four Intel Quad Core i7 processors, which gives a clear indication of the kind of might this card packs. What it comes down to for gamers is a chance, in Drew Henry's words, to "blow some sh#t up." When summed up, gamers can expect the GTX 480 to double the performance output of the GTX 285, NVIDIA's previous top-of-the line GPU, for many games. According to the chart shown at the presentation, there will be at least a 50% boost in performance for most games, including recent ones like Battlefield Bad Company 2. In any case, players will be free to dial up to detail levels to their most extreme levels without worrying about a single particle effect or lighting and shadow feature to hinder performance. In addition to blowing stuff up, the 400 series motto invites you to "Crank that sh#t up!"

AMD always updates its Catalyst graphics drivers every month and today the company released its final update for the year. The 8.12 update from its ATI division includes a number of new features including performance improvements and bug fixes for games.

Games that will show performance improvements with the new drivers include Fallout 3 (between 6 and 12 percent), Far Cry 2 )20 percen on Crossfire systems with slower cards and 70 percent with faster cards without AA enabled). Left 4 Dead (2 to 4 percent) and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky (5 to 10 percent)

There are still news stories put out there from time to time saying PC gaming is dying but the folks at AMD don't believe that's true. VentureBeat spoke this week with Rick Bergman, the company's senior vice president and general manager of the graphics products group. He seemed very high on the future of the PC gaming industry and how technology plays a part in it.

Bergman states, "There is a very compelling story on why PC gaming is so healthy now. When you consider shipments of high-end gaming rigs and strong sales of online games such as World of Warcraft, you can see how strong it is. Sales at the high end continue to astound me." AMD's graphic chip division, otherwise known as ATI, has taken significant market share from its main rival Nvidia lately, thanks in part to their launch earlier this year of their Radeon 4800 series which combine two graphics chips on one card.

It's the middle of the month so naturally it must be time for a new graphics driver update from AMD. Their PC gaming web site has the download links to the new 8.9 Catalyst drivers for their ATI Radeon based graphics cards. The new version adds support for a number of features including OpenGL 3.0 support, new HDTV display modes and added support for quad graphic card set-ups for CrossfireX based PCs.

The releases notes also has a number of game bugs that have been fixed in this new version. Vista owners of games like Assassin's Creed, GRID, and Age of Conan will all have issues resolved while XP owners who have games like The Witcher, World in Conflict, Spore and others will also have some bugs dealth with as well.

AMD has been making big strides in releasing new graphics chips that compete with its main rival Nvidia lately. A month ago they released the ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 which they claim is the fastest video card made. Today AMD announced the launch of their ATI Radeon HD 4670 and ATI Radeon HD 4650 graphics cards. These are their new mainstream graphics cards, priced under $100.

According to AMD, these new cards still offer double the performance of playing games like Crysis, Half-Life 2 and GRID compared to Nvidia's current mainstream card (the Geforce 9500 GT). The ATI Radeon HD 4650 with 512 MB of RAM will be available later this month at a price of $69. The ATI Radeon HD 4670 with 512 MB of RAM is available now for $79; a 1 GB RAM variant will be released later this month but no price was announced.

In the latest salvo made in the graphics wars, AMD today announced that they are cooperating with a number of game developers to make their PC games work well on DirectX10.1. AMD claims that only their ATI Radeon graphics cards offer full "top to bottom" DirectX10 graphics support.

The specific games mentioned as receiving full DirectX10.1 support from AMD are Battleforge, the fantasy RTS game from Phenomic and Electronic Arts, Stormrise, the sci-fi RTS game from The Creative Assembly and Sega and the little known RPG title Cloud 9 from NHN Games. AMD has also released a small "Ping-Pong" interactive demo to show off their use of the DirectX10.1 demo. The demo requires Microsoft Vista Service Pack 1. and ATI Radeon HD 3600 series or an ATI Radeon HD 3800 series graphics card with at least 512MB of video memory, the ATI Catalyst 8.3drivers or higher, a dual- or quad-core CPU and 2GB of RAM. Folks without those requirements can download a video showing the demo in action.

If you ask AMD, Nvidia is not the way games are meant to be played. AMD has announced a partnership with Blizzard Entertainment that will see Blizzard's best games bundled with all ATI Radeon graphics products, with an official press release touting "a superior gaming experience" due to the use of Radeon cards.

The announcement comes as a precursor to this year's BlizzCon event, of which AMD is a sponsor. Due to their sponsorship, BlizzCon, which runs October 10th and October 11th in Anaheim, California, will boast ATI Radeon HD 4800-series cards in all computers on display at the show.

Blizzard Entertainment chief operating officer Paul Sams said that the relationship with AMD "provides us with early access to some of the latest graphics technology," which ensures full compatibility between Blizzard titles and the ATI graphics line.

AMD senior vice president Rick Bergman cited similar reasons for the partnership. "Blizzard Entertainment is responsible for the hottest titles in PC gaming and AMD is excited to be working closely with one of the top development teams in the industry," he said.