AMD Launches New Line Of Video Cards

Today AMD has announced the release of the new line of video-cards, coming from the Radeon HD 3000 series of graphics processing units. These are the first VPUs that offer full support for Microsoft’s DirectX 10.1, and the chips have been built under the 55nm process technology. The price tags will be very attractive as they will reach mainstream points. The ATi Radeon HD 3000 comes in 2 versions at launch – with prices starting at $179 for Radeon HD 3850 with 256MB of GDDR3 memory and $219 for Radeon HD 3870 with 512 DDR4 of video memory. The new technology allows tri and quad multi-GPU support with ATi CrossFireX(tm) and is dedicated at the enthusiasts who wish to improve their gaming experience.

The representatives for AMD also said that the new series of graphics is a step forward towards the launch of the powerful platform codenamed “Spider”. "With the introduction of the ATI Radeon HD 3800 series we are redefining the market for enthusiast graphics with a new class of price, performance and features that have never been seen before in this industry" (…) "Through a flawless transition to 55nm and Microsoft DirectX® 10.1, we can deliver an unprecedented level of scalable performance, image quality enhancements and power efficiency at the sub- $200 segment that rivals today's most expensive graphics processors and opens up enthusiast gaming to more end users than ever before", said Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Graphics Product Group, AMD.

This line of new cards is the first to take full advantage of the PCI Express 2.0, in order to increase the bidirectional bandwidth (16 GB/s). The combination of HyperTransporttm 3 and PCIe 2.0 offers a real increase in the amount of system bandwidth for HD and multi-GPU gaming. Another “bonus” is the performance-per-watt advantage – with the reduction of the size of the GPU chip, the costs of the necessary power to keep the die from getting hot have decreased considerably (450W PSU for a single card, and 750W PSU for 2 cards in CrossFire mode). From the HD point of view – the new cards have the Universal Video Decoder, capable of full decoding the HD DVD, Blu-Ray videos and for the H.264/AVC and VC-1 video formats.

GeCube is already presenting us with 4 models of these cards, an XT and a Pro version for each model. The Radeon HD 3870 XT OC Edition comes as the best product in its class, due to the superior cooling system and because of the new performance level. The technical specs are 775 MHz for the GPU and 1200MHz (2400 MHz DDR4). So if you haven’t upgraded your system yet for Windows Vista now would a good time as the new cards offer comprehensive DirectX 10.1 support.