It seems that with every day that passes a new snippet of info on the upcoming Radeon HD 4890 surfaces. Today a Taiwan based website published some performance results of the Radeon HD 4890 with 3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage.

The test systemshows to be a Intel Core i7 920 CPU running at 2.66 GHz, coupled with 3 GB of system memory. In 3DMark06, the HD 4890 card secured a score of 16,096 points, with SM 2.0 score of 6155, HDR/SM 3.0 score of 7521, and CPU score of 4836.

In 3DMark Vantage, reproduced a score of P10996. The device is tagged as “RV790″ as the device string. Again reported clock frequencies ar 850 MHz on the GPu core and 975 on the GDDR5 memory.

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ATI released a new set of drivers for their Radeon based graphics cards. The new 9.3 Cats are available for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ 9.3 Windows release include:

Performance improvements

* Lost Planet: Colonies – performance gains of up to 20% were seen on the ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 Series, and performance gains of up to 50% were seen on the ATI Radeon™ HD 4600 Series, ATI Radeon™ HD 4500 Series, and ATI Radeon™ HD 4300 Series of products
* Unigine Tropics Demo DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 – performance gains of up to 20% were seen on ATI CrossFireX configurations using the ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 Series of products
*

New Features

ATI Catalyst™ 9.3 – the industries first Unified graphics driver for Windows 7 and Windows Vista

* AMD has delivered a single unified graphics driver for both Windows 7 and Windows Vista – demonstrating AMD’s Windows 7 graphics driver leadership and focus on delivering a stable and robust Windows 7 experience on AMD hardware
* Delivers full WDDM 1.1 support under Windows 7 on the ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series, ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series, and ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series of products
* All future ATI Catalyst postings will deliver one single unified driver for Windows 7 and Windows Vista
o Please note that the AVIVO Video Converter is not currently supported under Windows 7

ATI Catalyst™ 9.3 Folding@Home performance enhancements

* Using ATI Stream™ technology, owners of the ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 Series, ATI Radeon™ HD 3000 Series, and ATI Radeon™ HD 2000 Series of graphics accelerators will see a performance boost in their Folding@Home scores when running the latest Folding@Home client and upcoming cores in conjunction with ATI Catalyst™ 9.3

ATI Catalyst™ 9.3 – Windows Vista HDMI audio driver support integrated into all ATI Catalyst 9.3 packages

As of ATI Catalyst 9.3 and future ATI Catalyst releases, the AMD Windows Vista HDMI audio driver is automatically included

* The HDMI audio driver will only be installed if the AMD graphics accelerator has an HDMI display connector and there is no 3rd party HDMI audio driver installed.

Download:

ATI Catalyst 9.3 WHQL Windows XP 32-bit
ATI Catalyst 9.3 WHQL Windows XP 64-bit
ATI Catalyst 9.3 WHQL Vista | Windows 7 64-bit
ATI Catalyst 9.3 WHQL Vista | Windows 7 32-bit

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In the Netherlands Salland, a Dutch e-tailer, inserted the all new RV790 based Radeon HD 4890 1024 MB in their database on preorder. The e-tailer has a bit of a reputation for doing this consistently with upcoming product launches, to grasp some extra media attention apparantly.

Chipset Radeon HD4890
Memory 1024 MB
Type memory GDDR5
GPU 850 MHz
Mem clock 3900 MHz
Interface PCI-e 16x
RAMDAC 400 MHz

Anyway, the Radeon HD 4890 1024 MB is spotted over there for 260 EUR. The card is the 1GB version and confirms the rumor of a faster clocked 4870. The Cards core frequency is 850 MHz (100 Mhz higher than 4870) and the memory at 3900 MHz gDDR5 (opposed to 3600 MHz).

If you like to throw away money … then this product might be something for you. Okay that sounded a bit too harsh rather then the intention really is. But Sapphire released a 2GB version of the Radeon 4870. It’s labeled as the Vapor-X and is spotted in some German webshops for 242 EUR.

The bump from1 GB towards 2GB is controversial, and gaming wise will just not make a difference as 99.95% of the titles out there have plenty of graphics card memory with a 1GB framebuffer. Only if you’d go really high in monitor resolution and your AA settings, at best you can gain a few % performance increase .. and that’s at best.

What I do like about the Vapor-X is the cooler, using ‘vapor chamber’ technology. Other then that the clock speeds are reference as well at 750 MHz on the core and 900 MHZ (x4 DDR5) for the memory.

AMD shipped the 50 millionth ATI ‘Hollywood’ graphics processor for the Nintendo Wii game console. With 50 million units delivered, the ATI graphics processor code-named ‘Hollywood’ becomes the most successful AMD game console chip to date in terms of unit sales.

The ATI ‘Hollywood’ graphics processor is a custom graphics processing unit from AMD that enables Wii to provide exciting, immersive game play and interaction for consumers around the world. AMD has a rich 10-year history of providing graphics solutions for Nintendo spanning both the Wii and Nintendo GameCube consoles.

AMD introduced the ATI FirePro 2450, a low profile quad display graphics accelerator that consumes minimal power (less than 18 watts) delivering exceptional power efficiency.

The low power consumption enables cool, energy-efficient operation, as well as superior reliability and longevity. The low profile design of the ATI FirePro 2450 enables IT departments to standardize on one card that can be installed in a broad range of systems, including workstations, desktop PCs and docking stations featuring AMD or other processors.

With 512 MB of on-board graphics memory the card delivers high performance while streaming media and running applications in several windows and includes full Microsoft Windows Vista Aero support. The ATI FirePro 2450 supports PCI Express 2.0 and offers two VHDCI connectors with breakout cables for quad DVI-I or VGA support. he new ATI FirePro 2450 graphics accelerator is now available with a MSRP of USD$499

At CeBIT there was some discussion as to what the new high-end products from ATI will be like. ATI is working on a release for ASIC name RV790 for sure. First off, everybody agrees .. there will be a release in April from ATI.

Based on the feedback we got back from AIBs it does look like there will be a card called ATI Radeon HD 4890 (a single GPU card). This card will be released to compete the GeForce GTX 260 (not the GTX 285). As it seems the two things different will be the frequencies of the GPU. Rumors are that 850 to 900 MHz is a possibility for the new RV790 GPU (4870 is clocked to 750 MHz). Secondly expect a memory frequency increase compared to the Radeon HD 4870. Memory wise we expect a slight bump from 3600 MHz towards ~4000 MHz GDDR5.

Of course if you talk about RV790, the conversation quickly jumps towards a possible Ati Radeon HD 4890 X2, and as it seems … it doesn’t look like we’ll be seeing a new X2 anytime soon based on RV790 as as released by ATI. Board partners are however free to build an X2 card, but the last time this happened that policy ended up to be a drama as Sapphire really was the only one offering a 4850 X2 board.

We expect an April release of Radeon HD 4890 with a sales price of roughly €230,- with both 512 and 1024MB memory configurations.

Interesting news. If the rumor is correct then ATI is going to limit the list of supported graphics cards in the next release of Catalyst. Apparantly as of Catalyst 9.4 ATI is going to drop support for the following graphics cards:

Radeon 9500, 9600, 9800, X800, X1800, X1900 and other older desktop video cards.

On the professional side Catalyst 9.4 will no longer support the FireGL X1/X2/X3, V3000, V5000, V7000 and FireMV 2200, 2250 professional cards. Of course owners of these models will still be permitted to download older drivers and use them happily. The ATI Catalyst 9.4 is set to be released next month.

Hot on the heels of NVIDIA’s GeForce announcement comes word from AMD regarding their own HD-capable mobile GPUs. The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4860 and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830 are the world’s first graphics processors to use 40nm process technology, and are capable of beyond-1080p mobile gaming.

According to AMD, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4860 and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830 both distill the 3D engines from the desktop HD 4800 series of video cards, and as such are capable of full 1080p video playback and beyond-1080p gaming resolution. However because of the smaller, 40nm process, they’re capable of fitting in ultraportable notebooks.

ATI’s Universal Video Decoder (UVD) can take on all the processing required for playback of a Blu-ray disc, leaving the CPU completely free; alternatively they can upscale to 2560 x 1600 on dual-link monitors. The first notebooks to use the new ATI GPUs will be from ASUS, who expect to have products on the market beginning Q2 2009.

Press Release:

AMD Launches World’s First 40nm Graphics Processors: ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4860 and ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4830

HANNOVER, Germany –(Business Wire)– Mar 03, 2009 AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the world’s first graphics processors to harness 40nm process technology: the ATI Mobility RadeonTM HD 4860 and ATI Mobility RadeonTM HD 4830. These feature-rich graphics processors redefine mobile PC entertainment with advanced capabilities including support for the latest Microsoft DirectX® 10.1 games, a home theater-quality HD multimedia experience, and energy-efficient features for long battery life at work, at home or at play.

“People now decidedly prefer mobile PCs, and innovations like this 40nm mobile GPU show AMD is uniquely positioned to make the best entertainment experiences of desktop PCs possible in a notebook,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Products Group, AMD. “Depending on the performance of the panel or external monitor, laptops that feature these tiny, powerful but efficient graphics engines can run today’s most demanding game titles at beyond 1080p HD resolution, or playback full 1080p HD video with high energy efficiency thanks to ATI PowerPlay™ and 40nm process technology.”

So that makes the new 4870 card an ‘update’ rather than new technology. AMD’s next high-end graphics card is as you guys all heard, built on ASIC RV790. It’s however still based on a 55 nm manufacturing process.

Sources tell German website Hardware-Infos that the new GPU perform better and run at higher clock-speeds than RV770 (4870). The ASIC is absed of an improved 55 nm manufacturing process.

RV790 engineering-samples undergoing testing are known to be coming in two flavours according to the source: a base model and an overclocked model. The base model comes with the same exact clock speeds as the RV770XT: 750/900 MHz (core/memory), while the overclocked model is known to come with clock speeds of 850/975 MHz (core/memory). To achieve that 100 MHz increment in core frequency, the voltage is known to be stepped-up from 1.24 to 1.30 V.

Products based on this GPU are known to surface by April [via TPU and Hardware-Infos]