Today, AMD launched its much-delayed and much-awated HD 2000 series of GPU products, all of which are based on the same unified shader architecture that powers the Xbox 360. The R600, as the top end of the HD 2000 series was codenamed, is the first major new product launched after the AMD/ATI merger.

Briefing the press in Malaysia was Mr Vijay Sharma, Director of Product Marketing Graphics Product Group.

HD 2000 series

The 2000 series consists of three different GPU cores packaged into graphics card products that are aimed at three different segments: the 2900 products are for the enthusiast segment, the 2600 are for mainstream desktops, and the 2400 are for the budget end of the market. The bottom two product lines are further stratified along the lines of GPU clockspeed and the amount of GDDR3 on the card.

Each of the three lines includes both desktop parts marketed under the ATI Radeon brand and mobile parts sold under the ATI Mobility Radeon brand.

Most of the 2000 series GPUs are manufactured on TSMC's 65nm process, a fact that's allegedly responsible for their delay in coming to market, with the high-end desktop and mobile parts being made on TSMC's 80nm half-node process and 90nm process, respectively. The newer process technology is necessary to make these extremely large GPUs even workable, and given its ~215 watt power draw I expect that AMD/ATI will shrink the top-end, 700 million-transistor HD 2900 to 65nm or lower at the first available opportunity.

As has been widely reported here and elsewhere, the HD 2000 series shares some DNA with the Xbox 360's "Xenos" GPU, also designed by ATI. The Xenos was the first implementation of ATI's unified shader architecture (USA), which, in a nutshell, lets all of the device's execution hardware process any of the three types of graphics shader programs: vertex, geometry, and pixel.

Overview 

 AMD ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT

 AMD ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro

 AMD ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT

 AMD ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro

 Specification 

Now, lets wait the see how the price battle between two giants nVidia and AMD-ATi takes place in Indian market. As a AMD-ATi fan, I hope that AMD will use its well known price-performance strategy. I am on no hurry, better wait for few months or one year untill true Dx10 games come out. Till then enjoy the battle and the price drop.

Just wondering what intel will do about this growing Dx10 market ?? 

Source

Never heard about this, huh ? Yes of course, and this is exactly the point. You never heard about it because it was developed in the dark, and kept secret until almost fully finished and polished. Portal: Prelude, as its name states it, is an unofficial prequel to the game Portal. 

Remember kids, it's not just a map-pack, it's a whole new story. 

Missed the cake last time! Try for Pizza this time.

The Story

Its story revolves around the pre-GlaDOS epoch, even before she was plugged in. At this time, test subjects were monitored by real Aperture Science employees, whose work was tedious, lengthy and repetitive. This is why they decided to build a great artificial intelligence that could both replace them in these difficult tasks, and also take responsibility for many other tasks within the complex and compete with Black Mesa's superiority. All employees of the Aperture Science complex are now eagerly awaiting GlaDOS. Maybe even a little too eagerly, as the upcoming events will tell... 

Preview 

Screenshots

More Screenshots

Steam's Response 

Even we were worried about the fact that Steam, the owner of Portal, can start a legal battle to stop the project and nasty things may happen.

But Nicolas "NykO18" Grevet, creator of the Mod, informed us about the Steam's response -

Yesterday, we got our first contact with the french community manager of Valve. Yes, Valve. The marvellous company that brought Portal and so much more to us for years. Don't take me wrong, I'm not trying to seduce anyone, but believe me, it was huge. I was so happy and so scared at the same time. For your information, they don't seem to bother about us doing a prequel for Portal. They're even sending us their congratulations and they seem to enjoy what we're doing. So, please guys, stop saying everywhere that Valve is going to murder us, or something.

Requirements 

Though this is a free game but it is based on the original Portal which is not free.

In order to play Portal: Prelude you need to have Steam installed on your system, of course. You also need to be the owner of Portal and probably either Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike Source, Day of Defeat Source or the Source SDK Base (which can be downloaded for free in the tools tab of Steam). In fact, I'm not really sure you need anything else than Portal, so I advise you to try and see, because there's no way I'm going to uninstall every Source game of my computer until it doesn't work anymore. Steam will notify you if something goes wrong...

 

Recommended PC configuration :

• Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3000 MHz
• Display Card: DirectX 9 compatible graphics card
• Memory: 1024MB
• Free Disk Space: ~1GB
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista

This game is totally free and set to be released somewhere around the mid of October 2008, most likely on October 10th, the 1st anniversary of the famous Orange Box release.

It offers more game-play hours than the original Portal, with 8 chapters, 48 challenges, 6 advanced maps, a brand new storyline and more than 400 lines of speech with English and french subtitles. 

Lets go back to the Aperture Science Laboratories 

Portal: Prelude

More Screenshots

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Forum

AMD Accelerates Award-Winning AMD platform technology, codename "Dragon", with new AMD Phenom II™ X4 Processor. Phenom II X4 955 is said to replace it as the fastest AMD CPU and a tough competitor for intel i7-940 processor, both in terms of price and performance. 

Ready to accelerate

Take performance over the top with AMD Phenom™ II processors [and AMD OverDrive™ software]. Second generation AMD Phenom™ II processors feature a refined architecture, the award-winning innovation of AMD64 technology with Direct Connect Architecture, and 45nm technology for maximum performance headroom.

Beyond specifications

Tune performance with the superior headroom of AMD Phenom™ II processors and AMD OverDrive™ software. Combined with ATI Radeon™ HD graphics cards, they deliver extreme visual performance and the ability to control and monitor system functions.

Total system performance

Build a total system tuned for performance, beginning with an all-AMD solution including AMD Phenom™ II processors, AMD chipsets, and ATI Radeon™ HD graphics with CrossFireX™ technology for multi-GPU support. Experience the power of gaming beyond high definition. 

	Phenom II X4 920	Phenom II X4 940	Phenom II X4 955		intel i7-940
CMOS Technology	45 nm	45 nm	45 nm		45 nm
Frequency	4 x 2.8 GHz	4 x 3.0 GHz	4 x 3.2 GHz		4 x 2.93 GHz
L2-Cache	2 MB (4 x 512 KB)	2 MB (4 x 512 KB)	2 MB (4 x 512 KB)		1MB (4 x 256 KB)
L3-Cache	6 MB	6 MB	6 MB		8 MB
Socket	AM2+	AM2+	AM3		LGA 1366
TDP	125W	125W	125W		130W

Energy Efficiency

Dragon platform technology enables manufacturers to design and develop PCs that deliver performance when you need it while saving power when you don’t. AMD Phenom II CPUs feature AMD Cool'n'Quiet™ 3.0 which automatically provides dramatic power management improvements with minimal performance impact.7 Its efficient multi-core design offers low processor temperatures and quiet fans, even when computing in HD. 

Free Software Supercharging

Consumers can take performance to the next level with free software from AMD.
Download all now at: http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx

• AMD Fusion for Gaming - Easy-to-use program that, with a single click, automatically suspends resource consuming background tasks to focus more system performance on gaming.
   
• AMD OverDrive™ - Highly-customizable utility with greater functionality that can help power-users take system performance even further, with advanced over-clocking controls that can be turned on and off with a single click.
   
• ATI Catalyst™ with ATI Stream technology - Version 8.12 and later automatically merges the power of the CPU and GPU to enable a growing number of applications, such as ArcSoft TotalMedia™ Theater and CyberLink PowerDirector 7, to run dramatically faster than when using the CPU alone.
   
• ATI Video Converter - With the latest Catalyst Driver 8.12, the new ATI Video Converter utilizes the graphics processor and ATI Stream technology to quickly and easily convert your videos to play on portable entertainment devices much faster than converting video using a microprocessor alone.
   
• AMD Fusion Media Explorer Beta - Simplifies the entertainment experiencing by enabling a simple but powerful way for consumers to interact with their music, photos, movies, TV and social media on their PC. This utility offers one-button postings of photos to Facebook™ accounts as well as automatic related media searches when the system is online, plus much more.

Elite Performance for Less Money

End users can experience high-end performance with Dragon platform technology from AMD, all while spending approximately $1,200 U.S. dollars less than competitive offerings. Dragon platform technology consisting of the new AMD Phenom II X4 processor, ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 1GB graphics card, the AMD 790GX motherboard and 4 GB of DDR2-1066 memory can be purchased for approximately $900 USD. By comparison, a competitive platform consisting of an Intel Core i7, x58 motherboard, 3 GB of DDR3-1333 memory and the same GPU can be purchased for just over $2100 USD. Both platforms run the most demanding PC games like Crysis™ at elite performance levels, and deliver comparable Crysis benchmark frame rates at an average of 38 frames per second.  

AMD News Release

AMD Phenom II Overclocked to 6.5GHz - New World Record for 3DMark

Sneak Peek of AMD Phenom II X4 940 and 955 Processor

Benchmark results are coming real soon.