radeon

I wanted to let everyone know that we do have reviews in the works for the just announced Radeon R7 & R9 series. I have an R7 260X 2GB, R9 270X 2GB and R9 280X 3GB in my posession. I knew that AMD was having the Tech Day broadcast from Hawaii, but was surprised to learn soon after that I would be receiving cards. I actually got the cards delivered before I got the emails from AMD. Following the cards there was a press briefing last week, along with the usual slideshow press deck.

Prior to this I was neck deep in two articles for the WSGF. The first article was looking at the gaming power of the latest AMD A10 APUs. The second was a large CPU shoot-out to look at a range of CPU/APUs and their real-world impact on gaming. While I would have loved to jump into the new GPUs, I was simply too deep into the testing cycle on these existing platforms. That testing has completed, and I have updated my test rig to boot. I have migrated to an AMD FX-8350, and upgraded to a 480GB SSD as my primary drive.

Thanks for your patience, and please let me know if there are any particular titles you would like for me to test.

AMD recently launched a new bundle to help sweeten the deal in when purchasing a Radeon HD 7000 series card. Great news is that they are offering not only free games, but new popular titles. As someone said in response to the bundle, "AMD is actually giving away games people want to play". Up for inclusion are Far Cry 3, Hitman: Absolution, and Sleeping Dogs, plus a coupon for 20% off Medal of Honor: Warfighter. As would be expected, the bigger you buy, the more you get.

AMD has also released an improved Catalyst driver suite, that brings marked improvements to a number of popular titles. We haven't had a chance to test the new driver, but AMD claims the new 12.11 driver bring an average of 10% improvement across Borderlands 2, Dirt Showdown, Skyrim, Sleeping Dogs, Starcraft 2, Civ5 and more.

MaximumPC has posted two articles about possible releases in the expected Radeon HD 8000-series lineup. Click the source link for the full article, but the basic details are as such:

• Radeon HD 8870 will have MSRP of $279 and challenge the NVIDIA GTX 680.
• Radeon HD 8850 will have MSRP of $199 and challenge the NVIDIA GTX 670.
• Radeon HD 8970 expected be 20% more powerful than the Radeon HD 7970 w/ 2,304 Stream Processors and 3GB of VRAM.

The AMD Catalyst™ 12.1 Preview includes all of the features found in AMD Catalyst™ 11.12 and also includes all of the latest optimizations found in the AMD Catalyst 11.11c performance drivers (AMD Catalyst 11.12 does not include the latest 11.11c optimizations). It is highly recommended that all gamers use the AMD Catalyst 12.1 Preview driver.

Feature highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 12.1 Preview driver:

AMD HD3D technology support enhancement
· Enables support for AMD HD3D technology in conjunction with AMD CrossFireX configurations

Forum member "TMK" was selected by HIS Digital to receive the Radeon HD 6970 IceQ Mix. He was one of 838 total entrants, and one of 532 entrants who got all the answers correct.