Did you build a HTPC recently, but was disappointed by its gaming performance, or simply avoided this because you still enjoy playing games, and you don't want to have more than one computer, or can't afford it? Well, from now on, you won't have any excuse for keeping that bulky server case, because Galaxy just announced what is probably the best low profile card at this moment, the GeForce 9600GT "Blade."


If we look at the graphics cards that were available until now for HTPCs, it's clear they were no match for games. Decent games, I mean. After all, you could play about the same games on your phone, and that's not something to be proud of, especially since you spent some money to build that nice multimedia rig for your living room.

Well, Galaxy's 9600GT "Blade," despite having a low profile, keeps all the high profile features of NVIDIA's reference design - G94 GPU, 8 16×32 Samsung DDR3 memory modules, providing a total of 512MB memory which uses a 256bit bus, 8 layer PCB, as well as one HDTV and one HDMI connectors.

For now, availability and price are not public, but we'll surely find out about them pretty soon. After all, time is money, and hardware producers should know it better than anyone!

One of these days, it was my pleasure to build a low-end gaming system for someone's kid and prove his parents that the AMD solution was better than any Intel for their money. Anyway, a 4-years old won't get to play Crysis or Call of Duty 4 anytime soon, but what about building a serious gaming system? Don't tell me - I know too well how many headaches this task can give you! Maybe this is also one of the reasons that people are moving to consoles - you simply buy something that is going to work out of the box with all games designed for it, and now AMD is trying to make this dream come true for all those PC gamers still waiting for a miracle, by unleashing its GAME! initiative.


I don't know what others may say, but I think it's very important for AMD to be close to its clients, especially since its processors are being pushed by Intel into the ropes. After all, ATI is doing fine, and no matter what various "specialists" may say, building a decent AMD-ATI gaming system is possible, although it may not break any records.

Nigel Dessau, AMD's senior vice president and chief marketing officer, said "With the support of industry leaders in PC gaming, AMD GAME! ensures consumers don't need an enthusiast-level knowledge of PC hardware for an optimal gaming system. We in the PC industry owe consumers the same predictability, simplicity and affordability in finding a PC for gaming that the console industry currently provides."

This is not a task that AMD is tackling all alone, because industry giants such as Acer, Alienware, Logitech and Microsoft are also joining the "GAME!" initiative, to provide the best gaming systems that include AMD processors, ATI Radeon HD graphics, together with AMD chipsets.

The best part is that AMD GAME! platforms can be already purchased online from system builders like Alienware, Cyberpower, iBuypower, Maingear and Velocity Micro, while retail availability is expected this summer.

You go ahead and build a powerful rig, but realize you can’t take the whole thing with you to show your friends how awesome it performs (eventually, they’ll all come at your place to see it as if it were a sacred shrine). Anyway, wouldn’t it be cool to boost up your office (or any other PC, including laptops) only by adding one single feature like a portable graphics card? Asus did something like this, but it didn’t really cut it.

The Asus XG station was a good idea but was actually based on the PC-card slot, something that didn’t prove to be good enough for graphics. It seems that ATI knows a good concept when it spots one. They took the Asus idea and now plan to release an external card that performs comparably to a PCIe card.

The external card is based on the current RV670 chip (next-gen, please!) and it is curiously codenamed Lasso. Apparently, the Lasso is scheduled to be available by the time the Puma platform launches. Although it sounds right on paper, we don’t exactly know which type of connector the Lasso will support. Most likely, older laptops won’t be able to connect with the Lasso, and as such, it will be marketed as the right solution for the graphics performance option for future notebooks.

ATI also announced that it will showcase this technology at Coputex or some time before or after the show, while volume production should be scheduled for July/August.

In 2006, when AMD bought ATI, the CPU maker came up with a plan to fuse CPUs with GPUs together in one powerful central processing unit. This project was dubbed Fusion for obvious reasons, but AMD didn’t care to disclose much info on it in the last 2 years.

Nobody knows if Fusion will actually be a Multi-chip module or if it will use AMD’s DCM architecture, there’s enough room for speculation in this case. However, AMD Taiwan leaked some interesting pieces of info on denominations and performance-related aspects.

It so appears that the first fused processing unit was codenamed Swift, which is is part of a Shrike platform. Swift promises “richer graphics and a better media experience with improved overall performance and longer battery life.” Sounds like this is going to be aimed at portable devices as well.The Taiwanese division also mentioned that AMD continues to pursue maximum performance per watt as “We want to achieve the highest performance with the lowest power consumption.”

If all goes according to plan, Swift and Shrike should be ready for volume sales in 2H 2009, but the guys over at Fudzilla say that Swift won’t actually be available up until 2010. More likely Q2 2010 rather than the 2H 2009 timeframe.

June will be a busy month for GPU fans. Both AMD/ATI and NVIDIA are expected to launch their next-gen cards around the same time, meaning that head-to-head tests will be all over the place shortly after, so we’ll know exactly what to buy this summer.

A couple of days ago we learned about NVIDIA’s prices and today we take a look at how ATI is going to price their products. TG Daily has obtained some exclusive info on ATI’s products, and according to the renowned site the new boards will come with support for “physics processing” and prices that will start below $200 for a 512 MB board. Logically dubbed the Radeon HD 4800 series, ATI’s cards will launch several days after Nvidia’s GT200.

According to Fudzilla, ATI’s RV770XT- and Pro-based products have been officially announced to launch on June 16th. These are the mid/mid-high solutions though, so we can’t really compare them to NVIDIA’s GT200. ATI's Radeon 4800 series will come in three major flavors, at first: we have the 4850, the 4870 and the flagship model 4870 X2.

The RV700XT is actually Radeon 4850, code-named “Makedon,” which integrates 512 MB of GDDR3 or GDDR5 memory and will include a single slot cooler. July will see the official launch of Radeon HD 4870, which will come equipped with 512 MB GDDR5, plus the highly-anticipated HD 4870X2 with 1024 MB GDDR5.

Price points for these cards are as follows: the 3850 512MB is expected to retail for $189 - $219, while the 4870 GDDR5 cards will end up retailing for about $199 - $249. No pricing details on the 4870X2 for the moment.