The traditional reason for selecting a high-end graphics system for a PC has been, well, graphics. The desire for smooth, realistic action in games has long been the leading driver, but anyone who spends time editing photos or video has learned to appreciate graphics performance.

But new technology is making graphics performance important to a broader range of computing needs. A few years back, it occurred to computer scientists that graphics processing units (GPUs) contain a lot of raw computing power, and on certain computing tasks, the technology called general purpose computing on GPUs (GPGPU) could provide a big boost in performance. While each processor on a GPU is limited in what it can do relative to a typical CPU core, there are a lot of them. For example, even the relatively modest AMD Radeon™ graphics used in lower end of the AMD APUs has 80 stream processors (AMD calls them “Radeon™ cores”) it can use to accelerate an application, while the top-of-the-line AMD Radeon™ HD 6990 has a staggering 3,092 Radeon cores!

The key is software that can take advantage of GPGPU.  Recently a standard called OpenCL™ has been gaining momentum. OpenCL has the advantage of working in mixed environments, combining the power of GPUs from different manufacturers and utilizing both on-chip and discrete GPUs. Another software approach, called DirectCompute, is being promoted by Microsoft. Meanwhile, Nvidia has championed a proprietary programming approach called CUDA, but this only works on their GPUs.

Many high-performance applications, such as Adobe’s Creative Suite 5, CyberLink MediaShow, and ArcSoft’s TotalMedia products, use OpenCL to boost performance. All of these have some link to video, but GPGPU use is spreading to more distant fields, from financial options valuation to statistical simulations to deep database analytics.

Games and other graphically intense applications often require a lot of non-graphical computation. For example, at the same time that a game is running the GPU flat-out for complex rendering, it may also need intense physics computations to plot the motion of objects. Here’s where the belt-and-suspenders approach of having both integrated and discrete graphics can come in handy, because software now allows both GPUs to be used simultaneously, so the system could use the graphics capability of the discrete GPU for the complex rendering and shading, while assigning the physics computations to the integrated unit.

An on-chip GPU, such as the discrete-class graphics found in the AMD APU, may actually have an advantage over a discrete unit in GPGPU tasks. High-performance computing often hits a bottleneck somewhere in the system, and for GPGPU programming it is often the relatively slow transfer of data between main system memory and the dedicated memory on the GPU. The fact that integrated GPUs share memory with the CPU has traditionally been viewed as a disadvantage, but with the AMD Fusion APU, the tables are turned because it can process data without moving the information from main memory, avoiding the potential bottleneck.

It’s going to take a while for software to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by GPGPU computing. The big limitation of the GPU’s multiple processors is that they have to run the same code on all the data passing through them at any given time and that means that programs have to be broken down into chunks that can be run in parallel. But the advantages are so great that developers are willing to do the work, finding new uses for GPGPU on an almost daily basis.

The use of GPGPU both increases the value of having a high-end graphics system and, with the new breed of integrated graphics, doubling up with a discrete GPU as well.

Steve Wildstrom, a technology blogger and analyst, wrote BusinessWeek’s “Technology & You” column. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only.  Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

Fast forward to the present, and I have the bittersweet taste of crow in my mouth.  I say bittersweet because while it is never fun to be proven wrong, it is great representing a technology that, well, is the industry leader. This has been confirmed in a multitude of recent reviews that clearly indicate that AMD CrossFireX™ is the one to beat!

To a large extent, we can claim AMD CrossFireX has been the leader for some time, as shown here or here. More recently, we’ve witnessed even the most die-hard fan of competing solutions start to look over the fence, wondering if they might be missing out (and in fact they are).  We’ve not only proven that scaling with AMD CrossFireX is an excellent way to boost performance for the ultra-enthusiast gaming segment of the market, it is also working its way downstream as a result of its nearly ubiquitous support on both Intel and AMD motherboards, allowing owners of recent mainstream and performance AMD Radeon™ graphics cards to boost performance by way of a second card.

In more current affairs, “AMD has really gone to town on CrossFire scaling”, especially on the high-end. The days where you had to choose between spending fortunes on the top-end product, or stick with less performance for less money are long gone, you now have the option for a true upgrade.

Interestingly, a few weeks ago some news sites published a stat taken from a competitor’s blog that suggested a competing solution was the de facto standard amongst gamers. When we heard the statistic that was being tossed about, we thought something was not quite right.  Sure enough, we reached out to the publisher of this statistic and after investigation it was removed from their site.

A few weeks ago we introduced the world’s fastest graphics card – the AMD Radeon™ HD 6990, where we once again proved, AMD CrossFireX technology IS the way to go.

For those of you who want better than the best and faster than the fastest, then AMD CrossFireX technology is the way to go- these aren’t just my words, read it for yourself!

Antal Tungler is the New Product Review PR Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only.  Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

When it comes to gaming, AMD Radeon™ HD 6750M graphics on MacBook Pro offers up to 3x the performance over the previous generation’s graphics*. 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro owners can now game pretty much anywhere and still get increased entertainment features such as intense visual detail and unprecedented frame rates for games. That’s a real benefit for those who can’t be away from their games for too long.
We’re also seeing more game developer interest for gaming on the Mac. Coupling that interest with up to 3x the graphics performance can only mean more choice in game titles for Mac gamers everywhere.

The growing interest in gaming is encapsulated in this quote from a leading gaming developer: “It’s an exciting time for Mac gaming,” David Stephen, Managing Director of Feral Interactive told us. “We are grateful for the great support that AMD has given us to make sure that titles such as BioShock, Mini Ninjas, Battlestations: Pacific, Borderlands, Lego Harry Potter perform beautifully with AMD GPUs.”

When the gaming crave has been satisfied, professionals can get back to work with their graphics-intensive applications, such as Apple’s Aperture or Final Cut Studio, backed by superb image quality and exceptional color accuracy. AMD Radeon graphics allow mobile users to still be productive outside the office without sacrificing performance or creativity.

More information about these graphics solutions is available on Apple’s website: www.apple.com/macbookpro.

Stan Ossias is a Director of Product Marketing for Mobile Graphics at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites, and references to third party trademarks, are provided for convenience and illustrative purposes only.  Unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links, and no third party endorsement of AMD or any of its products is implied.

*Testing conducted by Apple in February 2011 using preproduction 2.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based 17-inch MacBook Pro units and preproduction 2.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7–based 15-inch MacBook Pro units with AMD Radeon HD 6750M. 2.53GHz Intel Core i5–based 17-inch MacBook Pro systems and 2.66GHz Intel Core i7–based 15-inch MacBook Pro systems with NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M were production units. All systems were configured with 4GB of RAM. Tested at native resolutions using Portal v(4295)(400) and Half Life 2 Episode 2 v(4295)(420) with 4x antialiasing and high graphics quality. Half Life 2 Episode 2 timedemo test file: Storm. Portal timedemo test file: Mydemo1. MacBook Pro continuously monitors system thermal and power conditions, and may adjust processor speed as needed to maintain optimal system operation.

*IF you are having technical issues with the AMD Catalyst™ driver, or your graphics card please report your issues here.

As a note: this will be the last AMD Catalyst™ blog that I will write.  I will be handing the reigns over to Chris Bell here at AMD who will carry on and keep you up to date on our driver postings.   It has been a pleasure to keep you posted on all things AMD Catalyst™.  I thank you for your feedback and comments over the past year.

Here is what is new this month!

Highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 11.2 Windows release include:

New Features:

• AMD Catalyst AI Texture Filtering updates

o    The Quality setting has now been improved to match the High Quality setting in all respects but one; it enables an optimization that limits tri-linear anisotropic filtering to areas surrounding texture mipmap level transitions, while doing bilinear anisotropic filtering elsewhere.

This optimization offers a way to improve filtering performance without visibly affecting image quality

o    The Performance setting has been updated to address the sharpness of the default Quality setting causing shimmering in certain cases.  It now provides a smoother filtering option that eliminates most shimmering while preserving the improved detail provided by anisotropic filtering.

• Tessellation Controls

o    Supported on the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series and the AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 Series

o    New settings give users full control over the Tessellation levels used in applications.

o    The default selection “AMD Optimized” setting is intended to set the best level of Tessellation on a per application basis.   The “AMD Optimized” setting is designed to help users get the maximum visual benefit of Tessellation, while minimizing the performance impact associated with enabling the Tessellation feature. Currently no applications have been profiled.

o   The “Use Application Settings” option gives applications full control over the Tessellation level.

o   Users can also manually set the maximum tessellation level used by applications with the slider control

• Morphological Anti-Aliasing support for the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series GPUs

o    AMD Catalyst now includes official support for Morphological Anti-Aliasing for the ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series GPUs

Support Video Quality settings during Blu-ray 3D playback

• Supported on the AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 Series GPUs
• Requires Blu-ray 3D player software, 3D supported display and 3D Stereoscopic glasses
• Users can now enable the Video Quality settings within the Catalyst Control Center when playing Blu-ray 3D content

For more information on AMD Catalyst™ 11.2 (for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux versions), including all of the resolved issues in this release, please see the AMD Catalyst™ 11.2 release notes.

To download the AMD Catalyst™ 11.2 driver, click here.

Regards,

Jay Marsden

Jay Marsden is a Product Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.

As you may know, tessellation is an important feature enabled in Microsoft DirectX® 11. The technology allows developers to take advantage of the GPU to quickly and efficiently subdivide geometric models into a finer mesh of smaller polygons. Basically, game developers can use more triangles to create the images you see when you’re playing—with more triangles designers can draw surfaces that look more realistic. This in turn adds detail to rendered scenes, while conserving CPU cycles, memory, and bandwidth.

More importantly, tessellation enhances the visual details you notice most when gaming: more realistic characters, terrain, water, cloth, shadows, and more, all while maintaining a high level of performance.

AMD places heavy emphasis on the end goal – to provide the best gaming experience. To that end, AMD has a team of developer relations engineers who focus on using the features of DirectX® 11 in the most effective way.

Tessellation is a terrific tool to deliver more realism and visual fidelity. However, careless use of the technology can quickly overwhelm the GPU and cause it to perform less efficiently with no visible benefit in image quality. Here are some potential pitfalls that can happen when tessellation is employed incorrectly:

• Rasterization: It’s important for all DirectX® 11-capable GPUs that tessellation not result in most polygons covering 1 pixel or less, in order to allow the rasterizers to keep operating at a reasonable level of efficiency.

• Overshadowing: If there are high levels of tessellation, it can produce many sub-pixel sized polygons, greatly increasing the impact of overshading.

• Multi-sample anti-aliasing (MSAA) techniques: Since tessellation results in a large number of small polygons, it also increases the number of pixels falling on polygon edges, thus reducing the efficiency of MSAA.

To overcome these challenges, our developer relations engineers make sure games can realize the full image quality benefits of tessellation while still making good use of GPU resources. This is done by using a variety of adaptive techniques that use high tessellation levels only for parts of a scene that are close to the viewer, on silhouette edges, or in areas requiring  fine detail. Our goal is to keep polygon size at or above 16 pixels as much as possible. This allows for a fairly high polygon density, making scenes look great while also running well on all recent GPUs. We have also developed techniques that can help balance tessellation workloads by doing a limited amount of pre-tessellation in vertex shaders, which can help to reduce the impact of bottlenecks in the rendering pipeline.

As gamers, we know that you just want a game that plays well. At AMD, we are committed to delivering the best possible gaming experience for all gamers, not just those using AMD hardware. To that end, we are continuing our work with developers of DirectX® 11 games to help them use tessellation in the most efficient way possible.

It’s that time again for the AMD Catalyst™ driver update!  We have been getting great comments and feedback from the community because of this blog site.  Please continue to send us your feedback as we do review them all*.

*IF you are having technical issues with the AMD Catalyst™ driver, or your graphics card please report your issues here.

Here is what is new this month!

Highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 10.11 driver for Windows® release include:

Performance Highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ 10.11 release:

Here are examples of performance that we have noted in our labs.  Your results may vary depending on the model, screen resolution, anti-aliasing, and whether you are using AMD CrossfireX™ technology.

Battleforge™

• Performance increases up to 3% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series using single GPU and CrossFireX configurations with anti-aliasing disabled.

STALKER – Call of Pripyat™ benchmark:

• Performance increases up to 5% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series using single GPU and CrossFireX configurations.

Resolved issue highlights:

• Enabling AMD OverDrive^TM through the AMD Catalyst™ Control Center for single display systems no longer results in GPU clocks running at high levels in non-GPU intensive scenarios
• Mouse cursor no longer flickers and disappears in World of Warcraft when hardware cursor is enabled when playing in Stereo 3D mode
• Primary display no longer blanks out when playing World in Conflict Soviet Assault DX10 with Dual Monitor enabled in AMD CrossFireX™ mode
• AMD CrossFireX™ no longer becomes disabled in Battlefield Bad Company 2 after performing a task switch
• The “Contrast” value for the display is no longer set to zero after AMD CrossFireX™ is disabled for the first time
• Alien blood is now rendered properly in Aliens vs Predator with Anti-Aliasing enabled

Highlights of the AMD Catalyst™ driver for Linux^® release include:

Resolved issue highlights

• Invalid position values for specified size  with aticonfig are accepted and updated in xorg.conf
• Cursor unable to enter task bar area when certain rotations are applied
• Initial rotation results in Xserver crash during startup

Hotfix driver:

We’ve also recently posted the AMD Catalyst 10.10e hotfix driver (AMD Radeon™ HD 6800 series users should use this driver; AMD Catalyst 10.12 will add full support for the AMD Radeon HD 6800 series next month):

Note! This hotfix is provided as is and is not supported by AMD. It has not completed full AMD testing and is only a driver update.

Download AMD Catalyst 10.10e Here: http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/gpu88-catalyst-10-10e-hotfix.aspx

AMD Catalyst 10.10e Hotfix includes the following features and enhancements:

• The ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series GPU’s now support the new AMD Catalyst AI user interface that was previously only available on the AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series GPU’s

• The ATI Radeon™ HD 5000 Series GPU’s now support Morphological Anti-Aliasing

• Fixed cases where Morphological Anti-Aliasing was not being correctly applied to games (very intermittently)

• OpenGL 4.1 beta support

• Support for the new Morphological Anti-Aliasing feature

• Dead Rising 2 – Crossfire profile (Resolves negative scaling)

AMD CrossFire Performance Improvement for:

o   Metro 2033

o   F1 2011 – (DirectX^® 9 version)

o   Fallout New Vegas

Performance optimizations for systems with an AMD Radeon™ HD 6870 and AMD Radeon HD 6850 series of graphics products installed

o   Aliens versus Predator performance enhancements

o   Star Craft 2 performance enhancements

o   OpenGL performance enhancements – gains can be seen in Prey, Quake Wars: Enemy Territories, and Heaven v2

Support for additional Stereo 3D-capable displays:

o   Viewsonic V3D241wm-LED

o   3D Projectors

For more information on AMD Catalyst™ 10.11 (for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux versions), including all of the resolved issues in this release, please see the AMD Catalyst™ 10.11 release notes.

To download the AMD Catalyst™ 10.11 driver, click here.

Till Next Month,

Jay Marsden

Jay Marsden is a Product Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.

A piping hot AMD Catalyst™ driver update has just arrived from the labs!  Thanks to all of you who provided feedback to us on the last driver update.  Keep it coming! We have been reviewing it all.

If you are having technical issues with the AMD Catalyst driver, or your graphics card please report your issues to AMD Graphics Technical Support.

Highlights of the AMD Catalyst 10.10 driver for Windows® release:

New Features

Introducing the AMD Catalyst Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) technology Edition

There will now be two variants of the AMD Catalyst driver package available:

1. AMD Catalyst (same driver package as in previous versions):
   • Includes the Direct3D, OpenGL, Display driver and AMD Catalyst Control Center components
2. AMD Catalyst Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) technology Edition:
   • Includes the Direct3D, OpenGL, Display driver and AMD Catalyst Control Center – Plus the OpenCL driver component

Users can still download all of the individual AMD Catalyst components separately if you wish (which will also include the OpenCL driver)

Introduction of AMD HD3D Technology

Blu-ray 3D support

• This release of AMD Catalyst provides support for Blu-ray 3D playback
• Requires Blu-ray 3D player software, 3D supported display and 3D Stereoscopic glasses*
• Supported on the AMD Radeon™ HD 6800 Series GPUs

Stereo 3D gaming support

• This release of AMD Catalyst provides support for Stereo 3D gaming via 3^rd party middleware from Dynamic Digital Depth (DDD) and iZ3D
• Requires 3D supported display and 3D Stereoscopic glasses*
• Supported on the ATI Radeon HD 5000™ Series and AMD Radeon HD 6000 Series GPUs

*For more information on AMD HD3D Technology, including gaming middleware and a list of supported displays, visit www.amd.com/hd3d

Video acceleration for HD WMV video content

• This release of AMD Catalyst provides GPU acceleration support for WMV HD (Microsoft video codec) under Windows 7
• Supported on the ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series of products and higher.

Enhanced Dynamic Contrast video controls

• This release of AMD Catalyst enhances the Dynamic Contrast setting found in the Catalyst Control Center by adding support for histogram based detection

Highlights of the AMD Catalyst 10.10 driver for Linux release include:

New Features

Support for new Linux operating systems

• This release of AMD Catalyst driver for Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:
  • openSUSE 11.3 support (production)
  • Ubuntu 10.10 support (early look)

For more information on AMD Catalyst 10.10 (for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux versions), including all of the resolved issues in this release, please see the AMD Catalyst 10.10 release notes.

Get the AMD Catalyst 10.10 driver now!

Till Next Month,

Jay Marsden

Jay Marsden is a Product Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.

*IF you are having technical issues with the ATI Catalyst driver, or your graphics card please report your issues to AMD.

Here is what is new this month!

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst 10.9 for Microsoft Windows:

Performance improvements:

• STALKER: Call of Pripyat Benchmark – depending on the model, screen resolution, anti-aliasing and whether you are using ATI CrossfireX™ technology, here’s an example of some performance improvements we’ve noted in our labs:
  • up to 20% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5870 graphics
  • up to 12% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5770 graphics

• The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
  • up to 4% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5770 graphics
  • up to 5% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5850 graphics
  • up to 6% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5970 graphics

ATI Catalyst™ Application – Updated ATI CrossFireX™ Profiles

• Aliens Vs. Predator – Profile update
• Battlefield: Bad Company 2 – Profile update
• F1 2010 – Profile update
• Kane & Lynch 2 – New profile

Resolved issue highlights:

• UVD clocks will now return to normal speeds after switching from High Definition  to Standard Definition content
• Flickering is no longer visible while running 3D games on HDMI displays with Quad CrossFireX™ enabled
• Mesh corruption is no longer visible in “The Chronicles of Riddick 2: Assault on Dark Athena” when SSAO in-game settings are set to “high”
• ATI CrossFireX™ now functions properly, and in-game Anti-Aliasing can now be enabled in “StarCraft II”
• Adobe® Flash Player will no longer display green screen after resume from sleep
• Negative ATI CrossFireX™ scaling on “Final Fantasy-XIV” no longer occurs
• Intermittent performance drops no longer observed with hardware cursor enabled in “World of Warcraft” game running in extended mode

Resolved issue highlights:

• UVD clocks will now return to normal speeds after switching from High Definition  to Standard Definition content
• Flickering is no longer visible while running 3D games on HDMI displays with Quad CrossFireX™ enabled
• Mesh corruption is no longer visible in “The Chronicles of Riddick 2: Assault on Dark Athena” when SSAO in-game settings are set to “high”
• ATI CrossFireX™ now functions properly, and in-game Anti-Aliasing can now be enabled in “StarCraft II”
• Adobe® Flash Player will no longer display green screen after resume from sleep
• Negative ATI CrossFireX™ scaling on “Final Fantasy-XIV” no longer occurs
• Intermittent performance drops no longer observed with hardware cursor enabled in “World of Warcraft” game running in extended mode

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst 10.9 driver for Linux:

Support for new Linux operating systems

• This release of ATI Catalyst™ Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:
  • RHEL 6 support (early look)

For more information on ATI Catalyst™ 10.9 (for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux versions), including all of the resolved issues in this release, please see the ATI Catalyst™ 10.9 release notes.

Download ATI Catalyst 10.9 Now!

Till Next Month,

Jay Marsden

Jay Marsden is a Product Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.

“We are replacing the “ATI” brand with “AMD” across our market share leading Radeon graphics family, starting in the fourth quarter of this year.”

(Silence)

“Well, I wasn’t expecting that…”

This is an example of the kind of exchange I had with some of the editors who cover our ATI graphics family.  And it was not surprising.  Brands are intended to evoke emotions and create connections, even feelings that can transcend logic.   In that respect, the graphics business is very much like sports and politics in that people take their emotional positions and enjoy participating in the dialogue about the competition.   It’s part of the “fun” of the business.

Even so, many brands have come and gone, and there comes a time when the real value of a brand wanes, often before the sentimental value.  This is exactly the position we face now with the ATI brand – based on the hard facts of market research undertaken in early 2010, it is clear our strongest foot forward is actually a combination of AMD and product brands such as Radeon™ or FirePro™.  But we’ll share more of that later.

A bit of background – hopefully grounded in the ‘realm of reason.’  First, we at AMD believe – actually, we know – that processor brands (CPUs and GPUs) are largely irrelevant in the PC buying decision.  Time and again, our research confirms that the average PC buyer is unaware of what processors are under the hood of their PC.  This is why we invest very little in ‘brand-building’ with the mainstream market segment.

And, it’s why we launched our VISION Technology program.  If you want the most visually-compelling PC experience for your money, you want the one with the “VISION” sticker on it.  If you’re a retail sales associate, everything you need to know is on that sticker.  The VISION brand is simple and memorable, and it’s focused on what people are trying to do with their PC, not what is in it.  For that reason VISION is a big hit across the industry.

But I digress…most brands and logos in this business are aimed at what we refer to as the “processor aware” audience.  For AMD, that’s everyone from OEMs and ISVs to channel partners, investors and IT professionals.  And for the ATI brand, it means enthusiasts and gamers.  So, earlier this year, we asked over 4,000 “graphics processor aware” individuals in seven countries – China, Brazil, Germany, Russia, UK, Japan and the US – which brands they know about, consider and prefer.  The results may surprise you, at least a bit.

First, we learned that the “Radeon” brand is as strong as any other product or company brand in terms of awareness and consideration.  Oh, there are regional differences in favor of one brand or another – but in general, Radeon is well established as a leader in this segment.

Second, preference for the AMD brand is stronger against the competition than the ATI brand.  This isn’t to say the ATI brand isn’t strong… it says that enthusiasts assign higher brand preference to the AMD brand.   And it is a nice complement to the Radeon-related finding mentioned above.

Third – and this was the clincher – those who know that AMD and ATI merged score their brand preference for AMD three times higher than those who are not aware of the merger.  In other words, if you know we are one company, you believe in us more.  On the other hand, by keeping the brands distinct, we were actually limiting or handicapping our own brand strength.

In short, we needed to make ‘the move.’

So, with our new product refresh in the fourth quarter of this year, you will see the beginning of an industry-wide shift to AMD Radeon™ and AMD FirePro™ graphics processors.  The timing couldn’t be better, as we just regained the market share lead in discrete graphics, and have launched an unprecedented number of processors and solutions for the professional graphics market.   Not to mention that in Q4 of this year, we intend to begin shipping our first AMD Fusion family of APUs, featuring world-class AMD Radeon graphics.

So, all emotion aside, we know this is a solid decision, based on feedback from a large customer base, numerous partners and our own sense of the industry.  We hope you agree.  But whether you agree or disagree – rational or emotional – please take a minute and let us know.  Because, as always, we are interested and care very much about your opinion.

I look forward to your comments.

John Volkmann is Corporate Vice President – Corporate Brand at AMD.  His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated,  AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

*IF you are having technical issues with the ATI Catalyst™ driver, or your graphics card please report your issues here.

Here is what is new this month!

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ 10.8 release for Microsoft Windows include:

OpenGL ES 2.0 support

• ATI Catalyst™ 10.8 provides full support for OpenGL ES 2.0 specification
• Enables 3D accelerated graphics within a web browser that supports OpenGL ES 2.0
• Supported on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7

Performance enhancement for Quad ATI CrossFireX™ configurations using ATI Eyefinity technology

• Performance has been greatly improved for users running with ATI Eyefinity technology on a Quad ATI CrossFireX™ configuration

Anti-Aliasing support for StarCraft II

• ATI Catalyst Control Center™ now  enables Anti-Aliasing for StarCraft II

Performance highlights:

Far Cry 2:

• Performance increases 2-6% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 Series single and ATI CrossFireX™ configurations.
• Performance increases 2-4% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 Series single and ATI CrossFireX™ configurations.
• Performance increases 3-8% on ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 Series single and ATI CrossFireX™ configurations.

Left 4 Dead 2:

• Performance increases 3-5% on ATI CrossFireX™ configurations using the ATI Radeon™ HD 5800 series and ATI Radeon™ HD 5700 series.

Stormrise:

• Performance increases 5-10% on ATI Radeon™ HD 5600  series and ATI Radeon™ HD 5500 series configurations.

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ driver for Linux 10.8 release include:

Support for new Linux operating systems

• This release of ATI Catalyst™ driver for  Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems: 
  • SLED/SLES 11 SP1 production support

OpenGL ES 2.0 support

• ATI Catalyst™ 10.8 provides full support for OpenGL ES 2.0 specification
• Enables 3D accelerated graphics within a web browser that supports OpenGL ES 2.0
• Supported on Linux distributions

For more information on ATI Catalyst™ 10.8 (for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux versions), including all of the resolved issues in this release, please see the ATI Catalyst™ 10.8 release notes.

To download the driver, click here.

Till Next Month,

Jay Marsden

Jay Marsden is a Product Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.