Not sure what to make of it. AMD's recently released Open CL drives has given us something to think about. Among the new cards listed in the support sheet, including the fresh HD 5800 and HD 5700 series, the driver also mentions two HD5900 parts.

Frankly, we are not sure what to make of this. It is quite possible that AMD will brand the dual-GPU incarnations of HD 5850 and HD 5870 cards as HD 5900 series, dropping the previous X2 suffix, but this is merely speculation.

Eight titles and engines promised for 2010 The release of the first graphics architecture to support Microsoft’s DirectX 11 has been followed with widespread adoption as AMD achieves a successful first strike in the next generation GPU hardware battle. Meanwhile, many eager consumers have been keeping close watch for any solid confirmations regarding software titles to successfully implement the new rendering API.

Getting better though

AMD's recently introduced Radeon HD 5870 is readily available in most European markets. After a somewhat bumpy launch, distributors are starting to get new shipments and they are finally coping with demand. Speaking of demand, there seems to be plenty of early DirectX11 adopters to go around. Prices range for the HD 5870 range from just under €300 in Blighty to €315 or €330 on the mainland, depending on the region.

AMD and Pixelux Entertainment announced a joint development agreement that is part of the AMD effort to greatly expand the use of real-time physics with graphics through the open source Bullet Physics engine. By encouraging development of physics middleware built around OpenCL™ and Bullet Physics, AMD and Pixelux offer a route toward physics simulation that spans game consoles, PCs and other hardware platforms.

We’ve learned that AMD’s truly next generation CPU codenamed Bulldozer should be out of the labs in late 2010. This is not Deneb / Phenom done right, it's a complete new architecture.

Since this is AMDs brand new architecture, the company is optimistic about it and we believe that initial shipments won’t start until much later in 2011.

We also learned that Bulldozer at start comes as an eight core CPU, but we would not exclude the possibility of other core iterations. Intel plans to have Sandy Bridge, its new 32nm architecture in 2011 and plans a refresh in 22nm called Ivy Bridge.

We told you about Juniper cards earlier and now let's check out their system requirements. Looks pretty similiar to Radeon HD 4770 except you need at least a 600W for Crossfire.

    * PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard
    * 450 Watt or greater power supply with one 75W 6-pin PCI Express® power connectors recommended (600 Watt and two 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode)

A few days ago, AMD demo'd WoW running seamlessly on six Dell 30" monitors, 7680x3200 resolution, at playable frame rates from a single Eyefinity card. Dirt 2 was also running, full DX11, again at playable frame rates, from the same card. Left4Dead stuttered a bit here and there, but was very playable. At 7K+ resolution from one card, that is not bad at all.

The take home message is that Eyefinity does one thing that no one else can, simulate a single monitor on multiple displays transparently to Windows. It should just work, and from what we saw, it does. This simple thing breaks through a fundamental brick wall for GPU adoption, limited resolution monitors.

The Great Chip Wars, as we’ve come to know them, ended this week — courtesy of a new marketing campaign from Advanced Micro Devices.

AMD has decided to sell its products under the Vision banner, a slogan that emphasizes the strengths of its graphics chip instead of promoting the abilities of its CPUs, or traditional workhorse chips. PC makers and retailers will promote three flavors of AMD-based computers, called See, Share and Create models.