Fusion is the first major product that invovled both AMD's and (former) ATI's engineering teams since the merger two years ago. Fusion integrates an entry level GPU core (not more than 60mm2) onto the CPU die. Since Fusion is set to debut in late 2009 / early 2010, we expect an RV810 or a similar performing GPU coupled with a Phenom.

Fusion's target application would be notebooks, and potentially by 2011 notebooks are expected to comprise 71% of the total PC sales. Fusion could also be targetted towards the desktop side of things; budget PCs that rely on integrated graphics on the motherboard chipset, market share of these PCs is currently more than 50% of the desktop PCs sold. Keeping both these numbers in mind, Fusion has the potential to become AMD's biggest success.

With this campaign, AMD decided to drop their Smarter Choice tagline in favor of Future is Fusion, which sounds better in our opinion. You can also try the Fusion utility (Beta) which will help you streamline your PC in terms of power consumption.

Head on out to the official page for more information.

Integrated graphics has always been a critical part of the market place, so much that Intel dominates the landscape with its integrated graphics offerings and owns more 46% of the market share. Integrated graphics is an alternative to providing minimal level of graphics performance, while keeping the costs and the power consumption down, in some cases it may also help reduce the footprint of the PC. No wonder, these chipsets are very popular with the HTPC (Home Theatre PC) crowd. Integrated graphics is also a major criteria with regards to OEM design wins for the mobile space (laptops), no wonder all the major players dont want to leave this segment anytime soon.

In terms of performance, the MCP7A with 16 Shader processors outruns AMD's 790GX and completely obliterates Intel's G45 in Crysis & Call of Duty 4. It will be a landslide victory for Nvidia because it is competing with only Intel's G45 on the Intel side of things.

MCP7A will take the branding of nForce 730i & will be available in two flavors; Geforce 9300 & 9400. The only differentiator between them being the clockspeeds. nForce 730i will be replacing the long-in-the-tooth nForce 630i. The chipset will include Hybrid SLI support and we would not be surprised to see Nvidia leverage the integrated graphics for tasks like PhysX. The next IGP from Nvidia will be based on the GT200 (budget) series, codenamed iGT209 and is scheduled for Q1 2009.

The delay of this chipset was one of the reasons cited for Nvidia's lowered guidance couple of months back and from the looks of it, this will be a big winner for Nvidia.

As usual, there are some extra benefits offered by some of the vendors, for example EVGA has 90 day step-up program. Also keep in mind some of these major vendors (XFX, BFG, EVGA) recently took the novel route of protecting early adopters when Nvidia was forced to cut prices on the GTX 200 series.

If you have any suggestions, please let us know and we'll try to accomodate it in the next revision.

This product will be immensely popular with the OEMs for the following reasons:

1. Incredibly cheap, especially in lots of 1000s
2. Very low power consumption & heat disspitation
3. 1080p HD decode
4. 3-4x performance over integrated graphics

The previous generation mainstream from AMD (RV620) featured 40 shader processors which has now doubled in RV710 to 80. Another increase is noticed in the Texture units from 4 to 8. AMD has managed to do all this despite a very small increase in die size. 

Performance figures at 1280×1024 are 10xx and 40xx in Vantage and 3DMark06 respectively. These figures should be enough to have a lead on it's rival the 128-bit 9400GT. Radeon 4300/4500 series launch is slated for September 25 and is expected to retail for $39-$59.

1. FiringSquad
2. Anandtech
3. HotHardware
4. TweakTown
5. TechPowerUp
6. Guru3D
7. Hexus
8. ComputerBase (German)
9. PCGamesHardware
10. Hardware France (French)
11. HardwareZone
12. CHW (Chile)
13. iXBT (Russian)
14. LegitReviews
15. AMDZone
16. Fudzilla
17. HardTecs4U (German)
18. Bit-Tech
19. NeoSeeker
20. HardwareCanucks
21. TechwareLabs

Our roundup is the most extensive collection of reviews on the web. Please keep checking back as our tracker keeps populating this list.

Since 3DMark06 is no longer the most current benchmark to gauge the performance, so we've got some Vantage numbers too; 73xx for the 4670CF and 72xx for the 4850. Again a slight edge to the 4670CF over a single 4850. The 4650 sibling will end up a good deal slower, aptly it relies on software CrossFire and comes without the CrossFire ports.

From these preliminary benchmarks, the 4670CF seems to have a slight edge over the 4850 and we'll have to wait and see how this translates into games. Judging from the raw specs, these two might trade blows as the 4850 will have a clear memory bandwidth advantage while the 4670CF setup will have a clear advantage in texturing power.

In response, Nvidia seems to be prepping their counter-attack and apparently the initial batch of 9550GTs will be based on G92b (rather than G94b) as the need to clear the G92 inventory is top priority. Either of these combinations is bound to outperform the 4670 but will also cost more to manufacture. The 4600 launch is slated for tomorrow and as usual we'll have the most comprehensive roundup as soon as reviews start flowing in.

Update: Hexus has the first 4670CF review with game tests. Just like we mentioned above, 4670CF comes out the winner over the 4850, thanks to the higher texturing power.

The main attraction around this release is GPU based acceleration; in short blistering real-time performance. This is possible by leveraging the massive untapped potential of GPU based processing. GPUs have leapfrogged CPUs in terms of parallel computational power and complexity for some time now and it comes as no surprise that the industry begins to realise this and various such non-gaming related tasks are off loaded to the GPU rather than the CPU. No wonder that Intel decided to join the party with Larrabee.

GPUs traditionally have been stressed only when a 3d intensive app is launched. The rest of the time, the GPU sits mostly idle. Power saving mechanisms such as PowerPlay/PowerMizer obviously are in place to reduce the power consumption by down clocking the GPU. The flip side of this is to utilize the GPU for other common tasks. First step was offloading video decode/encode from CPU to GPU and now Adobe follows in the same vein.

In CS4, applying textures, color or text on 3d surfaces will be done instantly. You can also manipulate an ultra-resolution images with ease and no slowdowns. Creating 3d panorams from a series of images will also see a huge improvement in performance. Apply a series of filters and previews will also be snappy. All these performance improvements are bonus on top of an incremental addition of new features.

No details on pricing or release date yet. Adobe's campaign reads "Its going to be Brilliant". With so many new features and performance improvements, Adobe is set to fulfill on their promise.

Based on the RV770 GPU; FireStream 9250 packs in 800 Shader processors coupled with 1GB of 256-bit GDDR3 memory. FireStream 9250 is available in a single-slot form factor compared to its older sibling the dual-slot 9170.  The compact size of the 9250 should enable it to fit in 1U servers as well as most desktop workstations.

The power consumption for 9250 has also gone up (150W) compared to the 9170 (100W) but the efficiency (GFlops/Watt) is still improved by 60% thanks largely to the huge jump in computational horse power. In terms of double-precision floating point performance, the FireStream 9250 is the fastest processor in the world.

FireStream series of cards to catered towards delivering blistering performance of AMD's GPUs to business users in high performance computing situations such as financial analysis, seismic processing, simulations, rendering, climate research, protein folding etc.

MSRP of FireStream 9250 is $999, a great value compared to the 9170 which has half the computational horse power for twice the price. FireStream 9250 is scheduled to be available this month.

Listed at €67.00, the card seems to be a bargain compared to a €62.50 9500GT. As seen from the preliminary benchmarks posted today by IT168, the 4670 performs roughly 30-150% better than the 9500GT depending on the benchmark.

On an ending note, for those curious minded folks the exact die size is 145mm².

Update I: More stores have started listing the 4600 series. If this pricing holds true for the NA market, then the 512MB 4670 will be the sweet spot of the bunch.

H465F512S - HIS Excalibur HD 4650 - 512MB DDR2 - $89

H465H512P - HIS Excalibur HD 4650 Silent - 512MB DDR2 - $106

H467QS512P - HIS HD 4670 IceQ - 512MB DDR3 - $115

H467QS1GP - HIS HD 4670 IceQ - 1GB DDR3 - $141

Keep in mind, this is the MSRP so the products might appear for less in retail. TDP for the board is rated for 50W. The product is based on G96, the same core used in 9500GT but with parts of the core disabled. So the yeilds for this GPU will be really good and will be very inexpensive to manufacture as Nvidia is transitioning all its products to the 55nm process. This product will directly go against the upcoming 4400 series based on the RV710 GPU from AMD.

Part two of the counter-attack is the 9550GT; going up against AMD's Radeon HD 4670. This product will be based on G94b, the 55nm version of the G94. This will still be 64 Shader processor part like the 9600GT but will feature a 192-bit bus width. In terms of die-size and bus width, AMD's 4670 will be cheaper to manufacture but might also end up short on the performance side of things.

In summary, both vendors will be looking to score in the sub $150 price segment. There will be good price/performance ratios from both sides. The only downside on Nvidia's product stack is that the GT2xx based mainstream/budget parts are still missing and lack the potential value from an OEM perspective.