Gadgets and Gizmos

AMD Introduces ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3000 Series

AMD has announced the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3000 series, a new family of discrete graphics for high-definition gaming and video in notebook PCs. The initial offerings consist of ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3400 series and ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3600 series. ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series allows notebook users to experience the full power of HD through graphics processing designed to satisfy the most demanding mobile users at work and play.

Featuring the latest industry-standard technologies, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series is optimized for the forthcoming AMD notebook platform, code-named “Puma”, to deliver The Ultimate Visual Experience™. The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series offers support for DirectX 10.1 enabling a higher level of visual quality through new lighting and rendering techniques designed to enhance the realism and quality of 3D games.

New PCI Express 2.0 support enables faster throughput and greater overall system performance as compared to PCI Express 1.1. Notebook users can play the latest Blu-ray and HD DVD movies in 1080p resolution using ATI Avivo HD technology, which frees the CPU for other tasks.

With a choice of digital outputs, notebook users can connect to a variety of displays featuring DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort support on a notebook platform. These new notebook graphics chips provide battery efficiency and greater performance-per-watt, delivering exceptional battery life for enthusiast users, according to AMD.

AMD is showcasing the upcoming notebook platform, code named “Puma” at the Consumer Electronics Show. AMD plans to introduce “Puma” in Q2. In “Puma,” the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3000 series graphics will join AMD Turion Ultra notebook processors and the upcoming AMD RS780 chipset to deliver power-efficient mobility.

The platform will fully support DirectX 10.1, Microsoft’s 3D graphics platform. The hybrid graphics capabilities will ship with notebooks based on the Puma platform in the middle of this year, Shutter said. Though intended to be a centerpiece of the Puma platform, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400 graphics card is already separately shipping with Asus systems, according to AMD. Pricing information was not available.

Though intended to be a centerpiece of the Puma platform, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400 and 3600 series are currently shipping in notebooks from Asustek including the M50 and F8 series.

Additional products are scheduled for availability from notebook manufacturers in the second quarter of 2008, when the Puma platform launches. Both of the new product lines include support for AMD’s Unified Video Decoder that brings full hardware acceleration of video decode for content such as Blu-ray and HD DVD movies encoded with H.264 or VC-1 at up to 1080p.