AMD Launches ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4000 Series Graphics for Notebooks, Delivering Up to Twice the Gaming Performance of Previous Generation1

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced ATI Mobility Radeon^TM HD 4000 series graphics, its next generation series of notebook graphics processors, bringing leading gaming and multimedia technology from the desktop to notebooks. These feature-rich graphics processors redefine mobile gaming with advanced capabilities including support for the latest Microsoft DirectX^® 10.1 games, a home theatre-quality HD multimedia experience, and energy-efficient features for long battery life to help users get the most out of their notebook at work, at home or at play.

The ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4800 series redefines HD gaming performance with support for ATI CrossFireX™ technology to deliver up to one teraFLOP of performance power.² ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4600 series offers a superb balance of performance and energy efficiency. Optimal for thin and light notebooks, the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4300 and ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4500 series provide exceptional battery life for anyone on the go.

"ASUS constantly strives in delivering the best possible mobile computing solutions to our customers for exceptional multimedia experiences,” said Alvin Chou, Senior Product Manager for ASUS’ Notebook Business Unit. "We are pleased to offer the world’s first notebooks with the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4650 graphics in the ASUS N51Tp and N81Vp; and ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4570 graphics in the F81Se.”

"The MSI EX625 notebook, with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4600 series graphics, and the GT725 notebook, with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4800 series graphics, represent the pinnacle of gaming and multimedia graphics for the mobile platform,” said Eric Kuo, MSI Sales Director. "AMD has exceptional graphics success that will bring unprecedented power and performance for the mobile platform.”

Redefining HD Gaming

All ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series graphics processors feature powerful 3D engines derived from the popular ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 series architecture and are capable of up to twice the gaming performance of the predecessor ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3000 Series at their respective power levels.¹ The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4800 series graphics processors are the industry’s first to support GDDR5 memory technology, providing nearly twice the memory bandwidth of GDDR3 and GDDR4, contributing to stunning improvements in game play and performance. Also featuring support for Microsoft DirectX 10.1, the entire ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series is ready to tackle the demands of next-generation game titles for crisp, detail-rich images and outstanding visual effects that deliver an unparalleled level of realism. Extreme gamers can push the boundaries of gaming performance with the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4870 graphics processor delivering up to 1.8 times the performance compared to previous AMD discrete mobile graphics processors³ and with ATI CrossFireX technology, combine the performance of two ATI Mobility Radeon™ graphics processors to produce uncompromising image quality in any of today’s demanding 3D games.

"We’re proud to highlight ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4870 as the first notebook GPU to support specially designed, ultra-high bandwidth GDDR5 graphics memory to unleash the full-throttle gaming experience normally reserved for the high-end desktop gaming rigs,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager of AMD, Graphics Products Group. "Now, notebooks equipped with one or a pair of these speedy graphics processors can take on just about any PC game and run them smoothly at their maximum option settings.

"And for gaming-friendly multimedia notebooks, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4600 is the most potent power-efficient notebook GPU we've ever produced, making high-performance gaming practical in lightweight, elegantly styled notebooks like never before.”

Stunning HD multimedia experience

Home theatre enthusiasts can enjoy full 1080p HD viewing anywhere they want on HD-capable panels, monitors or televisions. Using AMD’s second generation Unified Video Decoder (UVD), the CPU is freed from other tasks so even when managing processor-intensive content such as Blu-ray movies, users can still instant message friends or conduct virus scans in the background without interruption. This also helps lower power consumption and reduces the need for high fan settings, enabling a quieter experience. DVD upscaling allows for enhanced picture quality when watching standard definition content on 1080p HDTV, while dynamic contrast adjusts the contrast and brightness during scenes to bring a crisp, vibrant picture to viewers. ⁴ Specifically designed for HD video enthusiasts, ATI Avivo™ HD, an advanced image and video processing display technology, is found throughout the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series and provides brilliant colors, sharp images, and smooth playback of Blu-ray and HD video content on HD-capable panels, monitors or televisions.⁵ In addition, selected ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series graphics processors models are also the first ever mobile graphics solution that has advanced hi-definition audio capabilities using HDMI with 7.1 digital surround sound and DisplayPort Audio to create an immersive, home theatre-class experience.⁶

Leading energy efficiency

AMD remains committed to designing energy efficient technology with optimal performance -- the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series is no exception. The new mobile graphics family features energy efficient, second generation 55nm process technology that, in the case of the ATI Mobility Radeon 4870 GPU, delivers an increase in performance-per-watt of more than sixty percent over the previous generation.⁷ Additional power-saving features include ATI PowerPlay™, ATI PowerXpress^TM, and ATI™ Switchable Graphics technologies.

ATI PowerPlay, an activity-based power management technology, intuitively conserves energy at idle or when demand is low and automatically adjusts between low and high states for greater performance when needed and energy conservation for long battery life. ATI PowerXpress and ATI Switchable Graphics technologies dynamically switch between the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series discrete graphics processor and the integrated graphics processor in the notebook -- all in real-time without needing to reboot -- to help provide exceptional performance when needed and to help extend battery life when on the move.

"The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4600 and ATI Mobility HD 4500 series offer outstanding performance per watt giving notebook manufacturers the ability to pack significantly more performance into thin designs as the previous years equivalent models,” said Bergman. "And for value oriented and ultrathin notebooks, these GPUs enable superior HD entertainment on the go coupled with low power requirements. We’re delivering a top-to-bottom line of mobile discrete graphics processors that deliver on the AMD hallmark of leading performance and energy efficiency.”

The ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series features a wide range of power-efficient and performance optimized configurations that vary in terms of size, operating speed and performance to satisfy the discrete graphics requirements of products ranging from ultra-mobile sub-notebooks to high-end gaming portables, small form-factor desktop PCs and everything in between.

Unprecedented Performance

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 series graphics also provide performance benefits for defense applications.

"A critical component of Mercury's Converged Sensor Network Architecture is pushing substantial computing capability closer to the sensor in embedded environments. GPUs have proven to be well-suited for this. Mercury’s relationship with AMD affords us the ability to leverage cutting-edge GPU technology into embedded systems for this purpose,” said Scott Thieret, Technology Director for GPU Computing at Mercury Computer Systems. "The dual ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870 GPUs, as deployed in our Sensor Stream Computing Platform, provide a teraFLOP of floating-point performance in a single 6U VXS card. This unprecedented compute density in an embedded system allows Mercury to solve tough stream computing problems for our military and commercial customers who contend with stringent size, power, and weight constraints.”

The ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4000 series graphics processors have been designed into quality notebooks from many leading notebook manufacturers such as ASUS, MSI and others, with models planned for availability beginning in Q1 2009. For more information visit http://www.amd.com/mobility/hd4000.

About AMD

Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is an innovative technology company dedicated to collaborating with customers and partners to ignite the next generation of computing and graphics solutions at work, home and play. For more information, visit http://www.amd.com.

1. The ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4870 and ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4850 deliver 800 stream processing units compared with the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3800 series which delivers 320 stream processing units.

ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4670 (680e/800m, GDDR3, 512MB ) vs. ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3670 (680e/800m, DDR3, 256MB): Performance measurements based on 3DMark Vantage (P) scores – on Puma platform, Turion™ Ultra 2.4 GHz, 2GB DDR2-800, Vista SP1 32-bit.

ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4750 (680e/800m, GDDR3, 256MB) delivers 3x the performance-per-watt compared to the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3470 (680e/800m, DDR3, 256MB). Performance measurements based on 3DMark Vantage (P) scores – on Puma platform, Turion™ Ultra 2.4 GHz, 2GB DDR2-800, Vista SP1 32-bit.

The ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4330 delivers 100.132* per watt, compared with the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3410 which delivers 26.7* per watt. *3dMark Vantage(P) scores used.

The ATI Mobility Radeon™HD 4330 delivers 100.132* per watt, compared with the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3410 which delivers 26.7* per watt. *3dMark Vantage(P) scores used.

2. Requires dual ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4870 or ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4850 graphics processors with ATI CrossFireX™technology to break the one teraflop barrier for single precision performance.

Theoretical bandwidth based on memory design specifications; claim of 3x the bandwidth compares GDDR5 vs. GDDR4

3. The ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4870 (680e/700m GDDR5, 1GB) has up to 1.8x faster performance over ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3870 (660e/850m GDDR3, 512MB). Performance measurements based on Puma reference platform (780 mobile), 2.4GHz Turion™ Ultra CPU, 2GB DDR-2 Ram, Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit SP1, ATI Driver: 8.53 RC3.

4. The ATI Mobility Radeon™HD 4800 series GPUs can upscale video display to 2560x1600 on dual-link monitors which is almost twice the display resolution of 1080p displays in AC mode only.

5. ATI Avivo™ HD is a technology platform that includes a broad set of capabilities offered by certain ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD GPUs. Not all products have all features and full enablement of some ATI Avivo™ HD capabilities may require complementary products.

6. DisplayPort Audio feature currently available with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4300, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4500 and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4600 series

7. The ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 4870 (550e/700m, GDDR3, 1GB) delivers more than 60% performance per watt improvement over the ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 3870: Performance measurements based on 3DMark Vantage (P) scores – on Puma platform, Turion™ Ultra 2.4 GHz, 2GB DDR2-800, Windows Vista SP1 32-bit.