Published in Graphics

ATI shows off mobile HD4000 chipset

by on02 October 2008

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Blu-ray hardware decoding demonstrated

 

AMD has shown off a pre-production Mobility Radeon HD4000 testbed at a Japanese show, and Guru3d took a few snapshots. The chipset was demonstrated in action, decoding Blu-ray video.

Thanks to hardware HD decoding capability, better performance per watt than Nvidia, and the fact that ATI's recent desktop GPUs have managed to outperform Nvidia counterparts, the new chipsets should have a bright future. The fact that Nvidia lost face in the overblown mobile GPU mess can't hurt either.

It takes roughly about six months to develop a mobile version of an existing GPU, so if all goes well, we could see the first mobile HD4000 chips in the next few months. Having said that, Q1 2009 sounds realistic for mid range and low end parts, which are the mainstay of the mobile discrete graphics market.

The power consumption of ATI's recently announced RV710 based cards is astonishingly low, rated at 20W and 25W for the HD4350 and HD4550 respectively, and even the mid-range HD4600 series is rated at under 50W. Making successful mobile versions of such efficient chips should be a walk in the park.

You can see the test rig here.

Last modified on 03 October 2008
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