ATI, graphics products group of Advanced Micro Devices, on Tuesday released the world’s first 40nm graphics processing unit. The novelty not only marks a milestone for the company, but also brings new performance levels to $100 price-point per graphics card.

“Consumer pressure in this economic downturn is shifting demand to lower prices and the price band around $100 has the highest demand and highest volume. AMD has responded with the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 4770, targeting this market with cutting-edge technologies like 40nm processors, support for DirectX 10.1 gaming and GDDR5 memory,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s graphics products group.

ATI Radeon HD 4770, which is powered by ATI RV740 graphics processing units (GPUs), features 640 stream processors, 32 texture units, 16 render back ends and 128-bit GDDR3/GDDR4/GDDR5 memory controller. ATI recommends its partners among graphics cards makers to clock the chip at 750MHz and install 512MB of GDDR5 memory at 3200MHz.

Just like the latest ATI Radeon graphics chips, the novelty supports DirectX 10.1 and OpenGL 3.0 application programming interfaces, hardware-accelerated playback of high-definition video with post-processing and other advantages.

Thanks to 40nm process technology of TSMC, ATI Radeon HD 4770 consumes only about 50W under load, which is considerably less than graphics cards offering similar levels of performance. Based on performance figures obtained by X-bit labs, the novelty is slightly slower compared to ATI Radeon HD 4850, a graphics card that used to cost $200 less than a year ago.

Manufacturer suggested retail price of ATI Radeon HD 4770 is $109, however, U.S. and Canada residents may also get $10 rebate from certain online stores.

Tags: ATI, AMD, Radeon, RV740, 40nm