Gigabyte, which has become one of ATI’s major partners officially announced its own graphics card from the MAYA family based on RADEON 8500 chip. The card is called AP64D-H (the boxes designed for this card will also have another name on them: RADEON 8500 Deluxe). This graphics card is a fully-fledged RADEON 8500 with the chip and memory working at 275MHz. it will be equipped with 64MB of DDR memory with 3.6ns access time. The card will also have a VGA-, DVI- and TV-Outs and will support HydraVision technology allowing the use of two displays at a time.

Also Gigabyte made a few changes to the ATI card’s reference design, so that now RADEON 8500 from this Taiwanese manufacturer acquired hardware monitoring functions. With the help of a special utility the user will be able to monitor the fan rotation speed, the chip temperature and voltages of different graphics card components. Also Gigabyte expects its AP64D-H to become a tasty bit for overclockers. For them specifically the card will be equipped with a massive cooling system and will be accompanied by a special V-tuner overclocking utility.

AP64D-H software bundle will include 6 games, which names have been kept secret so far. The card should appear in retail this month already. Additional info on the Gigabyte’s novelty is available at ReactorCritical.