ATI, graphics business unit of Advanced Micro Devices, on Wednesday officially released the industry’s first family of graphics processing units (GPUs) that supports DirectX 11 application programming interface. The new graphics boards - originally code-named Evergreen - not only boast with exclusive features, but also offer incredible performance in today’s video-games: ATI Radeon HD 5870 is currently the fastest single-chip graphics solutions on the planet.

“With the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of graphics cars driven by the most powerful processor on the planet, AMD is changing the game, both in terms of performance and the experience,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager of products group at AMD.

ATI Radeon HD 5870 – the world’s most powerful GPU to date that was previously known as ATI RV870 or ATI Cypress – features 1600 stream processing units, 80 texture units, 32 render back ends and 256-bit memory bus. The chip incorporates unprecedented number of transistors – 2.15 billion and has maximum compute performance of 2.72TFLOP/s. Another version of the chip – ATI Radeon HD 5850 – sports 1440 stream processors, 72 texture units, 32 render back ends, 256-bit memory bus and peak performance of 2.09TFLOP/s.

Despite of massive computing performance and transistor count, ATI/AMD managed to keep power consumption of its new ATI Radeon HD 5800 graphics cards low enough thanks to 40nm fabrication process and ATI PowerPlay power management technologies. In fact, in idle mode the new graphics cards consume just about 27W, which is almost impossible figure for a high-end desktop graphics adapter today.

ATI Radeon HD 5800 not only support DirectX 11 application programming interface, but also feature six integrated TMDS transmitters and can output image to up to three monitors at once thanks to ATI Eyefinity technology, for the first time in the history of consumer-oriented high-performance graphics cards. Besides, thanks to support for DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL, the new high-end graphics chips from AMD can also boast with advanced GPGPU (general purpose computing on graphics processing units) capabilities.

“As the first to market with full DirectX 11 support, an unmatched experience made possible with ATI Eyefinity technology, and ATI Stream technology harnessing open standards designed to help make Windows 7 that much better, I can say with confidence that AMD is the undisputed leader in graphics once more,” added Mr. Bergman.

For several years ATI had to lower pricing of its graphics solutions to remain competitive with its arch-rival Nvidia Corp. Thanks to unprecedented performance and DirectX 11 support, this will not be the case with the Radeon HD 5850 and 5870, which are available for $299 and $399, respectively. Performance and 3D graphics enthusiasts are more than likely to welcome the new graphics processors and enjoy improved effects in new and forthcoming video games – Battleforge, Dirt 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat – as well as increased performance.

The ATI Radeon HD 5800-series of graphics cards is supported by a dozen add-in-board companies, including Asustek Computer, Club 3D, Diamond Multimedia, Force3D, Gigabyte Technology, HIS (Hightech Information Systems), MSI, Multimedia, PowerColor, Sapphire Technology, VisionTek and XFX.

Tags: ATI, AMD, Radeon, Evergreen, 40nm, Cypress, Juniper, RV870