News ATI Demonstrates Mobility Radeon HD 4000 Graphics Processor, Readies Dual-Chip Mobile Graphics Solution. ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000-Series Graphics Chip Shows Up [09/30/2008 03:51 PM]by Anton Shilov UPDATE: Certain incorrect claims removed from the story.ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, has demonstrated working samples of its ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000-series graphics processors at Ceatec trade-show in Japan. What is, perhaps, even more interesting, is that ATI preps dual-chip graphics adapters for mobile computers as well.There is no secret that the new breed of ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4000 graphics processing units (GPUs) for mobile has been in development for some time now.
(Full article ‘ATI Demonstrates Mobility Radeon HD 4000 Graphics Processor, Readies Dual-Chip Mobile Graphics Solution’)

Mobile computers may carry powerful graphics adapter, but this makes them heavy and bulky, which automatically reduces popularity of such mobile computers. However, ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, Asustek Computer and Fujitsu Siemens plan to enable high-performance graphics processing on notebooks with the help of external graphics cards.

Over a year ago – in early 2007 – Asustek Computer, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of computer components and hardware, unveiled its XG Station which integrated a fully-fledged graphics adapter into an external box that could be connected to a mobile computer using Express Card interface. Even though the product has never made it to the market, the concept itself appeared to be pretty popular.

(Full article ‘AMD, Asustek, Fujitsu Siemens Prepare External Graphics Cards for Laptops’)

ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, said that its graphics cards do not and will not have compatibility issues with aging platforms. Unlike some of the latest Nvidia GeForce 8800 graphics cards, ATI Radeon HD 3000-series works on old problems without issues.

Back in August ’07 X-bit labs reported citing Asustek Computer’s claims that some PCI Express 2.0 graphics cards may not function on mainboards that only support PCI Express 1.0a and 1.1 2.5GHz transfer rates. Many, but not all, Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT-based graphics cards, which support 2.0 transfer rate and are supposed to be backwards compatible with PCIe 1, could not function on Intel 925 chipset-based system at X-bit labs.

“There were potentially compatibility issues with PCI Express 2.0 graphics cards and certain PCIe 1.0/1.1 platforms.

(Full article ‘AMD: No Compatibility Problems with PCI Express 2.0′)