We have some interesting news for PC gamers now, especially for those that are currently thinking of upgrading to a new graphics card in 2013. You may want to hold off on that decision for now, as AMD has revealed that they will be offering a free copy of Battlefield 4, with the purchase of one of their future graphics cards.

For those that have purchased an AMD graphics card recently, you should already be familiar with AMD’s running Never Settle Campaign, which has already proved to be a popular success with fans. At the moment, if you pick up an AMD Radeon HD graphics card between the 7800 and 7900 series, you’ll be able to pick up games such as Sleeping Dogs, Bioshock Infinite and Tomb Raider as an incentive bonus.

The recently released Sim City will soon be joining that list as well, but Battlefield 4 powered by the Frostbite 3 engine is surely going to be the icing on the cake. AMD hasn’t said when the offer will commence, or more importantly – which specific graphics card that consumers will need to purchase to be eligible for the offer.

Having said that, we can confirm that the amazing 17 minute Battlefield 4 footage on PC was powered by an AMD Radeon HD 7990 graphics card, so it could be the only card that is needed to get a free copy of the upcoming game – although AMD will obviously make this clearer closer to release.

A free copy of Battlefield 4 may sound like a great incentive, but if the Radeon HD 7990 GPU is needed, expect to pay around $1000 for one so it will not be cheap at all. If you regularly update your PC hardware, let us know your thoughts on this promotion from AMD.

Will any of you be taking AMD up on their offer, or does it often involve very high costs that isn’t worth it just for a free game?

The Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan is the new boy on the block, which is the fastest single GPU card on the market. If we had to give you an idea this is not as fast as a dual GPU, but much faster than a standard single GPU. What helps to make this a beast is the fact that it has 6GB of memory. You would assume that the temperature would be pretty high in such a beast, but these are kept to a minimum.

Below we have a video where you get to see how well several games perform on the GeForce GTX Titan, these titles are Crysis 3 and Far Cry 3, and as you will see the single GPU performs pretty well compared to the Ares II, which came top in a benchmark test.

The old master used to be the AMD Radeon 7970 GHz Edition, but a recent review comparing the specs shows how things have moved on since last year. However, there is a price to pay for having the latest and greatest single GPU, and that’s a massive $999.99 for the Titan when compared to $499.99 for the GHz Edition. You can see a review of both these cards side-by-side HERE.

If you are looking for a graphics card for the same kind of budget, then the Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 is one option. Looking over both these GPUs it’s clear to see that these are different beasts, but knowing which you should choose is going to be tough. You can see by the specs here that a similar performance can be achieved, but it’s the ability for the Titan to be placed into a mid-tower that makes it far more appealing – well to some gamers anyway.

Below we have three videos reviews for your viewing pleasure of each of these graphics cards.

Before we get started we must quickly clarify that this is not a top-end graphics card, instead we are hoping that this card will give performance similar to the HD 6850 at a much lower price tag, approximately $100 seems possible and extremely tempting – but nothing has been officially announced just yet.

Below we have embedded an image showing two leaked images which we found over at TomsHardware, as you can see the card isn’t massive but does feature a rather large cooling fan. This card is said to require roughly 100W of power (which is lower than the 6850′s TDP), it requires a single 6-pin PCI-E power connector and supports CrossFire (up to two cards), in terms of outputs there’s 1 x DVI, 1 x HDMI and 1 x miniDisplayPort, also TH suggests that it features a 128-bit memory interface and boasts 4 x GDDR5 memory chips.

Benchmark results can be seen here for 3DMark ’06, 3DMark 11 (Performance Preset) here and 3DMark 11 (Extreme Preset) here – the rig which the tests were carried out on consisted of the HD 7770 combined with the AMD Catalyst 8.940 RC2 driver, the Intel Ivy Bridge Core i5-3550K processor (clocked at 3.3Ghz) and a Z77 chipset-based motherboard – we expect even better results once drivers have been optimized.

Hopefully we will find out more in regards to pricing soon, when we do we will be sure to let you know. With the HD 6850 retailing at ~$150 we believe that a price between $90 and $110 is needed, any higher will probably put consumers off – this card should be a great option for PC gamers with a low budget,

How much would you be willing to pay for the HD 7770?

Before we get started we must quickly tell you that all of AMD’s announced FX CPUs feature, an 8MB L3 cache, support for DDR3 speeds of up to 1866MHz RAM and they all utilize the AM3+ socket

Let’s start with the 8 core offerings, these all feature an 8MB L2 cache, they are the FX-8150, FX-8120 and the FX 8100. The best of these is the 8150 which features a CPU base clock speed of 3.6GHz, a CPU Turbo core frequency of 3.9GHz, a CPU Max Turbo frequency of 4.2GHz and A 125 WATT TDP. You can see the specs for the other 8 core offerings below.

Currently there is just one 6 core offering which has been announced, this is the FX-6100 and it features a 6MB L2 cache, a CPU base clock speed of 3.3GHz, a CPU Turbo core frequency of 3.6GHz, a CPU Max Turbo frequency of 3.9GHz and a 95 watt TDP.

There are also four, 4 core options, these are the FX-4170, FX-B4150 and the FX-4100, all of which feature a 4MB L2 Cache. The best out of these offerings is the FX-4170, it is demanding in terms of power consumption (125 watt), but it features 4 x 4.2GHz cores. Below you can see details regarding the other two 4 core offerings.

If you head over to Engadget you can find out a little more about these new CPUs, what’s interesting is in benchmarks the FX-8150′s extra cores and clock speed (when compared to the quad-core Intel Core i7-2600K) didn’t result in anything too amazing.

Will you buy any of these AMD FX series CPUs?

There is an AMD FX processor for all budgets here, and the top of the range FX-8150 with its $245 price tag is $55 cheaper than the Core i7-2600. According to AMD the both are very similar in benchmark tests, but they would say that. The base speed of said CPU is 3.6GHz, and according to Engadget can be over-clocked to 4.8GHz, which to us is astonishing.

Those of you with an AM3+ motherboard will need to do some research first to see what they should upgrade to. There are so many factors involved, and it is not always down to money. Why would you want to pay a huge amount of money for a certain AMD FX CPU, if you will never use it to its full potential?

From the seven different models, there will be three different variants, 8-cores, 6-cores and 4-cores. The former two will be here in days, but there is no confirmed release date for the latter model. If you are a gamer then you will want to go with the eight-core option, but if you are not, then the six-core should suffice.

Take a look at this AMD FX CPU lineup chart to make your choice.

Initially a tweet was posted which read: “Proper Rage driver should be up in a few hours”, which suggests that this new driver version has been optimized with Rage in mind, the next tweet read: “If you have an AMD/ATI graphics card, the new RAGE Catalyst drivers are out! BE SURE to grab them immediately” – which really does seem to suggest that this game must run a lot better when these drivers are in use.

You can download the AMD Catalyst – Rage Performance Driver here, it is 144MB in size and installation is straight forward (just follow the on-screen suggestions), here’s the official AMD Catalyst Rage Performance Driver Features:

Significant performance gains for single GPU configurations
Compatible with AMD Radeon™ HD 6000, AMD Radeon HD 5000 and AMD Radeon HD 4000 series of graphics products
Includes the latest OpenGL driver component for Rage performance optimization

Some people have suggested that installing these drivers does in fact have an adverse effect on Battlefield 3 beta performance, AMD are said to be working on a unified driver which will optimize performance for both games, this should arrive within a few days – we will keep you posted as we hear more.

We would love to hear from you if you have installed the Rage Performance Driver, if so did you notice better visuals? Feel free to go into details with your answer in the comments section.

Recently the entire AMD Mobile roadmap showed up at ZDNet, there is lots of information to get through – but we have summed things up for you and can confirm some of the most exciting news for you.

The image below clearly shows us that AMD Trinity APUs are coming very soon, apparently engineering samples of 35W and 45W quad-core APUs have been made and smartphone and tablet manufacturers should be able to get their hands on these APUs in January 2012 – which pretty much confirms that there will quad-core smartphones and tablets on the market in 2012.

AMD consider the Trinity APUs as performance and mainstream chips, the A4-3320M, A4-3330MX and A4-3305M come under the ‘Mainstream’ bracket, whilst the A8-3550MX, A8-3520M, A8-3530MX, A6-3420M and A6-3430MX come under the ‘Performance’ bracket.

As AMD has not officially announced these APUs it is quite hard to confirm clock speeds etc, therefore we will have to keep you posted as and when we hear more. To find out more about AMD’s roadmap check out the images below (all sourced from ZDNet).

We don’t have too much to go by right now, however a brief article posted on Gizmodo features an image which appears to show AMD’s roadmap for 2011 and 2012, the roadmap is split into three categories (essential, mainstream and enthusiast) and the Corona platform is in 2012′s enthusiast section.

Below we have embedded the image which we found on Gizmodo, it clearly shows that the Corona platform will be the top-end platform for desktops in AMD’s arsenal during 2012, slightly behind this is the Virgo platform and then the most basic platform will be called the Deccan platform.

So what can we expect to see from the Corona platform? Well if Gizmodo’s post turns out to be accurate we can expect an FM2 infrastructure, DDR3 support, 10 ‘Piledriver’ cores, up to 8 SATA 6Gps ports, 10 x USB 2.0 ports, 4 x USB 3.0 ports, support for RAID 0/1/5/10, next-gen AMD discrete graphics and AMD Turbo Core 3.0 support.

According to Gizmodo the ‘Piledriver’ cores which we spoke about in the last paragraph are enhanced versions of the ‘Bulldozer’ cores which we will see in processors set for arrival sometime during Q3 of this year, you can find out more about AMD’s next-generation Bulldozer cores here, we can’t wait to see just what AMD has in store with the Piledriver cores!

The image also talks about the Virgo and Deccan platforms, these both utilize the same FM2 infrastructure as the Corona platform and will feature a DirectX 11 GPU core and DDR3 support, the biggest difference is that the Virgo platform supports up to 4 Piledriver CPU cores, whilst the Deccan platform will support up to 4 Bobcat cores, needless to say that the Bobcat cores are not really comparable to the aforementioned Piledriver and Bulldozer cores.

We can’t quite imagine just how fast 10 core processors will perform for standard desktop uses, we also wonder if this sort of technology will be used in next-gen consoles such as the Xbox 720, the potential is truly huge.

The very idea was debated between gamers, with some people feeling that PC’s will always be more powerful than consoles, and the hassles are also increased with PC’s. Do you agree with this thought? On the other hand, some console gamers feel that PC gaming has better graphics now but when the next-generation consoles come it will be a few years before PC’s catch up.

It’s worth noting that the Xbox 720 (the name its become known as) and the PS4 are dedicated for gaming first and foremost, meaning that these systems are much better, cheaper, and easier for developers to create games on. The developers can get a lot more from the system as its designed with them in mind, or its meant to be.

What got our attention today was the news that AMD is claiming the Xbox 720 will top current PC graphics, which was published online by Examiner, and they quote the source as “August issue of OXM”. This is in direct contradiction to what some PC gamers feel right now, although the next-gen systems are still a couple of years away, maybe more, so its very hard to predict anything about them at this time, but this has not stopped AMD making a prediction.

The Xbox 360 had its graphics hardware supplied by AMD, so if anyone might know something about the Xbox 720 development, it could be AMD. Examiner reports the detail level in the Xbox 720 will be on the same level as Avatar, the James Cameron movie. Some people claim that this is still not possible on a PC with the best graphics, although we may disagree there.

AMD hasn’t confirmed if they’re working on the Xbox 720, Neal Robison of AMD did say that we’ve got a lot to be excited about when it comes to gaming on the next Xbox. What blew us away was a statement about A.I. in the next-gen hardware, its claimed that Robison said the A.I. will allow for games like Grand Theft Auto to have pedestrians that each have their own mentality. Gamers need to pause a moment, and just think about the potential of that possibility.

The scary thought of each Grand Theft Auto pedestrian having a personality. What is next for artificial intelligence?

Recently AnandTech got their hands on the A8-3850 and put it through its paces with benchmark tests, in CPU tests the A8-3850 performed well, however sometimes struggled to keep up with the Intel Core i3 2100, you can see the benchmark results here. In the Cinebench R10 – Multi-Threaded, x264 HD, and 7-zip benchmarks the A8-3850 outperformed all of the competition, however the Core i3 2100 outdone AMD’s APU in six out of the 10 benchmarks, we were also surprised to see that at times the A8-3850 failed to outdo the AMD Athlon II X4 635.

When it comes to the APU’s GPU performance the results are pretty impressive, you can see lots of the benchmark results here, however please remember that what we are looking at are the AMD A8-3850 (Radeon HD 6550D) results vs. the Intel Core i5 2500K (2372 drivers) as these both feature integrated GPUs, whilst the others are paired with separate GPUs. Out of the 11 comparative GPU benchmarks the A8-3850 outperforms the i5 2500K in 8 of the tests, AnandTech say that more CPU intensive games such as Starcraft II and Dragon Age prefer the Sandy Bridge offering.

In the wrap up AnandTech say that Llano should suit those of you who are looking to buy an entry-level gaming PC, we just wonder whether people are that worried about saving a few dollars which they would have spent on a separate graphics card. One thing in Llano’s favor is the fact that it fits in with the smaller, faster less and power consumption mentality which technology seems to thrive on today, it certainly shows that AMD are headed in the right direction.

If you are considering purchasing an AMD Llano APU we must tell you that these APUs use a new socket called FM1, we expect to see more and more motherboards featuring this socket soon, one thing which is worth noting is that existing socket-AM3 coolers will be compatible with FM1 motherboards, this may come in handy if you have already bought an expensive cooler.

We have embedded a couple of photos of the pin layout and FM1 socket below. Do you think that new Llano APUs will take off?