With the updated Catalyst 9.11 drivers, our results were a lot better than before. Previously, using Flash 10.0 we were unable to view either of the Hulu videos (720p or 480p) in full screen mode without severe stuttering. YouTube HD on the other hand worked fine with 0 dropped frames. Moving to Flash 10.1 with DXVA GPU acceleration, we now see smooth frame rates on all Hulu content and lower CPU usage for both Hulu and YouTube videos. YouTube CPU usage on the Prince of Persia trailer drops 31%, Hulu's Legend of the Seeker drops CPU use 20% while nearly doubling the frame rate (i.e. from dropping half the frames to showing everything), and 480p Hulu drops CPU usage 10% with frame rates almost tripling (from ~13 FPS to over 30 FPS for what appears to be 30 FPS video content).

In addition to reference clocked versions, Sapphire and XFX are apparently first AIB partners that are going to do factory overclocked HD 5970 cards. We already told you that HD 5970 might be an overclocking beast and there might be a lot of room for additional overclocking. It looks like the chip can take it easily and AMD could have dropped it in order to maintain the 294W TDP.

Also from them is news on Powercolor announcing a 5970.

Powercolor is one of many AMD AIB partners that will launch its HD 5970 graphics cards, and as you might have guessed, every card is pretty much the same and there is no word on factory overclocks or non-reference coolers, at least not yet.

If you want one, sorry, Fudo also says they sold out in a day.

ATI partners have told Fudzilla that they received decent quantities of dual-chip Radeon HD 5970 cards, but due to heavy pre-orders and huge interest, they sold out all they had in matter of hours.

Since this is a two way street, AMD will also give some patents to Intel and make the competition less exciting. Nehalem looks much like AMD’s Barcelona and AMD will concentrate on catching up with Intel and bringing innovations that should help the company in 2011 to introduce some cool products such as Fusion as well as its Bulldozer savior core.

On November 17, 2009 AMD made a Form 8-K filing with the SEC regarding the Company’s settlement and patent cross-license agreements with Intel. A redacted version of AMD and Intel’s patent cross-license agreement is now publicly available as part of the attached Form 8-K filing. GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Intel also reached a patent agreement. The specific terms of that agreement are confidential.

The key takeaways from the new AMD, Intel patent cross-license agreement are as follows:


* AMD and Intel obtain patent rights from a new patent cross-license, with a capture period that has been extended five years.
* The licenses are now royalty free for both parties.
* AMD has broad have made rights including for x86 devices.

* 44-year IBM veteran led the company’s innovation and technology −

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Nov. 17, 2009 — AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that Nicholas M. Donofrio, 64, has been appointed to the company’s board of directors. Donofrio spent 44 years at IBM, starting as a logic and memory chip designer and rising to lead the company’s technology strategy and innovation.
“Nick is a highly-respected technology and business leader who has driven some of the industry’s most successful and important technology initiatives during the past four decades,” said Bruce Claflin, chairman, AMD Board of Directors. “He will be a great addition to our board.”
Prior to his retirement from IBM in 2008, Donofrio was an IBM fellow and executive vice president of innovation and technology. His focus on innovation contributed to IBM being awarded the highest number of patents of any company for 13 consecutive years. During his career, Donofrio held a variety of leadership roles in IBM’s server, advanced workstations, personal computing, manufacturing and semiconductor development divisions.
Donofrio also serves as a board member for The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation and Liberty Mutual. He is on the board of trustees for the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and is co-chair of the New York Hall of Science Board of Trustees.

Donofrio holds a bachelor’s degree from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a master’s degree from Syracuse University.

We have just released ATI Catalyst™ 9.11 for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Linux platforms on http://www.amd.com

Highlights of the ATI Catalyst™ 9.11 Windows release include:


New Features

GPU Acceleration of H.264 video content using Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta
 This release of ATI Catalyst™ supports the new Hardware Acceleration features of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta for video encoded in the H.264 format. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta introduces hardware-based H.264 video decoding to deliver smooth video playback, reduce system resource utilization, and preserve battery life. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta is expected to be available for download from Adobe Labs (labs.adobe.com) before the end of the year. This feature is supported on the ATI Radeon HD 5800, ATI Radeon HD 5700 and ATI Radeon HD 4000 Series of products.


High Quality downscaling for video transcoding MSE
 This release of ATI Catalyst™ includes an enhancement for the ATI Video converter for users transcoding high quality interlaced content (1920x1080i @60i videos) down to small resolution progressive content (320x240 @30p - iPod videos as an example), by maintaining high visual quality when down-scaling by a significant amount and converting interlaced video content to progressive.


Highlights of the Linux ATI Catalyst™ 9.11 release include:

New Features

Support for new Linux operating systems
• This release of ATI Catalyst™ Linux introduces support for the following new operating systems:
o RHEL 5.4 support
o openSUSE 11.2 early look support