AMD unleashes Cinema 2.0

Robot wars: AMD's new chips offer impressive graphics
Robot wars: AMD's new chips offer impressive graphics

Thought the Xbox 360 and the PS3 produced top-notch graphics, unlike anything you have seen before? Think again, as AMD has been demonstrating a cinema-realistic gaming experience that’s impressive.

Cinema 2.0

Touted by its makers as Cinema 2.0, this new gaming experience utilise teraflop chips to create near-lifelike animations.

Speaking about the new tech, Rick Bergman senior vice-president of AMD said it’s “a milestone achievement in ultra-realistic and interactive visual computing" and “more powerful than every generation of game console every brought to market combined."

Demoed in San Francisco, the chips behind the awe-inducing graphics are codenamed RV770 and have even got A-List approval, with film director Robert Rodriguez commenting: “The industry has been dying for this.”

The demo that was shown used two RV770 graphics cards rated at one teraflops each, driven by an AMD Phenom X4 quad-core processor and AMD 790 FX Chipset. Powerful stuff.

Radeon 4000 series

The demo was to show the power AMD is capable of, but don’t expect the tech to come to the consumer market just yet. What's hitting shelves soon is the Radeon 4000 series range of graphics cards.

“AMD wants to enable movie studios and game developers to render 3D graphics in real time and make game graphics more like real life,” said Bergman about the possibilities of the new low-cost chips.

The Radeon 4000 series will be available in the US as of next week from $200.

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.