Hong Kong-based video card manufacturer Palit is excited about its Revolution 700 Deluxe video card -- so much so that we're a little frightened by the force of its enthusiasm. The ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 GPU is no slouch to begin with, but this iteration has cores overclocked to 750MHz and 2GB of GDDR5 memory at a face-melting 3.8GHz. As imposing as clock speeds are, they likely can't measure up to the epic hype from Palit. "All other cards beware," the press release boldly cries, "there is a new king in town and it only comes from Palit!" Tap the read link for the whole thing -- best enjoyed while listening to the Mortal Kombat theme song.

Benchmarks and reviews of Intel's Core i7 processors are pouring in, and while mere mortals must wait till later this month to get their hands on the hardware, we spent much of our weekend working overtime with Crysis, Fallout 3, and Age of Conan on an $8,238 Core i7 965-equipped Mach V gaming desktop from boutique PC manufacturer Falcon Northwest. It's got the works and then some: liquid cooling, dual ATI Radeon 4870X2 graphics cards with 2GB of RAM on-board, 12 GB of DDR3 RAM, Blu-ray, HD-DVD (yes, you read that right), and over a terabyte of storage. Based on our dozen or so hours of grueling, utterly boring hands-on tests, all three games were plenty playable maxed out at 1920 x 1080 resolution with 4x anti-aliasing -- only Crysis ever dipped below 40 frames per second, and we never saw Fallout 3 under 60. We sincerely hope you appreciate the backbreaking, soulcrushingly hard work we do for you -- more photos and benchmarks (including Crysis) in the gallery.

NVIDIA managed to generate quite a bit of interest with its $59 GeForce 9400 GT graphics card, and it looks like rival AMD is now taking things one step further with not one but two cards that are even cheaper. Those include the $55 ATI Radeon HD 4550 and the $39 ATI Radeon HD 4350, which pack 512MB and 256MB of memory, respectively, along with some other surprisingly not too shabby specs. Namely, each card packs DirectX 10.1 support, an HDMI port with support for 7.1 channel audio, upscaling "beyond 1080p," and even support for ATI's CrossFireX technology in case you want to pair two of them up. As usual, you can expect the cards to be available from a whole host of different manufacturers, at least some of which should have cards available by October, if not sooner.

[Via bit-tech.net]

AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4870 has been a bit of a mystery since word of the card first leaked out alongside the slightly lower-end Radeon HD 4850, but it looks like things are finally clearing up, with AMD itself first getting official about the card and the first hands-on previews of the card now turning up. As [H] Enthusiast reports, it looks like this one was well worth the wait, with it saying that its gameplay experiences with the card were "phenomenal." That includes being able to play Crysis at 1920x1200 with all in-game settings cranked to "high" -- a recipe for disaster on most cards, but apparently more than playable on the 4870 X2 (with some other suitably high end hardware to match, of course). What's more, the site says the card's performance could get even better by the time it's officially released, as its test card was using a beta firmware that still leaves some room for improvement. Until then, you can hit up the link below for all the current numbers.

AMD has already gotten its official business with its new Radeon HD 4850 series out the way, and it now looks like the flood of various iterations is in full swing, with at least three manufacturers already pushing cards out the door. Among the first out of the gate is relative upstart Force3D, which has not only let loose a Radeon HD 4850 card, but a Radeon HD 4870 as well, the latter of which AMD still seems to be staying mum about. As HEXUS.net reports, however, this particular version will boast a core frequency of 750MHz, along with 512MB of GDDR5 memory and an effective clock speed of 3,600MHz. According to DigiTimes, Asustek also has a pair of similar Radeon HD 4870 cards set for release, along with a pair of HD 4850 cards packing 1GB and 512MB of DDR3 memory, while GeCube seems to be content to launch just a single 4850 with 512MB of DDR3 memory. Hit up the links below for the full rundown of specs, which unfortunately doens't include prices just yet.

Read - HEXUS.net, "Force3D jumps the gun, launches its Radeon HD 4870"
Read - DigiTimes, "Asustek and GeCube launch ATI Radeon HD 4850-based graphics cards"

[Via TG Daily, thanks Kris120890]