It boasts of a GCN Architecture and TrueAudio technology which takes your gameplay on a mind blowing level. It delivers the most realistic visuals and sound that you can ever ask for. The AMD Radeon R9 290X is also the fastest among AMD’s 200 series graphic cards.

The R9 290X features the following specs:

• 2,816 stream processing units
• Up to 1 GHz engine clock
• 4GB GDDR5 memory
• Up to 5.0Gbps memory clock speed
• 320GB/s memory bandwidth (maximum)
• 5.6 TFLOPS Single Precision compute power
• API support for DirectX® 11.2, OpenGL 4.3 and Mantle

It has also garnered mix reviews from the following tech sites:

Anandtech:

“The 290X is not only the fastest card in AMD’s 200 series lineup, but the 290 series in particular also contains the only new GPU in AMD’s latest generation of video cards. Dubbed Hawaii, with the 290 series AMD is looking to have their second wind between manufacturing node launches. By taking what they learned from Tahiti and building a refined GPU against a much more mature 28nm process – something that also opens the door to a less conservative design – AMD has been able to build a bigger, better Tahiti that continues down the path laid out by their Graphics Core Next architecture while bringing some new features to the family.”

Tom’s Hardware:

“After eight months of watching Nvidia go uncontested in the ultra-high-end graphics market, AMD has a new GPU based on existing technology that promises to challenge the top position. It gets mighty loud at times, but you can’t ignore the R9 290X’s price.”

“And now AMD is billing its new Radeon R9 290X as a ready-for-4K solution. Them’s fighting words, particularly with Ultra HD targeted as the next frontier in PC gaming. The technology is still very expensive, and it’s far from refined. But I challenge you to enjoy your favorite title on a 32”, 8.3-million-pixel screen, and then hand it back willingly. Expect 4K to be the battleground on which AMD and Nvidia drop their high-end GPUs moving forward.”

Bit-tech:

“The most important thing to say about the new Radeon R9 290X 4GB is that on the price performance scale it’s a clear winner against Nvidia’s GTX 780 3GB, at the time of writing. It undercuts it by at least £50 in the UK and $100 stateside, yet outperforms it almost universally. In doing so, it makes GTX Titan look even worse value than the GTX 780 3GB already does.”

“Compared with other AMD cards, it’s value isn’t quite as good, however. For example, while its performance is a huge jump over the R9 280X 3GB (up to 40 percent in some tests), it’s also double the price of it. Sadly, diminishing returns are to be expected with the highest end cards. We’ve also seen some very good deals on the HD 7990 6GB recently as well, although whether or not a dual GPU card is for you is another story. These cards also lack the TrueAudio DSP that the R9 290 series features, although this is mostly an unproven technology for now.”

“The card is a decent enough overclocker, although the Overdrive interface certainly needs some work. That said, it shouldn’t be long before better third party overclocking utilities fully support the card’s new approach to overclocking.”

TechPowerUp:

“The Radeon R9 290X is an important product for AMD because it’s the first truly new high-end graphics chip from the company in a very long time (21 months). AMD’s other late 2013 graphics card launches, led by the Radeon R9 280X, are merely rebrands of the company’s close to two-year old HD 7000 series, with price adjustments and repositioning within the product-stack. We must point out that NVIDIA didn’t handle its lineup any differently. Barring the GTX TITAN and its cut-down GTX 780, the rest of the GTX 700 lineup is largely derived from the previous generation GTX 600 series. Under the Radeon R9 290X’s skin is the swanky new 6.2 billion-transistor “Hawaii” silicon. Built on the existing 28 nanometer silicon fabrication process, it has solid credentials on paper, looking NVIDIA’s GTX TITAN and the GK110 silicon it’s based on right in the eye.”

Guru 3D:

“With the release of the Radeon R9 290X series AMD brings an incredibly fast product to the market. It rocks all performance scores in pretty much any game to date. Having that much raw unadulterated horsepower under the hood will bring options to the table. You play your games at 2560×1440 and flick on every quality setting that you can think of. Even then the cards will do a terrific job. For the few of you that already made the step towards UHD or 4K gaming at 3840 x 2160 that where these card do make sense. Admittedly just one 290X would probably be borderline acceptable when you select the finest image quality settings. So I foresee that the Ultra High Definition games simply will go for two R9-290X cards setup in Crossfire, which would be my recommendation. The product is often as fast or faster then a GeForce GTX Titan, whilst it is going to be priced a good chunk below the GeForce GTX 780. So that in retrospect means (even at this price level) performance for money. Honestly I am really excited to see prices below 499 EUR (incl VAT for this little powerhouse of a graphics card. But let’s bullet some stuff up and walk through the several segments and experiences from the review.”

The AMD Radeon R9 290X is now available in the market for $549.

Their spokesperson has confirmed than an unnamed driver issue has plagued their latest graphics boards and caused the delay. AMD was said to have done a retest on the boards using a new driver that will boost its performance.

The company has not revealed the price of the R9 290.

AMD Launches New Platform for Dedicated Web Hosting Providers

New AMD Opteronâ„¢ 3200 Series Processor Family Changes Industry Economics for Single-Socket, Dedicated Hosting and Cloud customers

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -3/20/2012

AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the latest solution as part of its ongoing Web/Cloud initiative with the launch of the new AMD Opteronâ„¢ 3200 Series processor. Dedicated Web hosting customers seeking enterprise-class reliability have a new choice that delivers:
• Great value with up to 38% better price performance1 and up to 19% less power per core2 than the competition;
• ECC memory and server reliability features at a low price-point;
• Fast hardware payback – In as few as 7 months hosting fees can cover hardware costs – up to 14% quicker than with the competition3;
• Efficient economics for the Cloud with twice the core density per rack4.

“In today’s economic environment, dedicated hosting providers need their data centers to become profit centers faster than ever,” said Patrick Patla, corporate vice president and general manager, Commercial Business, AMD. “With the new AMD Opteronâ„¢ 3000 Series platform, Web and Cloud customers no longer have to compromise with desktop-class platforms in order to hit certain price points. Now they have all the benefits of a true server-class product at desktop-class price points. This helps rapidly-growing hosting customers achieve fast payback in their incredibly dense, power-efficient environments.”

Since the launch of its new core server architecture, and AMD Opteron 4200 and 6200 Series processors last November, AMD unveiled a disruptive server strategy and intentions to leverage its leading graphics IP while driving down the power in future SoC offerings. As part of accelerating this, AMD recently announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Cloud pioneer SeaMicro.

Today AMD has delivered on its promise of a low-power, single-socket solution that brings server functionality with desktop economics. The AMD Opteron 3000 Series platform is targeted to the dense, power efficient 1P Web hosting/Web server market. Available in either 4- or 8-core CPUs, the AMD Opteron 3200 Series processor is shipping today in platforms from MSI, Tyan, Fujitsu and Dell. Based on the “Bulldozer” core, the AMD Opteron 3000 Series platform leverages Socket AM3+ and provides customers with the cost savings associated with a “desktop-like” infrastructure, yet still offers server-class reliability, enterprise-class silicon validation/testing, security features and server OS certification.

“AMD is a great partner, and we’re excited about the new AMD Opteron 3200 Series CPU. It allows us to create a custom design for our DCS customers, and deliver a compelling combination of performance and energy efficiency, ” says Dell Data Center Solutions’ Steve Cumings. “As the leader in the Density-Optimized market segment, we require focused partner technology within industry standards – and this is a good fit for our customers.”

Key Facts, Performance and Technical Detail

• 45W to 65W TDP
• 2.7 GHz base frequency, up to 3.7 GHz frequency using AMD Turbo CORE technology5
• 4- and 8-core options
• 2 DDR3 memory channels supporting ECC UDIMM
• 1333, 1600, 1866 MHz memory speed6
• Supports 1.5V, 2Rank
• Up to 32GB memory capacity
• Supports up to 2 DIMMs per memory channel
• Total Cache: 16MB for 8-core, 8MB for 4-core
• L2 Cache: up to 8MB total
• L3 Cache: up to 8MB total

AMD to Acquire SeaMicro: Accelerates Disruptive Server Strategy

SeaMicro Low-Power, High-Bandwidth Microserver Solutions Set the Stage for AMD’s Disruptive Approach To Lead Fast-Growing Cloud Data Center Market

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -2/29/2012
AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SeaMicro, a pioneer in energy-efficient, high-bandwidth microservers, for approximately $334 million, of which approximately $281 million will be paid in cash. Through the acquisition of SeaMicro, AMD will be accelerating its strategy to deliver disruptive server technology to its OEM customers serving cloud-centric data centers. With SeaMicro’s fabric technology and system-level design capabilities, AMD will be uniquely positioned to offer industry-leading server building blocks tuned for the fastest-growing workloads such as dynamic web content, social networking, search and video.

AMD’s server technology combined with SeaMicro technology provides customers with a range of processor choices and platforms that can help significantly reduce data center complexity, cost and energy consumption while improving performance. AMD plans to offer the first AMD Opteronâ„¢ processor-based solutions that combine AMD and SeaMicro technology in the second half of 2012. The company remains firmly committed to its traditional server business, and will continue to focus and invest in this area.

“By acquiring SeaMicro, we are accelerating AMD’s transformation into an agile, disruptive innovator capable of staking a data center leadership position,” said Rory Read, president and CEO, AMD. “SeaMicro is a pioneer in low-power server technology. The unmatched combination of AMD’s processing capabilities, SeaMicro’s system and fabric technology, and our ambidextrous technology approach uniquely positions AMD with a compelling, differentiated position to attack the fastest growing segment of the server market.”

SeaMicro technologies offer substantial advantages in large data center and cloud environments. Cloud data centers are projected to be the fastest growing segment of the server market through 2015, according to IDC1.

Current systems featuring SeaMicro technology typically use one quarter the power and take one sixth the space of traditional servers with the same compute performance, yet deliver up to 12 times the bandwidth per core2.

Foremost among SeaMicro’s innovations is their supercompute fabric, which connects thousands of processor cores, memory, storage and input/output traffic. SeaMicro’s fabric supports multiple processor instruction sets. SeaMicro solutions are currently deployed in multiple sites across the world. AMD will continue to support all current SeaMicro customers while accelerating plans to deliver new platforms that combine AMD and SeaMicro technology and enable AMD’s OEM partners to bring differentiated solutions to market.

“Cloud computing has brought a sea change to the data center–dramatically altering the economics of compute by changing the workload and optimal characteristics of a server,” said Andrew Feldman, SeaMicro CEO, who will become general manager of AMD’s newly created Data Center Server Solutions business. “SeaMicro was founded to dramatically reduce the power consumed by servers, while increasing compute density and bandwidth. By becoming a part of AMD, we will have access to new markets, resources, technology, and scale that will provide us with the opportunity to work tightly with our OEM partners as we fundamentally change the server market.”

The acquisition does not change AMD’s 2012 financial guidance and the transaction is expected to be accretive to earnings after 2012. AMD will fund the cash portion of the acquisition with existing cash reserves.

We recently covered the mobile GPU landscape, with a discussion of the various performance levels and price segments. The price/performance ratio is actually pretty similar between AMD and NVIDIA mobile GPUs (at least until we hit the top-tier models), and both have a decent number of design wins with notebook ODMs. The current mobile performance crown goes to NVIDIA’s recently launched GTX 580M, but along with the performance crown comes a hefty price and performance bill that needs to be paid. AMD’s top mobile part prior to today’s announcement is the 6970M, which is basically a lower clocked version of the desktop Barts core with some of the Stream processors disabled (essentially a mobile HD 6850). Our testing has shown the 6970M to offer just slightly less performance on average compared to the GTX 485M, but interestingly enough NVIDIA managed to use less power in low/idle loads than AMD. Of course, even the HD 6970M is a trimmed Barts core, and there’s still the desktop 6950/6970 Cayman core that has yet to see a mobile variant, which brings us to today’s announcement.

If you were hoping to see a truly crazy mobile GPU running off the Cayman architecture, we’re unfortunately not getting that. Unlike the desktop 6990, we’re also not talking about a dual-GPU in a single card solution. Instead, the HD 6990M will be a full Barts core, with all 1120 shaders enabled. (The closest desktop equivalent is the HD 6870, which comes clocked at 900MHz, 25% higher than the 6990M.) Besides the now-standard DX11 support that AMD has been shipping since the first HD 5000 parts, 6990M also includes with HD3D (stereoscopic 3D) and OpenCL 4.1 support.

Looking at the mobile parts, the shader count gives the 6990M an immediate 17% boost in performance relative to the 6970M, and with a slightly higher cores clock as well (715MHz on the 6990M vs. 680MHz on the 6970M), we’re looking at up to 23% higher performance than the 6970M. Both the 6970M and 6990M continue to feature 3600MHz GDDR5 memory, although the 6990M comes with 2GB instead of 1GB. AMD also enabled OverDrive up to 740MHz for the 6990M if you want to try some quick overclocking. Here’s how performance between the AMD parts stacks up, according to AMD’s internal testing (using a desktop 3.4GHz Phenom II CPU):

On the other side of the fence, NVIDIA’s GTX 580M has the same number of CUDA cores as the GTX 485M (384 cores), but with an 8% increase in clock speed. (The closets desktop equivalent is the GTX 560 Ti, which comes clocked 37% higher than the 580M.) Our earlier testing of the 485M and 6970M resulted in nearly identical average gaming performance across eight tested games, with both sides winning a few titles. In theory, then, HD 6990M should retake the mobile performance crown given the greater increase in compute and clock speeds relative to the second-tier parts. The following slide uses simulated performance (e.g. a downclocked desktop GTX 560 Ti GPU running at mobile speeds and with only 1GB GDDR5, again with a 3.4GHz Phenom II CPU), so take these results with a grain of salt:

Both the AMD and NVIDIA parts should be plenty fast for 1080p mobile gaming, so the real question is more likely to be who offers the best overall value. Sure, value in a gaming notebook is something of an oxymoron, but unless you absolutely need CUDA/PhysX support on the NVIDIA side or are looking at Bitcoin mining on the AMD side, performance is going to be close enough that pricing will sway the vote. Availability of the 6990M starts today, with the Alienware M18x coming in both single and CrossFire configurations. Clevo will also support the HD 6990M in their P170HM, P150HM, and X7200 notebooks, which means we’ll see whitebooks from the usual suspects like Eurocom, AVADirect, and others. Here's AMD's complete high-end mobile GPU lineup:

As we've noted in the past, the 6000M consists of parts from both the Evergreen and Northern Islands series of graphics chips. For many users, the difference between the two isn't all that important, but Northern Islands does upgrade the video engine to UVD3 where Evergreen is UVD2.2. Also worth remembering is that the 6800M parts are really just renamed 5800M parts with slightly altered clocks in some cases, so they're not as attractive as the 6900M parts. Finally, the 6800M parts can come with either GDDR5 or DDR3, the latter being significantly slower and thus less desirable. Our table only uses the specs from GDDR5 variants, so if you're shopping for a 6800M make sure you get a GDDR5 model.

Outside of their newest mobile GPU, we also asked AMD about the current state of their switchable graphics on Intel platforms. AMD says they should have some partners releasing laptops with application based switching (e.g. similar to NVIDIA’s Optimus), but that will likely be with lower performance GPUs. In contrast, NVIDIA is touting Optimus support on certain GTX 580M configurations, though as always it’s up to the notebook vendors to utilize the feature. We haven’t had a chance to get hands on time with any form of AMD switchable graphics for some time, so the jury is still out. We hope to have an appropriate laptop for testing in the not-too-distant future, at which time we’ll be able to provide a better answer on which solution is the overall winner.

As for the question of who actually takes home the mobile gaming performance crown, we hope to have both GTX 580M and HD 6990M notebooks for testing in the coming weeks. On paper and using our previous 6970M and GTX 485M results, it looks like the 6990M should come out on top, but with various driver updates in the past several months we’re not ready to declare an official winner. If you’re looking for more than a few slides and potentially biased game selections, stay tuned: we’ll provide our usual in-depth look at real-world performance as soon as we can get hardware into our labs. Our money is still going to be on whoever can come in at a lower price point, and if recent history is any indication, that will likely be AMD with the 6990M.

Gateway has outed its updated ID and NV notebook ranges, offering Sandy Bridge processors, USB 3.0 and – on select models – NVIDIA Optimus graphics switching. The Gateway ID47 series is particularly slick, using new LCD display technology to fit a 14-inch edge-to-edge panel into a notebook you’d more commonly find with a 13.3-inch screen.

The Gateway ID47H02u has a Core i5-2410M 2.3GHz processor, 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 500GB 5,400rpm hard-drive, DVD burner and Intel HD Graphics 3000 GPU, and is priced at $699.99. If you don’t mind taking a trip to Canada, however, and spending CA$799, you can get the ID47H03h, which has the same CPU but throws in 6GB of DDR3 memory, a 750GB hard-drive and NVIDIA GeForce TG 540M graphics with 1GB of video RAM and Optimus auto-switching. Canadians will also get the CA$899 ID57H03h, with a 15.6-inch display and 8GB of DDR3 memory, along with the same GPU and HDD as the ID47H03h.

In the US, the 15.6-inch segment is catered for by the NV55S05u, a $629.99 notebook with an AMD A8-3500M quadcore 1.5GHz APU (that can overclock to 2.4GHz), AMD Radeon HD 6620G graphics, 6GB of DDR3 RAM, a 640GB hard-drive and DVD burner. All of the models have an HDMI port, a USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 ports, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, WiFi b/g/n, stereo speakers and a copy of Windows 7.

Battery life on the 14-inchers is up to 8hrs, while the ID57H03h can also run at up to 8hrs. The AMD-based NV55S05u can go for up to 4hrs, and has a smaller battery as standard. All of the new ID and NV models are on sale now.

It’s also a great time to build an Intel-based computer. The successor to LGA 1155 (the Sandy Bridge socket), LGA 2011, is not due out until late this year, and looks to supersede LGA 1366 at Intel’s highest-end of the desktop CPU spectrum. Other than supporting Sandy Bridge-E CPUs, LGA 2011 will offer PCIe 3 (which current GPUs can’t take advantage of) and native USB 3.0 (even though third-party USB 3.0 controllers are already shipping on many Intel and AMD motherboards). Considering how capable the Core i5-2500K and Core i7-2600K are today, it’s unlikely Sandy Bridge-E will field any model that’s astonishingly faster than what’s already available. Thus, if you buy a Core i7-2600K now, you’ll be at the near pinnacle of desktop computing for at least 5-6 months. I think there are times to buy and times to wait. It’s a bad idea to buy right before a lineup refresh (as is the case with AMD today), but it’s also unwise to delay building a system to hold out for the next big thing when that’s half a year away and unlikely to be that much better!

All of the boards in the series use the dual intelligent Processors 2 tech with DIGI+ VRM power delivery for precision power adjustment and control. The boards also provide extra DRAM power to increase stability and has a feature packed BIOS. It sounds like the family will be overclocker friendly.

The mainboards also supports SATA 6Gb/s storage interface with RAID 0/1/10 support. The chipset in the boards also supports USB 3.0 natively with no need for a secondary controller. Intel still lacks native support for USB 3.0 and all Intel chipset boards are using a secondary controller for USB 3.0 ports. There is no word on when these boards will land and how much they will cost.

You can read more about the decision on Cheif Marketing Officer (CMO) Nigel Dessau’s blog, but this announcement comes at an interesting time since BAPCo just shipped us copies of the final SM12 release. We haven’t had a chance to run the suite yet, and we’ll still have a look at the results and see how AMD and Intel platforms compare at some point, but it looks like we have a foregone conclusion: Intel will come out ahead. What we really need to examine is why Intel gets a better score.

If you’ve been reading AnandTech for any length of time, you’ll know that we place a lot more weight on real-world benchmarks rather than synthetic tests, but certain tasks can be very difficult to test in a meaningful way. How do you measure every day tasks like surfing the web in a meaningful way when most CPUs are 95% idle performing that task? When we really look at the market right now, in many cases we can conclude that just about any current computer will be fast enough for 90% of users. If you want to surf the Internet, write email, work in Office applications, watch some movies, listen to music, etc. you can do that on anything from a lowly AMD Brazos netbook to a hex-core monster system. Yes, we did leave out Atom, because there are certain areas where it falls short—specifically, certain movie formats prove to be too much for the current Atom platform, particularly if you’re looking at HD H.264 content (e.g. YouTube and Hulu).

Reading through AMD’s announcement and Nigel’s blog, it’s pretty clear what AMD is after: they want the GPU to play a more prominent role in measurements of overall system performance. On the one hand, we could say that AMD is simply trying to get benchmarks to favor their APUs, since Brazos and Llano easily surpass the Intel competition when it comes to graphics and video prowess. This would certainly be true, but then we also have to consider what users are actually doing with their PCs. SYSmark has always included a variety of tests, and certainly knowing how fast your computer is in regards to Excel performance can be useful. However, AMD claims that a disproportionate weight is given to some tests, with mention of optical character recognition and file compression activities in particular.

We don’t have the full SM12 whitepaper yet, but we can look at the list of applications that are tested, and a few things immediately stand out. There are two web browsers in the list, but both versions are now outdated. Internet Explorer 8 has been replaced by Internet Explorer 9, and Firefox 3.6 is replaced by Firefox 4.0—with Firefox 5 just around the corner. Without newer browsers, HTML5 is basically untested by SM12, and while we understand that SM12 has been in development for a while, for something calling itself 2012 to include mostly 2010 applications feels out of place. Considering IE9 and FF4 both shift to GPU-accelerated engines, AMD would certainly have benefited from the use of the latest versions. The remaining applications look reasonable, but again we have no information on weighting of scores, so we’ll have to see how the results pan out.

Ultimately, the main thing to take away from all of this is that, just like the PCMark, 3DMark, Cinebench, SunSpider, etc. benchmarks we routinely refer to, SYSmark 2012 is merely one more tool to analyze system performance. It will be interesting to see how other elements—like the presence or lack of an SSD—impact the score. In our opinion most users would benefit far more from running something like Llano with an SSD as opposed to Sandy Bridge with an HDD, so the CPU/GPU/APU are not the only factors, but it still depends on your intended use. If you’re running a server, obviously the demands placed on the system will be far different from the average home computer. Multimedia professionals that spend a lot of time in Adobe Photoshop and/or Premiere likewise have different needs.

Is AMD right? Is heterogeneous (e.g. CPU and GPU working together) computing more important now than raw CPU performance, or is SYSmark12 merely proving what we already know: Sandy Bridge is really fast? Let us know what you think, but as always remember that when you’re looking at benchmark charts, take a minute to think about what the bars actually represent. The full news release is below, but again you can find substantially more detail in Dessau’s blog.

Update: It turns out AMD is not the only party to have left the BAPCo consortium recently. We've just confirmed with NVIDIA that they have also left the BAPCo consortium. No reason was given.

Update 2: BAPCo has released a statement in return. The consortium notes that AMD approved 80% of the development milestones and that AMD was never threatened with expulsion. The full statement is attached below.

Update 3: We've finally gotten official confirmation (as rumored earlier) that VIA has also left the consortium. They have sent a short statement to SemiAccurate which we have included below. The basis of their complaints are much the same as AMD's: they don't consider SYSMark 2012 to reflect real world usage.

AMD Will Not Endorse SYSmark 2012 Benchmark

— AMD Separates from Association with Industry Group BAPCo —

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — 21, 2011 — AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced that it will not endorse the SYSmark 2012 Benchmark (SM2012), which is published by BAPCo (Business Applications Performance Corporation). Along with the withdrawal of support, AMD has resigned from the BAPCo organization.

“Technology is evolving at an incredible pace, and customers need clear and reliable measurements to understand the expected performance and value of their systems,” said Nigel Dessau, senior vice president and Chief Marketing Officer at AMD. “AMD does not believe SM2012 achieves this objective. Hence AMD cannot endorse or support SM2012 or remain part of the BAPCo consortium.”

AMD will only endorse benchmarks based on real-world computing models and software applications, and which provide useful and relevant information. AMD believes benchmarks should be constructed to provide unbiased results and be transparent to customers making decisions based on those results. Currently, AMD is evaluating other benchmarking alternatives, including encouraging the creation of an industry consortium to establish an open benchmark to measure overall system performance.

AMD encourages anyone wanting more details about the construction and scoring methodology of the SM2012 benchmark to contact BAPCo. For more details on AMD’s decision to exit BAPCo, please read AMD’s Executive Blog authored by Nigel Dessau.

BAPCo® Reaffirms Open Development Process For SYSmark® 2012

SAN MATEO, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Business Applications Performance Corporation (BAPCo®) is a non-profit consortium made up of many of the leaders in the high tech field, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, Intel, Lenovo, Microsoft, Samsung, Seagate, Sony, Toshiba and ARCintuition. For nearly 20 years BAPCo has provided real world application based benchmarks which are used by organizations worldwide. SYSmark® 2012 is the latest release of the premiere application based performance benchmark. Applications used in SYSmark 2012 were selected based on market research and include Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe Acrobat, WinZip, Autodesk AutoCAD and 3ds Max, and others.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) was, until recently, a long standing member of BAPCo. We welcomed AMD’s full participation in the two year development cycle of SYSmark 2012, AMD’s leadership role in creating the development process that BAPCo uses today and in providing expert resources for developing the workload contents. Each member in BAPCo gets one vote on any proposals made by member companies. AMD voted in support of over 80% of the SYSmark 2012 development milestones, and were supported by BAPCo in 100% of the SYSmark 2012 proposals they put forward to the consortium.

BAPCo also notes for the record that, contrary to the false assertion by AMD, BAPCo never threatened AMD with expulsion from the consortium, despite previous violations of its obligations to BAPCo under the consortium member agreement.

BAPCo is disappointed that a former member of the consortium has chosen once more to violate the confidentiality agreement they signed, in an attempt to dissuade customers from using SYSmark to assess the performance of their systems. BAPCo believes the performance measured in each of the six scenarios in SYSmark 2012, which is based on the research of its membership, fairly reflects the performance that users will see when fully utilizing the included applications.

VIA's Statement About Leaving The BAPCo Consortium

VIA today confirmed reports that we have tendered our resignation to BAPCo. We strongly believe that the benchmarking applications tests developed for SYSmark 2012 and EEcoMark 2.0 do not accurately reflect real world PC usage scenarios and workloads and therefore feel we can no longer remain as a member of the organization.

We hope that the industry can adopt a much more open and transparent process for developing fair and objective benchmarks that accurately measure real world PC performance and are committed to working with companies that share our vision.