The Great Chip Wars, as we’ve come to know them, ended this week — courtesy of a new marketing campaign from Advanced Micro Devices.

AMD has decided to sell its products under the Vision banner, a slogan that emphasizes the strengths of its graphics chip instead of promoting the abilities of its CPUs, or traditional workhorse chips. PC makers and retailers will promote three flavors of AMD-based computers, called See, Share and Create models.

After hearing from multiple sources spanning on several continents, we can be fairly certain that the samples of nVidia's first DirectX 11 GPU are going to depart from engineering labs. Just like GT200, GT300 spent several months in the Labs while the drivers were being created.

Given that today's GeForce drivers contain more code than Windows XP core, we aren't surprised that nVidia is taking time to get the product ready for market. Just like some media were suggesting that GT200 taped out in March 2008 [while some developers got the GT200 cards as early as three months before that tape out story], GT300 needs time [and human resources] to finish the development. GT300 is the base graphics architecture not just for the standard desktop or notebook graphics, but also as a future graphics base for the Tegra generation of products. And with recent rumors of nVidia implementing ECC feature into the GPU [which is a given, since GDDR5 comes with ECC], Tesla parts should be quite interesting as well.

Only yesterday we reported that AMDs revealed their new generation of video cards with up to 1600 stream processors and 80 TMUs. Now we are able to have a more detailed look at the HD 5870, AMDs new showpiece.

The following chart displays HD 5870s final performances in comparison to the older HD 4870 and HD 4890:

Dubbed Radeon HD 5870. We received some details about the name of the chip that ATI codenamed Cypress which we have called RV870. The internal generation codename is Evergreen and this name represents the entire DirectX 11 generation of ATI cards.

The top card is named Radeon HD 5870 but the company plans two versions, one with 2GB memory and one with 1GB.

The Radeon HD 5870 1GB should sell for $399 at launch, while Radeon HD 5870 2GB should sell for $449. At the same time, the slower Radeon HD 5850 with 1GB memory will sell for $299. The launch date for all three cards is September 23rd in Europe whereas in the US we are talking about the 22nd.

Say you're AMD, and you make graphics chips that nearly double in performance with every generation. Yet games haven't been getting all that much more demanding over time. What would you do with all of that excess power, especially if you wanted to stir up interest in your latest product? AMD's answer at the moment is a new feature it calls Eyefinity.

By now, many of you are probably aware that the launch of AMD's next-generation, DirectX 11-compliant graphics cards is imminent. Rumors about the launch and the products themselves has been trickling out for quite a while now and lots of information--some right and some wrong--is already available at various places around the web. While we can't disclose any detailed specifications or product specifics just yet, we do have some information about a new feature being implemented in the next-gen Radeons that we are able to share with you now.

SUS, the leading provider of innovative motherboard solutions, today unveiled the ASUS P7P55 WS SuperComputer motherboard. Built around the Intel® P55 Express chipset, it features the new LGA1156 socket for next-generation Intel® Core i5 processors and DDR3-2133 (O.C.) memory for outstanding yet cost-effective performance. To enable multiple-GPU rendering, the motherboard supports both 3-way and 2-way graphics card configurations based on SLI or CrossFireX technology.

Intel is launching a new CPU socket called LGA1156 with a new chipset, P55. The first three CPUs based on this new platform will be Core i5-750 (2.66 GHz), Core i7-860 (2.80 GHz) and Core i7-870 (2.93 GHz), all based on the new "Lynnfield" core. We had the pleasure to receive a Core i5-750 and a Core i7-870 sample from Intel before their launch, so let's take a look on their performance compared to other CPUs from Intel.

Today Intel are releasing CPUs based on the Nehalem architecture but with prices and specifications designed to appeal to mainstream consumers. Today we will be putting two of these models through their paces and comparing them to existing i7 CPUs as well as AMDs top Phenom 2 model and the best Core 2 CPU. In addition to that we will cover various memory configurations and throw a handful of the more interesting P55 based motherboards into the mix with two aftermarket coolers.

We've been hearing a lot about the new Core i5/i7 CPU's, and generally we like to reserve our opinion until the test results are in. We've benched the Core i5 750 and Core i7 870 extensively. We've added a bevvy of tests to our benchmarking routine and Core i5/i7 LGA 1156 is looking pretty good.