AMD today officially announced the arrival of the ATI Radeon HD 2600 and ATI Radeon HD 2400 series, the mid-range and entry-level graphics processors in the ATI Radeon HD 2000 series.

These next-generation graphics processing units (GPU) support Windows Vista with DirectX 10 graphics, and built-in multimedia functions to deliver HD video playback on the PC. Prices range from USD $89-$149 (SEP) for the ATI Radeon HD 2600 series and USD $50-$85 (SEP) for the ATI Radeon HD 2400 series.

The ATI Radeon HD 2600 and ATI Radeon HD 2400 series promise to deliver remarkable gaming performance. The new chips sport more than half a billion transistors, hundreds of processing engines and accompanied by more than half a gigabyte of memory. The DirectX 10 support is definitely the strong weapon of the new cards, although only a handful of games take advantage of DirectX 10 now. Highly anticipated releases are expected later this year including jungle shooter "Crysis," online role-playing game "Age of Conan" and "Unreal Tournament 3" .

The second-generation unified shader architecture delivers a balance of high performance, advanced visual effects and realism for both the casual and avid gamer. Both series feature native ATI CrossFire technology, allowing for a wider variety of multi-GPU configurations, for all those gamers who want more horsepower.

Both series also feature the Unified Video Decoder (UVD) for hardware HD video processing and HDMI with built-in HD audio controller for easy connection to big-screens.

With support for Blu-ray discs and HD DVDs, CyberLink's PowerDVD Ultra, now offers support for UVD technology from AMD, promising low CPU utilization.

Using an energy-efficient 65 nm process technology to reduce power consumption, certain ATI Radeon HD 2600 series and ATI Radeon HD 2400 series models are designed to be passively cooled for a quieter home theatre experience. Availability for both products is expected in early July.