Building on the success of the recently launched ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card AMD today announced availability of a factory overclocked graphics processor that is the first to break the 1 Gigahertz (GHz) barrier using standard air-cooling solutions.

The new ATI Radeon HD 4890 utilizes GDDR5 memory and a 1 GHz clock speed - 150 MHz above stock speed - to deliver 1.6 TeraFLOPs of compute power.

This new version of the ATI Radeon HD 4890 marks the latest addition to the ATI RadeonTM HD 4000 series delivered by AMD technology partners Sapphire, XFX, Asus and TUL.

The design of the ATI Radeon HD 4890 delivers an enhanced gaming experience in the latest games, including ground-breaking DirectX 10.1 titles such as Ubisoft?s Tom Clancy?s H.A.W.X., Electronic Art?s BattleForge and SEGA?s Stormrise released last month, as well as GSC Gameworld?s S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky. When compared to DirectX 10 game play, DirectX 10.1 games have proven to deliver higher game performance and an improved visual experience. In addition, these cards feature support for open standards like OpenGL3 with DirectX 10-like hardware extensions, and the recently ratified OpenCL specification.

The ATI Radeon HD 4890 also supports advanced game physics. At the 2009 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Havok and AMD demonstrated the first implementation of OpenCL running on AMD graphics processors. In the demonstration, Havok?s physics technology delivered complex and realistic simulations of real-world materials like cloth, demonstrating the potential for increased realism in forthcoming games.

"Throughout the 40-year history of AMD, we have continually focused on technology firsts that deliver superior value to the customer," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president, Products Group, AMD. "The 1 GHz ATI Radeon HD 4890 continues that tradition by increasing the performance and compute power of our flagship single-GPU solution, ensuring a great experience whether our customers are playing the latest DirectX 10.1 game or running GPU accelerated applications built with OpenCL."

The ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card is supported by add-in-board companies offering a variety of custom board and cooling solutions. Technology partners include ASUS, Club 3D, Diamond Multimedia, Force3D, GECUBE, Gigabyte, HIS (Hightech Information Systems), ITC, Jetway, MSI, Palit Multimedia, PowerColor, SAPPHIRE Technology and XFX.

Sapphire will offer the new HD 4890 Atomic Edition featuring the company's Vapor-X cooler technology.

XFX will released the ATI Radeon HD 4890 Black Edition.

ASUS will offer the EAH4890 Formula Series with Voltage Tweak technology and Super ML Cap.

Finally, Powercolor will release the PowerColor PCS++ HD4890 equipped with the company's ZEROtherm cooling system.