3600, 3400 - not your usual paper launch

THE BIG NEWS today is the launch of the 3600 and 3400 series graphics cards from DAAMIT. While not aiming at taking performance crowns in ... uhhmm... anything, the cards open up some options in the budget-to-mainstream segment of the market, and cater to more earthly desires such as HD movie decoding. As Charlie mentioned earlier, we don’t expect the benchmarks to shine, but since expectations aren’t high, they won’t disappoint either.

Going on-line you’d expect a virtual (pun intended) deluge of reviews with benchmarks, but the AMD machine has gone into reverse and left reviewers shaking wads of Powerpointage at their readers.

According to Hexus, for example, reviewers weren’t supposed to receive cards from AMD directly, but rather from the partners, who are no doubt doing their best to create “unique selling points” for their kit. This stands to reason if you consider that all manner of pictures of non-reference designed 3400 and 3600 series cards have surfaced. Also, there are reports going round of 3690’s taxiing on the runway... which begs the question “wtf?”

In the end, your regular hardware sites are stuck with little more than the specs, feature slides and block diagrams to the hardware, but hey, it's better than nothing.

You can catch these non-reviews at the usual suspects, in no particular order: Hardspell, Anandtech, Hothardware, Hexus. net, B it-Te ch.net. They promise they will all have their reviews up as soon as they get their hands on the goods. Us? We’re just curious to see what non-reference gimmicks will the partners come up with. µ