AMD's official announcement for the latest high-performance graphics card, HD 4870 X2, was followed by yet another one, also made by the Sunnyvale-based maker. It appears that the company's graphics business has managed to achieve a market share of 40%, up from 30%, due to the success of its recently released 4800-series of graphics cards.

First of all, we should take into account that the first RV770-based graphics cards were released earlier this year, on June 25, which means that, in approximately 2 months, AMD's latest cards led to a 10% rise in market share. As a result, the company has set for itself a new goal, which is to grab a 50% share of the discrete graphics card market before the end of 2008, and to top NVIDIA sometime next year. The company also noted that, for 2009, it expected a 35:65 ratio for its discrete graphics card to IGP in notebook shipments.

Clearly, AMD's strategy of providing a competitive graphics card that is priced lower than NVIDIA's high-end 65nm GTX280 seems to have paid off. On top of that, some of NVIDIA's fans have apparently lost confidence in the green company and have decided to go with the Radeon graphics, instead of the latest GeForce cards. These factors have seemingly influenced AMD's business in a very profitable way and, with the release of the dual-GPU R700 card, AMD's graphics subsidiary, ATI, will probably continue its successful run.

Currently, AMD graphics card offer includes a number of solutions that can provide support to both entry-level and mainstream users, as well as to enthusiasts who require the very best in graphics performance. Furthermore, the more affordable high-end HD 4850 X2, claimed to directly compete with NVIDIA's flagship GTX 280, is yet to become available.

On the other hand, NVIDIA is expected to come out with a couple of new graphics cards of its own, although there aren't many details available in this sense.