Advanced Micro Devices is known to plan on launching its 45nm Phenom II processors at CES 2009, which is set to take place between January 8th and January 11th in Las Vegas. At about the same time the chip manufacturer is reported to also launch its entire Dragon platform. According to news on the web, the Sunnyvale company will launch the AM3 platform with DDR3 support for Dragon at a later date.

As already reported, Dragon will include AMD's 790GX/FX chipset and Radeon HD 4800 series cards. It seems that this will not be the only platform AMD is planning to introduce next year. The company will also unveil its Leo platform by the end of 2009, which is also said to be based on the 45nm Deneb core. According to the news, the platform will get upgraded chipsets, namely RD890, RS880D with SB800, and will also feature a new graphics core.

There are not many details on the graphics solution the company will include with the platform, yet there are some voices that say it should be something more than a new 40nm card, one that would feature DirectX11 support. It seems that Leo (Lion) is the platform AMD will have on display throughout 2010, and also the one that would go with the upcoming Windows 7.

As for AMD's plans in the 40nm area with its next-generation graphics cards, we already learned that it managed to tape out the RV740, which would come as its first graphics solution under the new fabrication process. While this is a mainstream part, AMD's graphics division ATI is also rumored to plan a new RV770, which would come after RV740.

At this moment, ATI's Radeon HD 4870 has lost the performance crown in favor of NVIDIA, which re-launched the GTX 260 and also came up with a better driver release. Since the RV740 is reported to come as mainstream card, until the RV770, a performance board, makes its appearance, NVIDIA might remain on the leading position.