Back in August, Advanced Micro Devices graphics group ATI promised to the world the Radeon HD 4850 X2 graphics card, a new solution that would put NVIDIA's GTX 280 on its knees. As ATI stated at the moment, the card was supposed to come to the market by the end of September, yet that didn't happen, as we all can see. The card is still expected to arrive, and various speculations about it have also appeared on the Web. The latest news suggests that ATI's future card is expecting validation from the company's partners and that it shouldn't be long until it finally comes to store shelves.

According to Hardspell, Pete Vagiakos, AMD Tech PR Manager Southern Europe, stated the following in an interview, “At the time AMD launched the 48xx X2 series, we enabled our AIB partners with GPUs and design guidance for the ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2. From that point, our partners understood they were free to bring the ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 design to market in a manner and timeframe that supported their business strategy. It is our understanding that the first ATI Radeon HD 4850 X2 cards are in the final stages of validation with our AIB partners, however for further information and specific dates please contact our AIB partners”.

Since ATI says its job is done, we'll have to see how soon AIBs finish the card. Given the current economic crisis, they may wait a little before releasing the new graphics solution, but we hope it won't be a long period of time. The third quarter ended quite well for the chipmaker, which already announced better-than-expected revenue for this time frame. The company said that its graphics product line-up brought a 55 percent sequential revenue growth as well as market share gains. With a dual-GPU Radeon HD 4850 X2 card added to the series, the company will surely do even better in the fourth quarter.