AMD shows off Llano APU

New chipset will be crucial to processor firm's graphics push

AMD has been showing off the latest advances in its graphics card range with a Radeon 6800 chipset using the new Llano accelerated processing unit (APU).

The Radeon HD 6870 and the slightly less powerful Radeon HD 6850 will be released on 22 October. AMD has kept a tight lock on the new graphics system, and news is only now leaking out.

The company is looking to capitalise on the advantage gained in early DirectX11 support with the new cards, which use a mix of APU and CPU power to enable much higher levels of graphics processing than AMD has produced so far.

The cards are built around x86 cores but use interactive processing to handle graphics at a level not seen before at this price point. The cards are optimised to work with Windows 7 systems.

AMD will release data on more advanced systems later in the week.