The film Predators opened in theaters over the weekend, and as was the case with several other flicks proceed by Robert Rodriquez -- Shorts, Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams, Spy Kids 3D: Game Over, Planet Terror, Sin City -- it was AMD hardware that brought the special effects to life.

In this case, Troublemaker Studios tapped into AMD's six-core Opteron processors and ATI FirePro graphics cards, and specifically the V8800 iteration. Representing the flagship GPU in the FirePro Vxxx line, the V8800 comes with 1600 stream processors, a 256-bit memory interface, 2GB of GDDR5, and all the modern standards you would expect, such as DirectX 11, OpenGL 3.2, and Shader Model 5.0.

Six digital artists comprised the core Predators production team. According to Charlie Boswell, AMD's Direct of Digital Media and Entertainment, the AMD-powered workstations allowed the Predators team to render scenes in real-time at resolutions of up to 4,096 x 2,160.

ATI is no greenhorn when it comes to switchable graphics, but the company's version has always required manual intervention on part of the end user. It doesn't need to be that way, and Nvidia proved as much when the rival graphics chip maker introduced the world to its Optimus technology, a switchable graphics solution that automatically determines whether the task at hand requires the additional power of discrete graphics or can get by with the integrated GPU.

From what we're hearing, ATI isn't content to sit on the sidelines and watch Nvidia rule over the switchable graphics market, not with ATI's mobile chipsets so prevalent in the marketplace. Word on the Web is that ATI is working on its own version of Optimus, which notebook manufacturers expect will be ready by the end of the year.

Specifics aren't yet known, though we don't imagine ATI's version will differ much from Nvidia's solution. It will be interesting, however, to see if one of them ends up having a leg up over the other.

For entry-level folk, AMD's HD 5670 videcards sell for as little as $90 shipped on Newegg, and even lower if you factor in those annoying mail-in-rebates. What you get in return is a serviceable card for light graphics duties with the following reference specs:

• 400 stream processors
• 775MHz core clockspeed
• 4000MHz memory clockspeed (effective)
• 128-bit memory bus
• 4Gb/s data rate

That's not going to blow the side panel off your custom built rig, but will be plenty sufficient for Peggle and other casual gaming chores, as well as more demanding games at lower resolutions (see our performance review here). Now here's where things get interesting. Chinese website Inpai.com seems to believe it has it on good authority that AMD will release an upgraded version of the HD 5670. From what the site knows so far, the beefed up model will sport 640 stream processors instead of the 400 found on the reference design, while the core clockspeed will drop slightly to 750MHz. Everything else looks to remain the same.

If true, and if the price doesn't get jacked up, HD 5670 could suddenly become a very compelling option in the sub-$100 graphics category.