Nearly six years have gone by since AMD scooped up ATI for $5.4 billion, and when it was first announced, analysts wondered if the chip maker was making the right move. AMD's multi-billion dollar gamble paid off, and until Kepler arrives, the Sunnyvale chip makers owns the fastest single-GPU graphics card in the world (Radeon HD 7970). But what if AMD had acquired Nvidia instead?

In the coming weeks, AMD will flesh out its Radeon HD 7000 lineup with its mid-range 7800 Series based on the Sunnyvale chip maker's Pitcairn GPU. Pitcairn slips neatly in between Cape Verde (Radeon HD 7700 Series) and Tahiti (Radeon HD 7900 Series) and will likely consist of three separate videocards, according to information that was leaked to the Web over the weekend.

If you want to get a jump start on upgrading the drivers for your AMD Radeon videocard, you can head over to AMD and grab the Catalyst 12.2 pre-certified drivers today. AMD says these drivers are identical to the upcoming certified release, just without Microsoft's official blessing, which will come later this month or in early March. In other words, this isn't beta code, the drivers just haven't gone through the certification process yet.

Following AMD's official unveiling of its Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition and 7750 graphics cards, boutique system builder Maingear announced it already has stock on hand is offering the chip maker's new Cape Verde graphics cards as options in its Shift and F131 gaming desktops. Maingear also plans to shove the mainstream parts into its Vybe desktop "in the near future."