Sapphire first with HD-ready graphics cards

Sapphire Technology has used the Cebit 2006 show to announce that it will be first out of the blocks with graphics cards sporting HDMI.

The High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is an industry standard digital interface that allows for full, uncompressed high definition video and audio to passed through a single cable.

Most HD-ready flat-panel TVs and projectors now feature at least one HDMI slot and it will become the standard way of connecting HD sources like PCs, set-top boxes and DVD players to HD displays.

Sapphire’s Radeon X1600Pro HDMI card is due to hit the streets next month and will deliver both HD audio and video to HDMI-compliant displays and TVs.

The card has 12pixel pipelines and comes with 128MB of GDDR3 memory. Each one will ship with PowerDVD and a DVD containing a selection of top games.

Users will be able to try the games out for a one hour trial and can then keep the ones they want by paying for the activation codes.