Details on AMD's 8970 GPU

[Lil' ½ Dead]

Earlier this week, we reported on rumors of two upcoming mid-range AMD 8800 series graphics cards based on the Sea Islands architecture. As mentioned previously, Sea Islands is the successor to the Southern Islands architecture used on the 7000 series. It features an improved Graphics Core Next GPU processor architecture based on TSMC's 28nm process. With that said, the chip will draw less power and be faster on GPGPU workloads thanks to several efficiency tweaks. Graphics cards based on Sea Islands will support DirectX 11, and will be available early next year.





While the 8850 and 8870 are based on the Oland GPU, this newly leaked Radeon HD 8970 will use the "Sea Islands" Tenerife GPU instead (and has a TDP of 250W). Tenerife offers up some impressive (but realistic) specifications, including 2,304 shaders, 128 texture units, 48 ROPs, and a relatively massive 384-bit memory bus. The HD 8970 will support 3GB of GDDR5 memory running at 6GHz, and on the 384-bit bus, the GPU has approximately 322 GB/s of bandwidth! Further, the 16 additional ROP units will give the Radeon HD 8970 a nice performance boost over the 8800 series, especially when running multiple monitors in Eyefinity configurations.
As far as specifications go, we do not yet know the die size of the GPU or what the GPU base (and boost) clockspeeds are. According to PC Perspective's GPU packrat reviewer Josh Walrath, the Tenerife GPU will have a much larger die than that of Oland. It will still be based on a 28nm process, but will be somewhere between 380mm^2 and 420mm^2. To put that in perspective, the 8850/8870 has a die size of 270mm^2.

The AMD Radeon HD 8970 will be AMD's next generation single-GPU flagship graphics card, and it looks to offer up some respectable hardware. Unfortunately we do not know what this Tenerife GPU graphics card will be priced at. For now, we will just have to be cautiously optimistic and wait a few months to see how much this card will cost. The wait should not be very long either, if rumors are true as they seem to indicate that the 8970 will be launched in late 2012 or early (January/February) 2013.

Details Leak on AMD's Sea Islands HD 8970 Graphics Card | PC Perspective

[Doctor_Death]

I just received the third Sapphire 7950 OC , so I'll be running 3 of them in Crossfire, I wonder how the performance would compare to the 8970

[xelosia]

thanks for the review

[SamCR3]

I just received the third Sapphire 7950 OC , so I'll be running 3 of them in Crossfire, I wonder how the performance would compare to the 8970

Good question. These GPU's are coming out too quickly if you ask me.

[aryan51]

Good question. These GPU's are coming out too quickly if you ask me.

no **** eh!

[Solara2xb]

I agree... I am still waiting to have enough money to get my GTX660Ti or GTX670 and the new AMD cards are already coming out.. Man.. things are way to quick now a days..

[SamCR3]

Maybe the release of the 8970 will drive down prices of the 7970 and I'll finally be able to afford another one for crossfire so I can be really cool like all you other guys with SLI and crossfire set ups. Lol.

[Trak]

Too bad one can't just Rent GPU's.........makes buying a new card every other month seems pointless......

[najiro]

They are coming out too fast.. it doesn't make sense anymore. Even 6XXX series aren't that obsolete yet even with 7xxx series available

[realneil]

I just received the third Sapphire 7950 OC , so I'll be running 3 of them in Crossfire, I wonder how the performance would compare to the 8970

I'm sure you'll find out soon enough Stan,..........is that credit card itching yet?

Good question. These GPU's are coming out too quickly if you ask me.

Who, (except for Stan) can keep up?

They are coming out too fast.. it doesn't make sense anymore. Even 6XXX series aren't that obsolete yet even with 7xxx series available

Agreed, I do like the new releases because they'll drive the cost of present day cards downward. I'd like a few 660ti or even 660 cards in SLI for my 2600K system. Prices will fall quicker this way.

[SamCR3]

Hey Neil, Just sent you a a message on facebook.

[realneil]

Got it, and replied too,.....have a good weekend Sam.

[SamCR3]

Got it, and replied too,.....have a good weekend Sam.

Thanks, Neil. You too!

[Steve]

sent you a a message on facebook.

Do my eyes deceive me Sam? I thought you had said a while ago you weren't on FB and never would be?

[SamCR3]

Do my eyes deceive me Sam? I thought you had said a while ago you weren't on FB and never would be?

I broke down when Stan made liking stuff a requirement for this summer's giveaways. Now I'm hooked in. Guess it was worth it though; I did win the XSPC kit.

[realneil]

Now I'm hooked

I sometimes go for days without looking at my FB page,...........there is always a lot of cleaning up to do when I do.
I originally said the same thing (~"no way, never!"~) about FB, but I have connected with many people from my past that I had lost touch with.
This alone has made it worthwhile to me.