14 DAY TRIAL // Things couldn't be better for AMD's graphics business unit, according to the latest news in the industry, the company being expected to refresh its Radeon graphics card lineup with the introduction of the RV790 graphics processing unit. As it turns out, the upcoming GPU isn't exactly set to impress people with significant performance increases, as it will only provide some improved clock frequencies over current graphics cards.
A recent news article on xbitlabs, citing industry sources, claims that AMD's upcoming high-performance graphics update will not be as impressive as some might expect. Apparently, the new Radeon RV790 GPU is nothing more than an overclocked version of AMD's current RV770 chip, featured in its existing high-performance graphics cards. The fresh chip has been designed to work at higher frequencies, taking advantage of a slightly better design, with some process technology adjustments.
Both chips, the RV770 and the RV790, have been designed with 800 stream processors, 40 texture units, 16 render back ends and a 256-bit memory bus, compatible with GDDR3, GDDR4 and GDDR5 memory. The RV790 is said to boast higher clock-speeds, which should provide some performance increase, but probably not enough to wow most people.
In addition, according to recent details, the chip maker should deliver two cards based on the same overclocked GPU, the Radeon HD 4890 and a dual GPU version, the Radeon HD 4890X2. Unfortunately, neither is expected to provide any significant performance increase, which means that the Santa Clara, California-based maker can rest easily, as its current GPUs will probably counter AMD's upcoming offensive.
We are still to find out when exactly the new cards are set to debut, as previous rumors pointed to April as a possible release date. However, company officials are yet to provide details on the alleged new cards.