Many flavors of Radeon HD 7950 graphics cards are expected to arrive

Dec 14, 2011 23:31 GMT  ·  By

AMD’s upcoming Radeon HD 7950 graphics card will arrive in much more flavors than the company’s previous solutions, as with the release of this new GPU the chip maker will allow AIBs to stray way from its reference design and use their own custom PCBs and coolers.

Traditionally, for the first few months after the release of a new high-end graphics card, GPU makers impose their reference designs on AIBs in order to limit the potential problems that could hurt the reputation of their new cores.

However, with the launch of the Radeon HD 7950, AMD will ditch this rule and allow its board partners to come out with their own custom designs of the card, according to SemiAccurate.

The reason for this decision is unknown, but Hardcore Hardware seems to believe that the HD 7950 requires a relatively simple PCB design.

A reason for this could be the low power consumption of the 28nm GPU that can probably get away with a not so complicated VRM.

No other information regarding the specifications of the Radeon HD 5970 was provided, but previous reports suggest that the Tahiti Pro core utilized by AMD for this card includes 30 Compute Units for a total of 1920 streaming cores that operate at 900MHz.

The number of ROPs seems to be set to 60, which will be paired with 120 texture units while the memory controller will be 384-bit or 256-bit wide with the memory clock set at 1.25GHz.

The card is expected to be launched by AMD on January 9, one day before CES 2012 officially opens its gates, together with the other HD 7900 part, the Radeon HD 7970.

No official info regarding pricing is available yet, but previous reports have revealed that these graphics cards should occupy the $349-449 price bracket once they arrive.