Everything above HD 7600M will use the GCN (Graphics Core Next) architecture

Jan 16, 2012 08:05 GMT  ·  By

Quite a lot of rumors about AMD’s mobile Radeon HD 7000M-series GPUs spread over the Web in these last couple of weeks, so during the CES fair, the chip maker took its time to talk with some members of the press about its mobile strategy for 2012.

As many of the reports to make their appearance over these last few weeks have revealed, the Radeon HD 7000M-series will be split by AMD in two categories.

The first one includes reused GPUs from the Radeon HD 6000M series manufactured using 40nm process technology, while the latter will be based on the Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, introduced with the Radeon HD 7970, and fabricated using TSMC’s advanced 28nm process.

The chip maker revealed to AnandTech that, in essence, everything 7600M and below will reuse their existing 40nm VLIW5 architecture while the Radeon HD 7700M, 7800M, and 7900M will switch to 28nm GCN (Graphics Core Next).

The GCN parts will use lower power variants of Pitcairn and Cape Verde, while Tahiti will remain a desktop-only part.

The good news is that features like DirectX 11.1, VCE, and ZeroCore Power Technology will be present in the higher-performance HD 7000M parts since their introduction.

In the first days of CES, AMD showcased a high-end Radeon HD 7000M-series GPU based on the Pitcairn core, which is expected to be branded as a Radeon HD 7900M part.

On the desktop side, Pitcairn will be available in two versions, dubbed Pitcairn XT and Pitcairn Pro, the former coming with 1408 stream processors and 88 texture units while the latter will be limited at 1280 shaders and 80 texture units.

The ROP count will be set at 34 units for both of these solutions while the available 256-bit wide memory bus can connect to either 1GB of 2GB of GDDR5 memory.

Right now, AMD hasn’t said when this launch is expected to happen, but AnandTech expects the GPUs to arrive in April or May of this year.

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