14 DAY TRIAL // At the end of last week we reported that AMD is preparing a new graphics card, called the Radeon HD 6930, based on a cut back version of the Cypress GPU, and now it appears that the availability of this solution will be limited to a few select markets.
According to information uncovered by Fudzilla these include only China and Russia, but no reason is given as to why AMD choose to go this path when it built the HD 6930.
Just like Nvidia has done with the GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores, AMD will also use a cut back version of its most powerful GPU for the Radeon HD 6930, which is supposed to be called the Cayman CE and include 1280 stream processors.
The reduction is quite significant when compared with the 1536 stream processors found in the HD 6970, but it should allow AMD to reuse a part of its Cayman GPUs that failed to pass the tests required for them to be installed in HD 6970 or HD 6950 graphics cards.
The new stream processor count should be paired together with 80 texture units, 32 ROP units, and the same 256-bit wide memory interface, which can be connected to either 1GB or 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM.
Together with the rest of the specs, the clock frequencies of the Radeon HD 6930 will also be reduced compared to those of its older brothers.
This means that the GPU will work at 750MHz, while the memory is supposed to run at 1.2GHz (4800MHz data rate).
As Nvidia has done with the GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores, AMD also doesn’t plan to release a reference design for the HD 6930 in order to allow its AIB partners to reuse the cooling solutions and PCBs they have developed for the HD 6950 and HD 6970.
As far as the pricing of the AMD card is concerned, Fudzilla’s sources claim that this has been set at the equivalent of $180-$200 US (135-150 EUR).