14 DAY TRIAL // Not all video card makers may want to stick to the precise design of the rapidly approaching video cards from Advanced Micro Devices and, luckily, AMD is already developing an alternative.
AMD hasn't released the Radeon HD 7900 graphics card series. That will only happen tomorrow (December 22, 2011).
That didn't stop leaks from revealing what the board and the PCB (printed-circuit board) looked like, though.
In fact, we have already written about the matter in whatever detail we could, here.
What is now coming to light are pictures of yet another PCB, belonging to the same cards.
Specifically, it might end up belonging to the HD 7900 series as soon as it is finished and sent to AMD's partners.
The photos showed up on the Asian side of the web show a more cost-accessible PCB for the high-end adapters.
The first Radeon HD 7900 series will stick to the original one, which we have mentioned above.
Once the Sunnyvale company finally completes the new one, though, there should be some slightly less expensive cards up for order.
Then again, these are still, in the end, high-end graphics adapters, so it can be assumed that anyone willing to buy them has more than enough cash or credit.
Nonetheless, NVIDIA will be offering its Kepler in March or April, 2012 (probably), complete with a new shader clock speed scheme, so cheaper high-end cards could be AMD's way of saying that it wishes to sell as many as possible until that time comes.
The new PCB has provisions for two 8-pin PCI Express power inputs, an 8+2 phase analog VRM (probably uses an affordable CHIL controller) and a different display output connector loadout (good for two DVI, one HDMI and one DisplayPort). 12 GGD5 chips can be inset just fine as well.
Now we just have to wait and see how AMD's partners choose to tune their prices.
