AMD Radeon HD 7970 Doesn't Have Hidden Cores

Not long ago, there was a big leak that spilled the beans on Sapphire's whole Radeon HD 7970 lineup.

There was something weird about the sheet of paper pictured there.

Namely, the number of stream processors was crossed out, being different from the one AMD advertised.

While Advanced Micro Devices clearly says the card has 2,048 shaders, Sapphire's leak put the number at 2,304.

Reports now say that AMD's senior PR executive Chris Hook denied the existence of hidden cores on the high-end graphics adapter.

Thus, either this was a typo or the paper was part of AMD's test to see which of its partners leaked product specifications to the press.

It's a good thing for AMD that this wasn't another case of giving the media wrong numbers.

Giving an incorrect transistor count for the Bulldozer 8-core chip was enough.