With this out of the way, people can go ahead and relax now

Sep 30, 2013 06:43 GMT  ·  By

The Radeon R9 270X is expected to sell well, with its price of under $200 / €200, but that's only if it proves better than the Radeon HD 7870 "Tahiti LE" it will replace. Fortunately, it turns out that will actually happen.

Sources from the OCUK Forums say that the R9 270X will be a “crippled” Radeon HD 7950, with a stream processor count of (probably) 1,792 (Radeon HD 7870 Tahiti LE has “only” 1,536).

The newcomer should also have 112 TMUs (versus 96).

And even so, the graphics processing unit comes in a more compact BGA package with a lower pin count, plus narrower memory interface (256-bit) and fewer power/ancillary connections.

Sadly, we don't know what the clock frequencies are, and we probably won't know until two weeks from now. That's when the R9 290X will debut, presumably opening the gates for the other R9/R7 boards in the process.