14 DAY TRIAL // Since the AMD Radeon HD 6970 is just a couple of days away from its release day, it is not surprising to find that it has become the subject of leaks, and it seems PowerColor's own model is the one that entered the spotlight early.
Many rumors have been going around the web about the assumed performance of the AMD Radeon HD 6970.
Since it is supposed to be the high-end representative of the HD 6000 series, some no doubt expected the adapter to rival NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580.
Certain leaked benchmarking results, however, seem to suggest that the GTX 580 is not exactly threatened and that the HD 6970 is more likely to battle the GTX 570 and 480.
The same leak had some pictures and the specifications of the unboxed PowerColor HD 6970 as well.
Apparently, the more powerful of the HD 6900 line has 96 texture units, 1,536 Stream Processors, 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM and a memory interface of 256 bits.
The GPU has a frequency of 880 MHz, while the memory works at 5,400 MHz.
Additionally, the card has dual DVI, a mini HDMI and two mini Displayport outputs, plus a TDP of 300 W.
As a comparison, the Radoen HD 6850 has 1,408 stream processors, 88 texture units, 2 GB of memory and clocks of 800 MHz and 5,000 MHz for the GPU and VRAM, respectively.
The HD 6950 also has identical connectivity capabilities as its sibling and a TDP (thermal design power) of 225 W.
It is unclear just how big a supply of such boards will be immediately available upon the official release, but there should be a few on sale before Christmas comes.
It now falls to reviewers to make it clear to the public whether or not the aforementioned leaked benchmarking results hold true.