14 DAY TRIAL // AMD's next-generation, dual-GPU graphics cards, the much-anticipated Radeon HD 5970, codenamed Hemlock, is just around the corner, given the increasing number of leaked details that have recently surfaced the Internet. While we still aren't certain when the new card becomes available, with TSMC's 40nm production issues, there are rumors pointing to an official release before the end of this month. On that note, it looks like we now have some details on the card's clock speeds and technical specifications.
According to a recent news article, coming from the fellows over at Fudzilla, the Sunnyvale, California-based chip maker will launch the much-anticipated Radeon HD 5970 with a core speed of 725Mhz. In addition, 'Hemlock', which packs two RV870 GPUs, will be featured with 2GB of GDDR5 memory, clocked at 1000MHz, and with two 256-bit interfaces. That's pretty much what you get from AMD's Radeon HD 5850 card, but performance is increased thanks to the adoption of the dual-GPU configuration.
In addition to that, the upcoming card sports double the Stream processors and texture units of the Radeon HD 5870, for a total of 3200 Stream processors and 160 texture units. This is one of the key points where performance enhancements should be noticed. Unfortunately, Fudzilla wasn't able to get details on the card's power consumption, although it's most likely that this will be somewhere north of 300W.
All of this should be taken with a grain of salt, as the card is not yet official and frequency details and specifications could change when AMD officially debuts its new flagship. Still, expect Hemlock to provide support for ATI CrossFireX technology and the new ATI Eyefinity solution, as well as support for DirectX 11-enabled applications. In addition, it's expected that, with NVIDIA's Fermi-based cards nowhere to be seen, the new dual-GPU Radeon card will provide AMD with the performance crown for some time.