Radeon HD 6970 Gets Pre-Launch Teardown, PCB Pictured

While the world still waits for AMD's Radeon HD 6900 series to go official in the immediate future, some hold on to their embargoed information, while others (mostly Chinese sources) don't really seem to care about such issues as NDAs, providing complete teardowns of the products, not to mention loads of information regarding its technical specifications.

So, case in point, a Chinese website called Taobao has posted a listing for the AMD Radeon HD 6970, complete with photos of the product being sold (a reference card, nonetheless), either in complete form or torn apart, with the PCB and the GPU getting some really nice shots of their own.

Now, of course, the listing also provides some interesting info on what to expect from the next-gen graphics card in terms of computing power and specs, corroborating some of the previous rumors in such a way as to pretty much confirm the previously leaked specs.

So, first of all, it's quite clear that the AMD Radeon HD 6970 will pack 2GB of memory (apparently, taking a look at the photos, we're talking about a single 2GB chip, not a 2 x 1GB configuration), as well as a 256-bit wide memory interface.

Now, looking at the Cayman GPU die (and taking into account the fact that we're talking about a 40nm processor), we'll immediately notice that it's slightly larger than the Cypress die, which means that the number of transistors is also higher, leading to the rumored 1536 stream processor count being a very real possibility.

Furthermore, it's also important to point out that the graphics card uses a 6+2+1+1 phase digital PWM voltage regulation design, drawing power from 8+6 pin power connectors.

Beside the torn-down Radeon HD 6970, the guys over at Taobao have also provided a couple of interesting benchmark results, which are pretty much on the same page as the leaked benchmarks we've talked about in one of our previous articles.

So, all we can say right now is that we're eagerly waiting for AMD to finally go official with its next-gen graphics card, thus putting an end to all these leaks and speculations.