Sapphire's Tahiti LE Card Is Mightier Than the Rest

Sapphire has reportedly completed development of a video adapter powered by the new graphics processing unit from Advanced Micro Devices: Tahiti LE, where LE stands for Limited Edition.

The amount of information available on the newcomer is small. Which is to say, we only know what the name of the board and the photos reveal.

In other words, we know that the GPU is made on the 28 nm manufacturing process technology, that there are 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM on the PCB (printed circuit board) and that a dual-fan cooler keeps heat low.

Fortunately, the report that exposed the existence, or impending arrival, of the Sapphire adapter had something more to say, though not much.

For one, the adapter has a factory-overclocked GPU, meaning that the Tahiti LE works at 1 GHz or above, at least when in PowerTune Boost state.

This is a clear advantage over the likes of VTX3D's HD 7870 Black Edition and PowerColor's PCS+ HD7870 Myst, among others.

Considering this, Sapphire may choose to add the “GHz Edition” at the end of the device’s name, just to make sure people know what they are in for.

Secondly, the 2GB of GDDR5 have an interface of 256 bits to stretch over. Given the clock speed of 6 GHz (even if the GPU is overclocked, the VRAM seldom is nowadays), that implies a memory bandwidth of 192 GB/s.

So far, the Tahiti LE-powered adapters have been said, or implied, to bear a price of $220 / 220 Euro. Sapphire's card will be a bit more expensive because of its better performance, but hopefully not by much.

Finally, AMD has released the limited edition Tahiti chip as a special winter holiday offer, so Sapphire should start taking orders for the Radeon HD 7870 Toxic 2 GB soon. When it does, the exact performance specs and price will be known at last.