14 DAY TRIAL // After announcing just yesterday that a 1GB version of the Radeon HD 6970 graphics card is inbound, AMD retracted its statement and said that the company would release instead a 1GB model of the lower powered HD 6950, prices starting at $269.
Much like its older brother, the HD 9650 is based on the Cayman core, and packs the same VLIW5 shader design, dual tessellation units as well as all the other architecture enhancements that made their way into the HD 6900 video card family.
However, unlike the AMD Radeon HD 6970, the GPU is a slightly cut down version of the Cayman core as it features 1408 stream processors and 88 texturing units.
Its operating frequencies have also been lowered as the core is now clocked at 800MHz and the memory runs at 1.25GHz (5.0GHz effective GDDR5) compared to the 880MHz/1.375GHz of the HD 6970.
The other GPU specifications have remained unaltered, as the card is equipped with a 256-bit memory bus and 32 ROP units.
According to Xbit Labs, the 1GB version of the HD 6950 features the same specifications as the 2GB card, memory clock speeds as well as bandwidth remaining unchanged.
At its new price point, the Radeon HD 6950 1GB will come as a more affordable alternative to the regular HD 6950, while offering about the same performance in most of today's games (apart from the times when very high resolutions with high FSAA levels are used).
The board will also be in the same price range as the upcoming Nvidia GTX 560 Ti that is supposed to be launched on January 25 for $279.
The names of the board partners that are going to launch 1GB versions of the HD 6950 have not been announced yet, but the cards are scheduled to make their appearance sometime in mid-February.