14 DAY TRIAL // AMD has issued an official response to the rumors that stated its latest graphics card, the Radeon HD 6790, can be unlocked into a more powerful solution by re-enabling some of the disabled processing units present. According to the company, this isn't possible since the required SIMDs have been fused off when manufacturing the Barts LE GPU.
The first rumors regarding the possibility of unlocking the Radeon HD 6790 into a more powerful graphics card, such as the Radeon HD 6850 or the Radeon HD 6870, appeared just a few days before AMD's solution was released.
These were fueled by the fact that the HD 6790 was powered by a cut-down version of the Barts core, the same GPU used by the Sunnyvale-based company for the two HD 6800-series graphics cards.
In addition, many AMD cards launched previously supported GPU unlocking, the most recent being the HD 6950 which could be turned into a faster HD 6970 by just flashing it with a BIOS build for its older brother.
"It is not something that should be possible on the 6790. Those SIMDs are fused off," told Xbit Labs, Even Groenke, a graphics products manager at AMD.
The company official goes on to say that even without the possibility of turning into a Radeon HD 6850 or HD 6870, the card still features an impressive overclocking potential.
"It is a card that has a lot of potential for overclocking, just take a look at overclocking results for other Barts-based graphics cards," said Mr. Groenke, adding that overclocking voids warranty.
The Barts LE core that is used inside the HD 6790 features 800 stream processors, 40 texture units, 16 render back ends as well as 256-bit GDDR5 memory controller.
In comparison, the Barts XT core which is used inside the Radeon HD 6870 packs no less than 1120 stream processors, 56 texturing units, 32 ROP units and the same 256-bit memory bus.
As far as availability is concerned, Even Groenke said, “This is a product that will be in the 6700-series for a while, it is not a temporary SKU," and pointed out that the graphics card will remain on the market for at least a couple of quarters.