ATI Radeon HD 5870 sports AMD’s fastest GPU, Cypress, which is also the, hat’s off, fastest graphics circuit available today. Even though a single Cypress GPU is often enough to keep with two GPUs of the last generation it won’t take long before AMD will raise the stake. In Q4 AMD will launch Hemlock sporting dual Cypress GPUs with potential of offering twice the performance of Radeon HD 5870.
AMD has shown the card in public, but even if AMD refused to reveal any details surrounding performance it did show a fully functional Hemlock card with a DirectX 11 demo from the coming Alien vs. Predator game.
The card comes with 1GB GDDR5 per core and clocked at 4000MHz while the two graphics circuits operated at 725MHz. The clock frequencies most likely depends on the power consumption and heat development, but perhaps also that AMD haven’t nailed the specifications yet.
The card is truly long, perhaps longer than Radeon HD 5870, but it should stay within the regular format and fit inside most cases. More information will appear in the coming weeks but until then Radeon HD 5870 should suffice, or why not two?
