AMD is working on new models for the performance segment. As we revealed earlier we can expect 6950 cards with 1GB memory soon, and it seems that also Radeon HD 6970 will launch with 1GB memory, with a good price cut with it.
When Radeon HD 6900 launched in December of last year AMD focused on 2GB memory for both models. Even if the prices of GDDR5 memory has dropped it is still a considerable cost that also stress the circuit board and power supply of the cards when manufacturers try to use 2 Gigabit circuits for larger buffers.
With new competition from NVIDIA in the form of GeForce GTX 560 Ti, that launch on January 25th next week, AMD has decided to prepare for a price war. It does so by cutting the memory in half, from 2GB to 1GB, enabling additional cost reductions.
Through cheaper 1 Gigabit GDDR5 circuits AMD can lower the price of Radeon HD 6970 with near 100 USD, which is almost 26% cheaper. Even if the smaller memory buffer will make a difference in games it is a safe bet that the drop in performance will not be equal. In most games with the default resolution 1920×1080 pixels the difference is negligible at most, though the higher the resolution the bigger the difference, e.g. Eyefinity configurations may not be the best solution.
AMD Radeon HD 6970 1GB will start selling in the middle of February and with the same number of stream processor, 1536 and identical clock frequencies as the 2GB models the price will be around 260€.
Source: Xbit-labs.com
