Radeon HD 7970 was uncovered under a lot of pressure just before Christmas and it did not disappoint. On January 9th the graphics card that will suit us mortals better will arrive, namely HD 7950 that has now been uncovered.
AMD’s latest graphics card HD 7970 did not disappoint, with on average 20 percent better performance than GTX 580 and even more so when the resolutions scale up and multimonitor configurations (Eyefinity) comes into play. HD 7970 is not cheapr and will not be easy to acquite for the coming weeks, but little brother HD 7950 may become savior for many.
| Model | HD 7970 “Tahiti XT” | HD 7950 “Tahiti Pro” |
| Node | 28nm | 28nm |
| Die size | 365mm² | 365mm² |
| GCN units |
32 | 28 |
| Radeon cores |
2 048 | 1 792 |
| GPU frequency |
925 MHz | ? |
| Memory buffer |
3 GB GDDR5 | 3 GB GDDR5 |
| Memory bus |
384-bit | 384-bit |
| Memory frequency |
1 375 MHz (5 500 MHz effective) |
1 250 MHz (5 000 MHz effective) |
| ROPs | 32 | 32 |
| Texture units |
128 | 112 |
| Price | 550 – 600€ | ? |
HD 7950 hsd four deactivated GCN units, which limits the number of Radeon cores to 1792. The card has the same amount of memory, 3 GB, connected to a 384-bit bus, although lower clocked than HD 7970. The frequency of the GPU is still unclear, but we presume somewhere in the area of 800 MHz and up and that AMD will put it just high enough to beat GTX 580.
AMD has given partners thhumbs up to go ahead and develop their own custom designs. This means that companies like ASUS and Gigabyte will have its own take on HD 7950 at launch. Prices are not known, but should be around €100 less than HD 7970 according to rumors.
Source: xtreview
