Radeon HD 3870 and its RV670 chip has a clock frequency of 775MHz, which results in a theoretical performance of 497 GFLOPS. The upcoming R680 graphics card from AMD, also known as Radeon HD 3870 X2, will also use the RV670 chip, although two of them, but the exact clock frequency of the chip has remained a mystery. Normally you would think that a lower clock will be used, but not this time. A user at Chinese hardware forum Chiphell has published information that says that the chips on Radeon HD 3870 X2 will work at 825MHz.
This means that the card has a theoretical performance of more than 1TFLOPS. However this is just a rumor until January 23rd, and it contradicts the previous benchmark which had a clock frequency of 770MHz.
We wouldn’t be surprised if AMD/ATI has decided to break the 1TFLOPS barrier, and the easiest way to do would be to raise the frequency of the cores. The source also claims that the memory will work at 1800MHz and the maximum TDP will be 190W with PowerPlay, both lower than expected. In less than a week we will know for sure.
