Lower power consumption, Rambus 8 GHz XDR2 memories and GCN (Graphics Core Next) architecture. We are looking forward to an interesting autumn.
The first member of the AMD Radeon HD 7000 series may be released in the last quarter of 2011. The series is based on two architectures and seven graphics processors: the Thames XT, Thames PRO, Lombok XT, Lombok PRO, which can be considered the descendants of the "Cayman" with VLIW4 architecture, and the GCN "Graphics Core Next", the much more advanced and modern Tahiti Pro, Tahiti For chips codenamed XT and New Zealand. The common point is the 28 nm production technology, thanks to which higher performance cards can be expected with lower consumption. According to the latest news, the cards based on the "Cayman architecture" are called Radeon HD 7850 and Radeon HD 7870. Based on the specifications, they are almost identical to the already well-known Radeon HD 6970/6950. The main difference can be seen in consumption. The power requirement of the more powerful model is 120, while the maximum consumption of the smaller graphics card is barely 90 watts.
By no means official information, so please treat with some reservations!
The Radeon HD 7670/7650 is also based on 4-way processors. Both competitors have 768 active shader processors, so it’s no surprise that the engineers operated with the clocks. Expected performance is hard to judge, but the more powerful model is likely to reach Radeon HD 6770 or HD 6790 levels - all with consumption well below 75 watts, meaning not even a 6-pin power connector is theoretically needed.
Expected specifications.
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The real curiosities were the high-end products. The flagships of the series are built on an architecture called GCN (Graphics Core Next). The novelty is expected to improve the use of the graphics processor for general computing operations. Both NVIDIA and Intel are making serious efforts in this area today.
However, this is far from all, as it is conceivable to use the second generation of XDR memories. With XDR2, Rambus promises an 8 GHz frequency. Micro-threading technology, which allows you to quadruple the number of instructions executed at one time, has a radical role in achieving this. AMD could come up with these big game sometime in the first half of 2012.
Source: pcgameshardware.de
