AMD launches HD 7970 GHz Edition, will compete with Nvidia’s GTX 680

AMD has launched the world's fastest graphics processing unit (GPU), the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, an upgrade to the existing HD 7970. The AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition uses AMD's Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture to deliver high performance and good image quality, providing gameplay at the highest resolutions in the most demanding games such as Battlefield 3, Deus Ex: Human Revolution and DiRT Showdown. The AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition comes fully equipped with 3GBs of GDDR5 frame buffer, AMD Eyefinity 2.0 technology, and support for PCI Express 3.0 and multi-GPU configurations with AMD CrossFire technology. The AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition will be available as early as next week from add-in board (AIB) partners including ASUS, Gigabyte, HIS, MSI, Sapphire, TUL and XFX starting at USD$499 (Rs.27,500). AMD is going after Nvidia’s GTX 680 which for a while, has been the fastest single-chip graphics card in the market.

Going after the GTX 680

"The AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition rounds out our award-winning GCN family, providing world-class gameplay thanks to the industry's fastest single GPU," said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, GPU Division, AMD. "Gamers have been hungry for our AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series since our launch last December. We have been able to meet that growing demand as we expanded our AMD Radeon HD 7000 offerings and brought the industry's most advanced graphics across a complete family of leading-edge desktop and notebook graphics cards,” he added.

The AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition provides ground-breaking GPU compute functionality through advanced AMD App Acceleration technology, allowing users to enjoy lightning-fast gameplay and realistic physics effects. AMD App Acceleration technology also optimizes common tasks like encrypted file compression and speeds up demanding digital content creation suites, while providing exceptional online video and Blu-ray video experiences. According to AMD, no other graphics card comes close to the performance and features of the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition.

Here are some of the specifications of the new card:

• 1GHz Engine Clock (up to 1.05GHz with boost)
• 3GB GDDR5 Memory
• 1500MHz Memory Clock (6.0 Gbps GDDR5)
• 288GB/s memory bandwidth
• 4.3 TFLOPS Single Precision compute power
• 1.01 TFLOPS Double Precision compute power
• GCN Architecture
• 32 Compute Units (2048 Stream Processors)
• 128 Texture Units
• 128 Z/Stencil ROP Units
• 32 Color ROP Units
• Dual geometry units
• Dual Asynchronous Compute Engines (ACE)
• PCI Express 3.0 x16 bus interface
• DirectX 11.1-capable graphics
• Shader Model 5.0
• DirectCompute 11
• Accelerated multi-threading
• HDR texture compression
• OpenGL 4.2 support
• Up to 24x multi-sample and super-sample anti-aliasing modes
• Adaptive anti-aliasing
• Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA) 2.0
• AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology
• Up to 6 displays supported with DisplayPort 1.2 Multi-Stream Transport
• OpenCL 1.2 Support
• Microsoft C++ AMP
• DirectCompute 11
• Unified Video Decoder (UVD)
• AMD HD3D technology
• Stereoscopic 3D display/glasses support
• Max resolution: 4096x2160 per display