Radeon HD 7950 launches, beats GTX 580; HD 7990 and 7870 launch date leaked

[DKT27]

It’s a veritable glut of Radeon-related news! Yesterday, to much fanfare, a bevy of AMD Radeon HD 7950 graphics cards were released. Based on the same 28nm Tahiti core found in the Radeon HD 7970, but with slightly fewer stream processors (1792 vs. 2048), texture units (112 vs. 128), and slower core and memory speeds, the 7950 is a monstrous graphics card that outperforms Nvidia’s GTX 580 at a lower price point.

Unlike the 7970, where every manufacturer stuck very closely to AMD’s reference design, there’s a big variety of 7950 cards to pick from. If you’re willing to part with $499, XFX has the fastest 7950, with a core clocked at 900MHz and RAM clocked at 1375MHz (very close to the 7970, in fact). At $459, the cheapest card is the Sapphire model. AnandTech, as always, has an excellent review of the HD 7950.

In other news, a leaked MSI slide (pictured below) suggests that we don’t have long to wait until the low-end ($100-$150) Cape Verde parts ship (HD 7770 and 7750), and in March the long-awaited mid-range ($180-$250) Pitcairn HD 7870 and 7850 cards will appear. Sometime in the second quarter, the dual-GPU 7990 will appear, and probably capture every performance crown in the process.

Meanwhile, Nvidia’s still waiting for its 28nm 600-series (Kepler) parts to roll off the production line at TSMC (where AMD’s chips are also made, incidentally). The first 600-series graphics card, after significant delays, isn’t due until March or April — by which time, AMD will probably have released the HD 7990 and might even be teasing its next-gen architecture. AMD, at least when it comes to graphics, definitely seems to have the advantage at the moment.

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[0veR]

But not beter than GTX 590 :P

[T4C Fantasy]

the 7990 beats the gtx 590 :P

[Nemesis]

we will see what happens when Nvidia comes out with their chips. you can never win as a consumer something new always comes out in 6 months. best you can do is pick the best one you can afford and us it until its so crappy you have no choice but to replace it.