AMD launched the AMD Radeon HD 7970 graphics card for desktop PCs, which it claims is the world’s fastest single-GPU graphics card and its first graphics card built on 28nm production technology.
The HD 7970 is the successor to the HD 6970, AMD’s fastest single-GPU graphics card till date.
The chip maker said the chips use a revolutionary new graphics architecture that enables putting 4.3 billion transistors, or basic computing components, on a single chip, which raises PC games and computing abilities to a new level.
AMD product manager Devon Nekechuk said the chip runs about 30% faster on the 3D Mark 11 Extreme benchmark test compared to Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 580 graphics chip.
The chip, which has 2,048 stream processors, can support as many as six monitors simultaneously and can use 3GB of graphics memory, dubbed 3GB GDDR5/384-bit. It consumes about 300 watts and 15 watts of power at a static level.
According to AMD, other new features with the HD 7970 include PCI Express 3.0 and DirectX 11.1 compatibility, making it the first card compatible with either of the two new standards. It is the first AMD GPU to actually know how much power it’s drawing from the system, and it’s intelligent enough to "gracefully downclock the engine to ensure it’s within power limits."
