Dual-GPU AMD HD 7970 X2 in the Making

You'd think that AMD's Radeon HD 7990 would be the end-all of all dual-chip graphics card efforts, but this does not seem to be the case if recent reports are to be believed.

The folks at DonanimHaber may have just stumbled upon the most queer of information pieces this year has seen so far. Apparently, AMD's graphics card manufacturing partners are creating custom-made dual-GPU boards of their own. This would not be at all surprising if said video cards were variations of the Radeon HD 7990. The Sunnyvale, California-based company has, after all, been said to have decided that the dual-GPU beast will appear during Computex 2012, in Taipei, next month (June 05-09). But here lies the strange part: according to DonanimHaber, the AIB partners aren't calling their projects Radeon DH 7990. Instead, they are using the “Radeon HD 7970 X2” moniker, which gives birth to a slew of new possibilities.

Obviously, any Radeon HD 7970 X2 will have two Tahiti graphics processing units, since this is the GPU that gives the HD 7970 its power. More importantly, depending on what PCBs companies choose, what coolers they have and what other tweaks they do to the circuitry, boards may end up with higher clocks than the 7990 itself (1 GHz). By that logic, we can definitely see 6 GB of GDDR5 VRAM backing the 28nm chips, but this is pure speculation at this stage. Regardless, it is plain as day that AMD's AIB partners are bent on launching products capable of putting pressure on NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 690. Add to that the likelihood of the Radeon HD 7970 X2 to also have a lower price and you have everything needed for a nice price war.

We're not saying such a competition will start - that is guesswork at best - but we're definitely in favor of developments that cause price reductions, so we'll risk hoping.

Posted in: Hardware, Preview