Even if we have seen much ”information” surrounding AMD’s coming DirectX 11 graphics circuit RV870 it has managed to keep the actual card well hidden from cameras and mobile phones. We got a glimpse of AMD’s first official DX11 test system at Computex, but over at ChipHell they published a picture of what they claims to be of AMD’s RV870-based card. The picture ain’t the best and with a gigantic water stamp it doesn’t any easier to see. The source says the card has two 6-pin power connectors and judging from the size of the card it looks to carry more than one GPU.
The card is said to be longer than the ol’ Radeon HD 2900XT that measures around 24cm/9.5″. A quick estimation makes us believe this card is about an inch longer, which is significantly longer than all of AMD’s available single-GPU cards. This is of course if the cooler is as long as the PCB, but either way it’s impossible to say exactly how long it is.
This would indicate that the RV870 card use some form of dual-GPU solution, as the shrunk 40nm circuits should do well with a much smaller PCB (like the one shown at Computex). At the same time, a single GPU shouldn’t require two 6-pin power connectors. The PCI Express 2.0 interface and a single 6-pin connector can supply up to 150W, an extra 6-pin connector would increase this to 225W.
Discussions at Beyond3D enforce these theories, but they also discuss a so called MCM solution (multi-chip module) where two GPU cores are baked into the same package (something we have discussed in the past with not so positive comments), and only need one socket. This is a new strategy for AMD so maybe you should read all too much into it.
All of this is mainly speculations but hopefully we will see AMD’s first DX11 card without the cooler soon and get some clarity as to how it actually is designed. On the other hand, we can’t even confirm that the card on the picture is RV870-based.
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