As much as we liked AMD's Radeon HD 6870, we were left wanting more. The card was fairly capable, but we knew in the back of our minds that the real heir to the Radeon-throne was the HD 6970 - based on the Cayman GPU - which was expected to launch around a month later.
Now, with the release only a few weeks away, we may have a few more details on the new silicon. Bringing together several different sources, the first rumour is pointing towards a shader count of 1,536 with 32 ROPs, 96 texture units and either 1GB - as we'd previously heard - or 2GB GDDR5.
While the number of stream processors is a little lower than the HD 5870's 1,600, we know from the 6800-series cards that AMD's architecture improvements can do a lot more with a lot less.
As ever, the raw stats aren't much good without clock speeds to go with them, and it looks like we have those too. A poster on the Zol forums has not only managed to get their hands on one of the monstrous new cards - and taken some photos as evidence - but is reporting that the core will run at 860MHz - though the speed of the 2GB memory remains a mystery. The combination of a six- and an eight-pin PCIe power connector also suggests that the card may come close to the suspected 300W TDP.
This all seems promising, and given AMD's performance improvements, the card should be a contender for the title of most powerful single-GPU card on the planet. However, there are also rumours that TSMC has been struggling to produce acceptable yields of the new GPU, despite being based on a proven manufacturing process. According to the source, this could be a major blow for the manufacturer that might see general availability delayed, resulting in a possible soft-launch this month.
