Besides the new 7970 X2 cards at Computex this year, there were also a few non reference HD 7970’s showcased at the tradeshow. Ironically, AMD nor its partners uttered a word about AMD’s 7990 Dual GPU SKU, probably that too since Nvidia’s GTX 690 destroyed it’s market.
Nevertheless, AMD is up to something new to gain back a chunk of its market share with the red team readying three new SKUs from the ‘Southern Islands GPU family.
Namely, the three are the much delayed Radeon HD 7990, Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition as well as a new SKU unheard of named Radeon HD 7930.
The HD 7990 has been facing issues since long leading from technical production board design issues to low yields of the chip itself. The HD 7990, whenever it would be officially launched will apparently have a tough time competing up against the Nvidia GeForce GTX 690, both performance and price wise.
The HD 7970 GHz edition however, will be put up against the GTX 680 by raising the reference clock speeds of the card besides probably lowering the price point for the card; that is IF they want to have a chance up against the 680 head on.
Last of the batch is the HD 7930 that has been spotted in a recent AMD Catalyst update being codenamed ‘Tahiti LE’. It’s expected the chip will be a cut-down variant of the ‘Tahiti’ GPU, a similar move as Nvidia is doing with their upcoming Kepler GK104 Geforce GTX 660.
Rumors have been circulating that the HD 7990 launch has been pushed back to as late as August this year. The HD 7970 GHz edition launch is although around the corner and is likely to concede with Nvidia’s GTX 660 launch. The HD 7930’s availability will be probably after June or earlier depending upon Nvidia’s strategy in the market in the weeks to come.
