{"id":40817,"date":"2012-01-15T11:55:55","date_gmt":"2012-01-15T09:55:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=40817"},"modified":"2012-01-15T15:48:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-15T13:48:00","slug":"amd-hd7900-overview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/40817-amd-hd7900-overview.html","title":{"rendered":"AMD HD7900 overview"},"content":{"rendered":"

AMD have finally lifted their information embargo on the HD7900 series, which means we can detail all the new interesting technologies featured in the latest generation of high-end graphics cards.<\/p>\n

Based on a 28nm manufacturing process, the AMD Southern Islands family of graphics cards brings with it the Graphics Core Next architecture, newly designed from the ground up, and featuring the latest in AMD graphics card technology.<\/p>\n

The AMD HD7900 is the first series of graphics cards to make use of the PCI-E 3.0 interface, which offers 32Gb\/s of bandwidth, double that of PCI-E 2.0. In addition to this, the HD7900 cards are the first to support the latest DirectX 11.1 standard.<\/p>\n

Southern Islands product lines<\/h3>\n

AMD have split their Southern Islands graphics cards into three separate product lines.<\/p>\n

Tahiti<\/span>: This is the top-of-the-range product line, aimed at enthusiast gamers and system builders. Graphics cards in the Tahiti family are the most powerful and advanced GPUs offered by AMD.<\/p>\n

Pitcairn<\/span>: This is the mid-range series. Graphics cards in the Pitcairn family are what AMD calls the \u201csweet spot\u201d for hardcore gamers. These are not as advanced or as powerful as the Tahiti offerings, though they will retail for significantly less.<\/p>\n

Cape Verde<\/span>: This is the low-end of the next generation of AMD graphics card products. AMD claims Cape Verde cards offer a new level of price versus performance, and are aimed at the thrifty end of the market.<\/p>\n

\"7970<\/a>

7970 front angle<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

New technologies<\/h3>\n

AMD has implemented a new version of PowerTune technology<\/span>, which intelligently monitors the maximum power drawn by the board. It allows the board to pull as much power as it requires, without reaching dangerous levels where the board’s fail-safe will shut it down. Thus, stress testing applications such as Futuremark or OCCT won\u2019t cause the graphics card to fail under high load.<\/p>\n

AMD ZeroCore Power<\/span> technology is a new addition to the HD7900 series, and allows the board to save power when not in use. ZeroCore will shut off the GPU when no active display needs to be driven.<\/p>\n

It can also put the graphics card into ‘long idle mode’, where you turn off the display and leave your computer running in the background (such as leaving your PC on overnight to download linux distros). When the card is running in ZeroCore mode, it consumes under 3 Watts, significantly lower than the 24 Watt idle power consumption on previous technologies.<\/p>\n

Well be looking at ZeroCore in depth in a near-future article.<\/p>\n

Partially Resident Textures<\/span> (PRT) is another new feature found in the HD7900 series. This allows graphics memory to behave like a hardware-managed cache, where texture data can be streamed to the card on demand when it is needed for the current scene being rendered.<\/p>\n

PRT also improves memory efficiency and image quality when it comes to large, detailed textures. The technology supports \u201cmegatexturing\u201d methods that allows it to work with texture sizes as large as 32Tb (yes, 32 terabytes). Megatexturing is expected to feature in next generation game engines, which will benefit from this technology more than current-gen engines.<\/p>\n

AMD Eyefinity 2.0<\/span> is another new technology making its debut in the HD7900 series. This new technology allows up to three 3D displays to be powered by one card, and provides Eyefinity 3D gaming.<\/p>\n

Another new feature of Eyefinity 2.0 is Discrete Digital Multi-Point Audio<\/span>. This allows up to three audio streams to be processed simultaneously. An example of this is three separate webcam streams, each with their own audio stream. Each audio stream can run through a separate display port and match up with its own visual feed.<\/p>\n

Eyefinity 2.0 will also be dicussed in more detailed in a later article.<\/p>\n

\"7970<\/a>

7970 ports<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

HD7970, the first Tahiti card<\/h3>\n

The AMD HD7970 is the highest end offering from AMD, part of the Tahiti family of graphics cards. It is based on the new Graphics Core Next 28nm architecture, and features an impressive hardware specification list.<\/p>\n

Specifications include 2,048 stream processors, 3GB of GDDR3 memory and a 384-bit bus width. The board will be powered by two power connectors, a 6pin and an 8pin, and offers a range of display outputs. These include a single DVI connector, an HDMI connector, and two mini DisplayPort adapters, which can support a maximum of 6 concurrent displays.<\/p>\n

These display connectors are in a new layout, taking up a single slot rather than one and a half slots as with previous AMD graphics cards. This allows for better exhaust airflow, reducing temperatures, and reducing acoustic noise. This coupled with a new fan design which includes larger fins and a lower fan speed of 2,400RPM, as opposed to 2,800 \u2013 3,000rpm found on previous generation AMD graphics cards.<\/p>\n

Another interesting feature found on the HD7970 is the dual BIOS toggle switch. The card features two separate BIOS\u2019, one protected BIOS with the factory defaults, and another BIOS for custom overclocking settings. This feature allows overclockers to tamper with the unprotected BIOS without running the risk of permanently corrupting the card’s main BIOS.<\/p>\n

\"7970<\/a>

7970 back angle<\/p><\/div>\n

Bottom line<\/h3>\n

AMD\u2019s latest offering improves on the performance of previous generation offerings; however its real draw lies in the range of new technologies. ZeroCore power management and Eyefinity 2.0 are the big attractions of this latest graphics card offering, and will be examined in depth along with other technology in future articles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AMD has unveiled their latest high-end graphics card offering along with various new technologies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":40815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[577,35,7919],"class_list":["post-40817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-amd","tag-headline","tag-radeon-hd7900-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40817"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41363,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40817\/revisions\/41363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}