AMD Releases The $150 Radeon HD 6790
AMD today launched a new graphics card, the Radeon HD 6790, in the crowded $150 price segment.
The new card is based on the same Barts GPU that powers the Radeon HD 6800 series. The card is aimed at NVIDIA's recently released GTX 550, which was initially priced at $150 but currently it can be found online for $130. So at least pricewise, the new Radeon HD 6790 is positioned against a GeForce GTX 460 768MB or a Radeon HD 6850 ( $160).
The 6790 is a cut-down from the 6850, losing 2 SIMD units and half of its ROPs but also features higher clockspeeds for both the core and the memory. The card has 800 SPs and 16 ROPs operating at 840MHz. It comes with 1GB GDDR5 memory clocked at 1050 MHz:
At 150W, the card requires 2 PCIe power sockets. It has also 1x dual link DVI out, 1x HDMI out and 1x Mini Displayport out.
Other features include:
- Second generation Microsoft DirectX 11 support
- PCI Express 2.1 x16 bus interface
- "Eye-Definition" graphics
- AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology
- AMD EyeSpeed visual acceleration
- UVD 3 dedicated video playback accelerator
- AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing technology
- DirectCompute 11
- OpenCL Support
- AMD HD3D technology
- Blu-ray 3D support - AMD CrossfireX multi-GPU technology
- Integrated HDMI 1.4a with support for stereoscopic 3D
- Integrated HD audio controller
- AMD PowerPlay power management technology
The 6790 is a cut-down from the 6850, losing 2 SIMD units and half of its ROPs but also features higher clockspeeds for both the core and the memory. The card has 800 SPs and 16 ROPs operating at 840MHz. It comes with 1GB GDDR5 memory clocked at 1050 MHz:
AMD Radeon HD 6870 | AMD Radeon HD 6850 | AMD Radeon HD 5830 | AMD Radeon HD 6790 | AMD Radeon HD 5770 | |
Stream Processors | 1120 | 960 | 1120 | 800 | 800 |
Texture Units | 56 | 48 | 56 | 40 | 40 |
ROPs | 32 | 32 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
Core Clock | 900MHz | 775MHz | 800MHz | 840MHz | 850MHz |
Memory Clock | 1.05GHz (4.2GHz data rate) GDDR5 | 1GHz (4GHz data rate) GDDR5 | 1GHz (4GHz data rate) GDDR5 | 1050MHz (4.2GHz data rate) GDDR5 | 1.2GHz (4.8GHz data rate) GDDR5 |
Memory Bus Width | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 128-bit |
VRAM | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB |
Transistor Count | 1.7B | 1.7B | 2.15B | 1.7B | 956M |
Manufacturing Process | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm | TSMC 40nm |
Price Point | ~$200 | ~$160 | $149 | ~$110 |
At 150W, the card requires 2 PCIe power sockets. It has also 1x dual link DVI out, 1x HDMI out and 1x Mini Displayport out.
Other features include:
- Second generation Microsoft DirectX 11 support
- PCI Express 2.1 x16 bus interface
- "Eye-Definition" graphics
- AMD Eyefinity multi-display technology
- AMD EyeSpeed visual acceleration
- UVD 3 dedicated video playback accelerator
- AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing technology
- DirectCompute 11
- OpenCL Support
- AMD HD3D technology
- Blu-ray 3D support - AMD CrossfireX multi-GPU technology
- Integrated HDMI 1.4a with support for stereoscopic 3D
- Integrated HD audio controller
- AMD PowerPlay power management technology