AMD Now Shipping 28nm GPUs, Says CEO
AMD CEO Rory Read said that the company is currently shipping 28-nm GPUs for revenue, indicating that two new Radeon HD 7000 Series cards are on the way.
On Tuesday during an IT Supply Chain conference, AMD CEO Rory Read confirmed that the company is now shipping its next-generation graphics cores -- which are fabricated using 28-nm process technology at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) fabs -- for revenue. Actual products won't be formally announced until CES 2012 next month, he said.
"We are ramping 28-nm [products] with TSMC in Taiwan and shipping the products here and now," he said. "We are very excited about the products."
AMD's CEO didn't actually detail a specific product, but there's speculation he may be referring to the "Tahiti" GPU, which will be used in the company's upcoming Radeon HD 7970 and HD 7950 solutions. Even more, there are reports that the Radeon HD 7970 will actually see a limited launch on December 22 followed by a full retail release on January 9 along with the Radeon HD 7950.
The Radeon HD 7950 will reportedly arrive as a custom solution, allowing AMD partners to clock each part to their specific needs. It will also be flexible in terms of the amount of memory and 3rd-party cooling. As for the HD 7970, it will be the fastest GPU in the 7000 "Southern Islands" Series, sporting a Tahiti XT core, 2048 streaming cores operating at a 925 MHz clock, 128 texture units and an estimated 300W TDP.
According to reports, both the HD 7970 and HD 7950 will be very long cards and sport a 384-bit memory bus connected to 3 GB of VRAM (twelve GDDR5 memory chips) working at 1.37 GHz (5.5 GHz effective) to deliver 264 GB/s of memory bandwidth. They will also have two 8-pin PCI Express power connectors.
Given that AMD hasn't made any official announcements, most of the information you see here stems from supposed leaks save for Read's confirmation. We expect to hear more in a few weeks when we step foot in Las Vegas during CES 2012.

Then what are you doing on the post? No one cares about your stupid feelings.
Then stick with IGP, Nancy.
Apparently, the high-end 600 series will come out end 2012 or start 2013. Far too late for me.
I am building a rig starting next year and I am getting the best there is at that time, so AMD it is. I'll be waiting for Ivy bridge though.
(I know it doesn't run at around 300W all the time, but seriously?)
Then stick with IGP, Nancy.
Then what are you doing on the post? No one cares about your stupid feelings.
I don't care if it is 800W TDP, if the performance warrants the power consumption then it gets two thumbs up from me. This is for higher end gaming machines, not media center PCs.
Still dude they shrink the die it should consume less power not as much.
Which one of these girls is the 300W TDP Nancy?
I still stand by my declaration. If the performance increase warrants the power cosumption increase then there is no problem. Wait for the benchmarks and then claim it isn't worth it. I want a high end gaming card, not a whisper quiet vagina, to install into my new high end gaming machine.
And who's jealous now? I have a GT3, but prefer to drive my Evo X. Just as fast and better gas milage after all the mods I put in. Same as 6950, why pay for 6970 when you can get it for cheaper price and a bios change. Damn, you sure are intelligent, comparing a Porche 911 Carrera (6950 2gb) to a Porsche GT3 (6970). Same damn GPU, just slightly dumbed down for ignorant phules like yourself...
300W isn't bad, I'm probably using more than that between my two OCed 5850s... so, dropping in a single much faster card would be a win for sure!
Just gotta wait for the hydro version...
Well, I got a Porsche under the shell of a Civic....
I hope they're not 28nm GPUs too.... (Girls in Parade Uniforms)
This is an intelligent attitude, and it is extraordinarily unfortunate that the masses don't seem to agree with you. How else could the big two hegemons get away with milking us so badly for so long? The card that should replace the $150 6850 will instead replace the $500 69xx, with the new $150 card having metrics similar to the existing $150 card. It's what they did last generation, and it's what they will continue to do as long as the sheeple keep drinking their koolaid. Enthusiast has become a term used by morons for morons.