AMD Readying Radeon HD 6790 for April 5?

By Marcus Yam
published

A combatant for the Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti?

Nordic Hardware has a report stating that AMD will be launching a new mid-range graphics part called the Radeon HD 6790, which is supposed to be an answer to Nvidia's just announced GeForce GTX 550 Ti.

The Radeon HD 6790 will be more powerful than a Radeon HD 5770, at a lower price than Radeon HD 6850. According to the report, the 6790 will use a GPU called the Barts LE, which uses AMD's classic VLIW5 architecture with 10 SM units with 800 stream processors. In comparison, the 6850's Barts Pro GPU has 12 SM units and 960 stream processors.

The clock speed is said to be at 840MHz and the memory at 1050MHz (4200MHz effective), all on a 256-bit interface.

ND said that this new card was supposed to launch on March 31, but instead is now launching on April 5.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
47 Comments Comment from the forums
  • kcorp2003
    uh. i need HD7000 series please. 28nm please.
    Reply
  • FlukieLukie
    kcorp2003uh. i need HD7000 series please. 28nm please.
    Your joking right? Outdate me by another generation lol
    Reply
  • I instead want this:
    http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/amd-radeon-hd-6000/hd-6670/Pages/amd-radeon-hd-6670-overview.aspx
    Reply
  • mactronix
    So im now wondering how thats going to work? If its going to perform between the 5770 and 6850 but be priced below the 6850 but presumably above the 5770 then here in the UK it has a £30 price gap to fill.
    Surely AMD are not at last going to drop the 5770 to where it should have been priced all along is it?
    Reply
  • silverblue
    The 6670 looks to be the fastest card that doesn't need the use of a 6- or 8-pin connector, however only barely - the 4670 may be old but I expect both cards to compete. The 4670 has a slight clock speed deficit, only half the potential bandwidth and two thirds of the shader power, but is superior at texture fillrate. Will that matter in the end? You're unlikely to play in higher resolutions on either card really so perhaps it won't, and the lack of DirectX 11 is hardly an issue.

    I'd really like to see such a card with 4770/4830 class performance. I'm surprised we've not had one already.

    The 6790 is an interesting prospect... maybe it's time for the 5770 to bow out.
    Reply
  • amk09
    mactronixSo im now wondering how thats going to work? If its going to perform between the 5770 and 6850 but be priced below the 6850 but presumably above the 5770 then here in the UK it has a £30 price gap to fill. Surely AMD are not at last going to drop the 5770 to where it should have been priced all along is it?
    You are on crack dude, the 5770 has been dirt cheap for the longest time now. It can be had for $100 on newegg, which is a great price for that card. Shell out another $100 for xfire 5770's and you have Dx11 performance on the level of a 5870. Not too shabby for $200.
    Reply
  • nukemaster
    with the 5870's down to about $220, you get guaranteed performance(even on games that do not scale with Xfire) for just over the price of 2 5770's now. Clearly if you have one 5770 its the way to go, but if not, I would bet on the 5870(or better) for sure.
    Reply
  • silverblue
    I've checked out that article and I'm a bit concerned now. Let's not have another 5830, please!

    It may have made more sense to offer a 6850 with a 128-bit bus; increasing clocks to compensate for the disabled SM units might alleviate some of the performance drop but increasing power over a more powerful model is a no-no.
    Reply
  • mactronix
    amk09You are on crack dude, the 5770 has been dirt cheap for the longest time now. It can be had for $100 on newegg, which is a great price for that card. Shell out another $100 for xfire 5770's and you have Dx11 performance on the level of a 5870. Not too shabby for $200.

    £ isn't the same as $. For what its capable of compared to the competition its always been over priced. At release it was too close to the 4870 which was cheaper and after the 460 was released its been a totally irrelevant card full stop.
    Reply
  • kcorp2003
    FlukieLukieYour joking right? Outdate me by another generation lol
    lol, hey i got a HD4870. Its great but i really want to experience BF3 in high quality.
    Reply