AMD seems to be gearing up for a hard launch sooner than expected. Currently they are beginning to ship out their 28nm GPU based products to manufactures in preparation for a December 22nd release according to “journalists and AIB partners“. Originally, AMD’s high end GPU was suppose to release in January, but the HD7970 will see the light of day in time for the holidays. However, the HD 7950 is still set for January 9th, which vr-zone points out is just one day before CES. Chief executive officer of AMD, Rory Read, stated the following:
We are ramping 28nm [products] with TSMC in Taiwan and shipping the products here and now. We are very excited about the products
Above you can also see a leaked photo of the HD 7000 series GPUs in side of a PC. Speaking of leaks, a slide leaked out that contains the specs for the HD 7970. While it could be legit, it is important to take into account that there is a chance it could be fake:
Update:
Unfortunately, AMD’s plans have changed. The HD 7970 is scheduled for January 9th and the HD 7970 has been delayed until February.
Sources: vr-zone.com, xbitlabs.com, techpowerup.com
Man if those specs are real Nvidia and AMD both have huge winners on their hand this generation. 3GB of GDDR5 on a 384bit bus is insane. 3GB of VRAM is going to make the triple screen crowd VERY happy. Now if only they can take a whip to their driver team and make them actually release good drivers in a timely fashion.
While sometimes drivers do take longer to get here, I myself have not had a single problem with ATI drivers.
On nvidia on the other hand, I would have several updates that would create horrible frame rate issues that were previously not there, not being able to manually change fanspeed or clocks in nvidia control panel, and the infamous Nvidia Kernal Driver 2XX.XX has stopped responding issue.
IMHO they both need to step their shit up when it comes to driver support.
I’ve had my share of issues from both sides over the last decade I’ve been building, but AMD’s problem is just how long it takes them to get stuff out for new games. Eyefinity, CFX, or just general game performance tweaks sometimes are over a month late. Since they started pushing beta updates out heaver it hasn’t been quite as bad as before, but they still need to step up their game and stop treating the monthly release like it’s a huge amazing thing. I prefer Nvidia’s style. WHQL it when it’s ready to be WHQL’d, not before.
There was a similar driver issue with AMD. I think it was Ati kmdag or so. Anyway has been fixed for me but I have no clue since I am on a 5870 and not the 6xxx which is said to have problems with drivers.
Other than that, I’ll believe it when I see it.