PowerColor Develops Dual-Chip Radeon HD 6870 Graphics Card

From X-bit Labs: PowerColor, a major supplier of graphics cards based on ATI Radeon graphics processing units (GPUs), is reportedly working on a new dual-chip graphics cards that will utilize two performance-mainstream Radeon HD 6870 chips. The novelty is not designed to bring new performance heights or certain exclusive capabilities, but will feel the gap between the flagship Radeon HD 6990 and single-chip 6970.

The PowerColor Dual-Radeon HD 6870 graphics card will carry two code-named Barts XT chips with 1120 stream processors per GPU and will thus offer the horsepower of about 4GFLOPS (thanks to 2240 stream processing elements). The board will be equipped with 2GB of GDDR5 memory (1GB per chip) as well as two DVI, one DisplayPort and two mini DisplayPort connectors. Clock-speeds of the novelty are unknown, but its power consumption should be high, given the fact that it uses two 8-pin PCI Express power connectors.

PowerColor Dual-Radeon HD 6870 Graphics Card. Image by TechPowerUp web-site.

The image of the graphics board, which is projected to be demonstrated at Computex 2011 trade-show in Taipei, Taiwan, next month, indicates that the card is rather huge, but is similar to designs developed by Advanced Micro Devices itself.

This is not the first time when PowerColor demonstrates rather interesting dual-GPU graphics solution. None of the previous attempts have actually emerged on shelves of computer stores due to various reasons. Nevertheless, the dual-Radeon HD 6870 does have some chances since AMD will not refresh its lineup of graphics processing units until at least the Q4 2011.

Performance of the dual-chip Radeon HD 6870 will be higher than that of the Radeon 6970, but will not be able to match that of the previous flagship dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970 (since Radeon HD 6870 is not as fast as the Radeon HD 5870). The market success of the novelty will be determined by the price. At present two Radeon HD 6870 graphics cards cost ~$400, Radeon HD 6970 is available for ~$350 and the flagship Radeon HD 6990 costs ~$700. Given the fact that the dual-GPU Radeon HD 6870 is an enthusiast-class product that required large PC case along with high-end PSU, its competitive price should be in the range between $350 and $400, but in this case it will compete directly with PowerColor's own graphics boards

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