AMD has unveiled the latest addition to its laptop graphics series, in the shape of the AMD Radeon HD 8900M series.
The new range currently consists of only one card - the top of the line HD 8970M. This boasts a whopping 1280 stream processors, which is double that of the next step down in the 8000 series, the 8800M, which has only 640 stream processors.
As with the rest of the 8000 series, the new chip uses AMD's GCN architecture and features full DirectX 11.1 support.
Due to its power output, the 8970M will only likely find its way into the bulkiest of laptops. One such model that has already been announced is the
MSI GX70, a 17in model with a Full HD screen, quad-core AMD A10 APU, Eyefinity support and a keyboard designed by Steel Series.
According to figures supplied by AMD, the new chip will be some 42% faster than the Nvidia GTX 680M in Bioshock Infinite (1,920 x 1,080, 0xAA, 0xAF, ultra detail) and 12% faster in Crysis 3 (1,920 x 1,080, 0xAA, 0xAF). The company didn't supply comparison figures for Nvidia's latest
700M range of mobile graphics processors but boldly claims it as being "the world's fastest notebook GPU".
AMD 8970M Specs
The 8970M completes AMD's lineup of 8x00 series mobile graphics cards, which start with the 8500M, which features 384 stream processors, and continues with the 8700M (384 stream processors with faster clock speeds all round) and 8800M (640 stream processors). The full specs of the range are shown below.
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As with previous mobile AMD graphics solutions, these chips can work together with the integrated GPU on the company's APUs to boost performance, though the advantage would be minimum on a processor as powerful as the 8970M.
Although AMD hasn't pinned down exact launch dates for products featuring the new chip, we can expect to start seeing them around Q3.
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