AMD working on Malta dual-chip card

[csbin]

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/30539-amd-working-on-malta-dual-chip-card

It looks like AMD is not done with HD 7000 series Radeons and it will introduce a few new products this year.
We have heard from multiple sources now that AMD is working on a card codenamed Malta. The Malta is a dual-chip card and we are not sure if it is based on Tahiti like HD 7990 cards. The Malta card should have a clock well over 1GHz and should become the fastest offering from AMD. It should also be available to more than a few partners.
This card should come in the next few months but some of our sources do indicate that the card will launch soon. AMD probably wants to see the real world performance of Nvidia’s Geforce Titan and then follow up with its new card.
These GPUs will likely beat the 1050MHz that Asus delivers with its dual-chip water cooled ASUS ARES2-6GD5, 2x Radeon HD 7970 card, but we still don’t know whether it will outpace NV’s Titan.
The launch of the card is expected in the first half of 2013, but we don’t have a better date than that. AMD is adjusting a lot of its launch schedules. We have learned that AMD’s decision to push back the HD 8000 series launch is tactical and not technical in nature. We will try to learn more about it this week.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Im guessing that they've finally managed to work around the power constraints? which is pretty much only thing thats holding the supposed "HD7990" or maybe the better term would be a dual chip desktop product back.

 

[SolMiester]

I thought the dual chip 7970 was called New Zealand?, which is what the power colour, and Ares II are?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

two 7850/70? It's their best perf/w chip.

 

[Hitman928]

I hope they get their crossfire drivers ironed out a bit if they do this (not exactly trusting the source on this
one). Maybe it's a part of the whole memory controller rewrite, hopefully.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

two 7850/70? It's their best perf/w chip.

I would say it's more likely they've been binning 7970 chips and have a stockpile of chips they can undervolt and still hit high clocks.

 

[wand3r3r]

Apparently it's speculated to be faster than the Ares? I wish they'd release the 7970 successor.

 

[zephyrprime]

I would say it's more likely they've been binning 7970 chips and have a stockpile of chips they can undervolt and still hit high clocks.

Or maybe they are using TSMC's 28LP (low power) process to make it?

 

[BrightCandle]

The are definitely going to have a lot of software and potentially hardware fixes to do for crossfire to make this a viable release. If they don't fix their problems they may well find this totally flop on release as the reviews that matter eat them alive and recommend the single cards as the faster option.

Seeing as how this is AMD's strategy for dealing with NVidia's monster chips it makes a lot of sense for them to work very hard indeed on making crossfire work better than the competitions.

 

[3DVagabond]

Or maybe they are using TSMC's 28LP (low power) process to make it?

There is apparently an HPm process that uses less power. I haven't read anywhere where anyone is planning on using it. From what I understand LP doesn't "use" less power, as much as it handles less power and isn't really suitable for high performance GPU's. I'm no expert, though. Just what I've been able to gleam reading araound.

The are definitely going to have a lot of software and potentially hardware fixes to do for crossfire to make this a viable release. If they don't fix their problems they may well find this totally flop on release as the reviews that matter eat them alive and recommend the single cards as the faster option.

Seeing as how this is AMD's strategy for dealing with NVidia's monster chips it makes a lot of sense for them to work very hard indeed on making crossfire work better than the competitions.

I said this before. AMD needs to sort crossfire. We need for 60fps on Crossfire to be visually the same as 60fps on a single GPU, at the very least. Perfect scaling isn't as important, IMO.