Mystery X2-card from AMD, HD 5970 on 19 november?

[error8]

According to this link http://translate.google.com/transla...der-hd5970&sl=de&tl=en&history_state0=&swap=1
5970 is going to have really low clock speed 735 mhz on the core and 1010 mhz on the memory. It seems that the heat output really handicapped the cards clocks. I really wonder what will the full load temps look like. It's a scary behemont card.

 

[exar333]

The 5850 is more than just a reduced clockspeed 5870. It also has a reduced number of stream processors and texture units. The 5850 gpu is basically made from a 5870 gpu that has a portion of it that doesn't work because of a manufacturing defect. The gpu is designed to allow ATI to disable the non-functional potions and still use a gpu intended to be a 5870 as a 5850. So, the gpu on a 5850 might still clock as high as a 5870, but ATI can't use these gpus to make 5970s.

The gpus on the 5970 are most likely clocked slower than the 5870 because of heat or power issues. I doubt ATI would be putting two chips that don't qualify to be in a single gpu 5870 into their dual gpu flagship card. That seems like a terrific way to piss off your high end (high margin) customers, which is who buys dual gpu cards.

Nvidia did this with the GTX 295 at launch. It wasn't quite 2 x 280's (lacked memory bandwidth) but was more than 2 x 260's. This may be a way to encourage buying 2 high-end cards and CF them for better performance over one single graphics card. It allows the highest-end card to be the fastest single slot approach, while still allowing 2 5870's in CF to be the best CF approach.