AMD Dual-GPU HD 7790 May Arrive in March 2012 Says Report

After the release of the Radeon HD 7900 series cards in the first part of 2012, some even say in January, AMD will continue to expand its graphics processor lineup and it now seems like March will mark the arrival of the dual-GPU Radeon HD 7990.

The card will be based on the same Tahiti core as that used for the Radeon HD 7970 or HD 7950, but we don't know if AMD will go for the XT or the Pro version of this GPU.

AMD's current Radeon HD 6990 is built using the more powerful XT version of the Cypress core, but this is no guarantee as the company has also used Pro parts in its previous dual-GPU solutions.

Mo matter the Tahiti core that AMD will end up choosing, Donanim Haber reports that the HD 7990 should be launched by the end of Q1 2012, most probably during, or shortly after the CeBIT fair, which will take place at the beginning of the month in Germany.

The Radeon HD 7990 will most probably also use the new liquid chamber cooling solution that AMD said previously that it will be included in the HD 7970 and HD 7950 reference designs.

According to the Sunnyvale-based chip maker, this brings a series of improvements over the old vapor chamber technology, while also being easier to manufacture.

Radeon HD 7900-series cards use AMD's Next Generation Core (NGC) architecture that was designed to offer improved performance and functionality in GPGPU environment.

Before coming out with the dual-GPU Radeon HD 7990, AMD will release not just the HD 7970 and HD 7950, but also a series of mid-range models manufactured using TSMC's 28nm production node.

These will feature the VLIW4 (very-long instruction word) architecture introduced with the Radeon HD 6900-series GPUs.

Nvidia's next-generation graphics cores, code-name Kepler, which are built using the same 28nm TSMC fabrication node, will also arrive in 2012 and will be officially announced in December of this year, according to a recent report.

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