Monday, December 13th 2010
AMD Cayman Taken Apart, PCB Pictured
We've seen quite a few pictures of the AMD Radeon HD 6970 from its exterior, including some finer details observable. For the first time, we're getting to take a peek inside, thanks to a Chinese website that looks to be auctioning off an HD 6970 ahead of launch for a quick buck, if we're not terribly mistaken. The PCB shot reveals many details about the GPU and its board design:
Images Courtesy: Taobao.com
- To begin with, the GPU indeed has a 256-bit wide memory interface, counting the memory chips on the obverse side, and looking at the size of the GPU package.
- The size of the die, and taken that Cayman is a 40 nm GPU, indicate that Cayman is not much bigger than Cypress, it should be about 400~500 million transistors higher compared to Cypress.
- Given the roughly 2500 million transistor count, the stream core count of 1536 seems more realistic. AMD is said to be using an architecturally superior VLIW4 stream processor design that increases performance per mm² die area.
- The board uses a high-grade 6+2+1+1 phase digital PWM voltage regulation design, draws power from 8+6 pin power connectors.
- The reverse side of the PCB has no memory chips, so AMD might be using 2 Gbit memory chips to get 2 GB of total memory
37 Comments on AMD Cayman Taken Apart, PCB Pictured
They measure once 260 W usage, then its rated 260W
alltho, some tests of 4890 showed tdp rated at 190W and still people cudnt make it do that in games, while with nvidia (480 580) they have just done that, end up on tdp values.
Amd stays whitin PEG as much as possible (4870x2 was exception ? and a terrible card)
btw, i have a 190W (furmark with OC) card 6+8 pin, so much for a 300W card i have, rated at 180W
Plugs mean nothing, real tests before drawing conclusions please, speculations are allowed, and we all do.
I expect 200-220W
Seriously now, read what Jstn7477 and Imsochobo said. They're on the ball.
And, FYI, 6-pin PCI-e power plug is rated for 75W and the 8-pin for 150W, and these are the absolute maximums.
Also, would you kindly tell us how do the extra two pins on a 6+2 connector magically double its amperage rating?
I don't think we'll see a performance king but we're sure as heck getting a great competitor on the price/performance front and that always leads to price drops. Most leaked reviews pin the 6970 smack in the middle of the 570 and the 580.
www.coolpc.com.tw/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=276669#p276669
pics.bbzzdd.com/users/MarkR/pcie-pinout.png
this pic is partly wrong...but how it's wrong should be obvious...the 12v-ground wires are swapped.