TechPowerUp today released the latest version of GPU-Z, our popular video subsystem information and diagnostic utility that provides you with accurate information about the graphics hardware installed, and lets you monitor their clock speeds, fan speeds, voltages, VRAM consumption, etc., in real-time. Version 0.5.8 introduces two new features. The first one is a render test that applies sufficient load (not stress) on the GPU to pull it out of PCI-Express link-state power-management, to ensure the Bus information is accurate. If you find the PCI-Express bus link speed or PCIe version displayed incorrectly, simply click on the "?" button next to the field to launch the load test.

The next new feature is ASIC quality, designed for NVIDIA Fermi (GF10x and GF11x GPUs) and AMD Southern Islands (HD 7800 series and above), aimed at advanced users, hardware manufacturers, and the likes. We've found the ways in which AMD and NVIDIA segregate their freshly-made GPU ASICs based on the electrical leakages the chips produce (to increase yield by allotting them in different SKUs and performance bins), and we've found ways in which ASIC quality can be quantified and displayed. Find this feature in the context menu of GPU-Z. We're working on implementing this feature on older AMD Radeon GPUs.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.5.8, TechPowerUp GPU-Z 0.5.8 ASUS ROG Themed

The full change-log follows.

Club 3D B.V. is pleased to announce the introduction of the next generation video card based on the Antilles chipset, AMD' second generation DirectX 11.

The new Club 3D Radeon HD 6990 4GB GDDR5 comes with a Dual Bios Overdrive with a default speed from factory at 830 MHz. It can be switched into Overdrive mode at a flick of a switch. The Overdrive mode is set at 880 MHz. Do things faster with AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) technology on the most demanding applications and take advantage of the Dolby True HD support for a theatre-quality experience.

PC gamers have a new standard-setting graphics card to look forward to in the form of the ASUS HD 6990. A true powerhouse, it uses dual HD 6970 cores on one printed circuit board, doubling the power while maintaining streamlined energy draw requirements. With ASUS exclusive Voltage Tweak, it pushes the card to run at up to 1245 MHz for sheer gaming performance in the highest possible resolutions and with all effects and details turned up to maximum. The HD 6990 represents the very top-end of AMD-sourced technology.

Based on AMD Antilles GPU architecture, the HD 6990 offers hardcore PC gamers and DIY builders the fastest dual-core graphics card ever produced using AMD technology. It represents the pinnacle of the Windows 7 and DirectX 11-optimized Northern Islands series of GPUs from AMD.

A few days earlier, AMD's Matt Skynner displayed the company's newest graphics card that seeks to extend the performance leadership currently held by Radeon HD 5970. The dual-GPU AMD Radeon HD 6990, codenamed "Antilles", makes use of two 40 nm "Cayman" GPU, which powers the single-GPU HD 6950 and HD 6970. The core configuration of Cayman in Antilles is not known. The card itself keeps up with the product styling that all Radeon HD 6000 series carry, it's about as long as the HD 5970.

This time, AMD is toying with a revolutionary new cooler design that makes use of a cylindrical blower (like ones used in air-curtains, on a much smaller scale) to draw air from the rear portion of the cooler, and circulate through the complex vapor-chamber enhanced heatsink inside. In other words, the card lacks a fan intake hole where it's typically located, but the rear portion serves that purpose. Power is drawn in from two 8-pin PCI-E power connectors. AMD is expected to release the new enthusiast graphics card in this quarter.

At last, specifications of AMD's elusive Radeon HD 6970 and Radeon HD 6990 graphics accelerators made it to the internet, with slides exposing details such as stream processor count. The Radeon HD 6970 is based on a new 40 nm GPU by AMD, codenamed "Cayman". The dual-GPU accelerator being designed using two Cayman GPUs is codenamed "Antilles", and carries the product name Radeon HD 6990.

Cayman packs 1920 stream processors, spread across 30 SIMD engines, indicating the 4D stream processor architecture, generating single-precision computational power of 3 TFLOPs. It packs 96 TMUs, 128 Z/Stencil ROPs, and 32 color ROPs. Its memory bandwidth of 160 GB/s indicates that it uses a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. The memory amount, however, seems to have been doubled to 2 GB on the Radeon HD 6970. Antilles uses two of these Cayman GPUs, combined computational power of 6 TFLOPs, a total of 3840 stream processors, total memory bandwidth of 307.2 GB/s, a total of 4 GB of memory, load and idle board power ratings at 300W and 30W, respectively.

AMD is close to unveiling its next-generation "Northern Islands" GPU family, which will be branded under the AMD Radeon HD 6000 series. These include two new performance-thru-extreme GPUs, namely Barts and Cayman. There's also a dual-Cayman implementation codenamed Antilles. While specifications are anyone's guess besides the little details we know about Barts and Cayman, the feature-set of the Northern Island family was communicated to AIB parts in a presentation which was leaked by the Chinese press.

To begin with, the key feature additions in Northern Islands includes a much more evolved display logic that can drive five displays simultaneously over physical outputs that include two dual-link DVI-I, one HDMI 1.4 (full-size), and two mini DisplayPort 1.2 connectors. The logic also provides you to install up to six monitors over the two DisplayPort connectors by daisy-chaining them, making use of the MultiStream feature of DP 1.2, which supports two times the data-rate of DP 1.1, and can provide very high-resolution display, or HD display with stereoscopic 3D (120 Hz). HDMI 1.4 lets you make use of Blu-ray 3D. A new video processing engine, UVD 3.0, provides GPU acceleration for MPEG-2, DivX, MVC (multi video coding), for Blu-ray 3D.

Earlier today, we were treated to the first picture of the Radeon HD 6870, a new and upcoming performance graphics card from AMD. It was also learned that the HD 6870 is based on a new GPU codenamed "Barts", which is intended to be a successor to the previous-generation "Juniper" GPU, which was at the center of the Radeon HD 5700 desktop and Mobility HD 5800 series. That left some uncertainty as to what GPU was going to drive the sub-$199 HD 6700 series. AMD may have found an answer, rebranding.

AMD seems to have been on the crossroads of which naming scheme to adopt. The first scheme based on conventional logic tells users that Barts-based SKUs should sit in the HD 6700 series, and Cayman-based single-GPU SKUs in the HD 6800; while the second scheme promotes Barts to the HD 6800 series, and Cayman to the HD 6900 series, pushing the low-volume, high-end Antilles (dual-Cayman) graphics card to the HD 6990 SKU. Evidently, AMD chose the newer, second scheme. The only rationale that makes sense is that the x800 series seems to be very popular, and if Barts, with its radically redesigned SIMD components can perform on par or better than the HD 5800 series SKUs, that's enough to justify its upwards push.

Even as NVIDIA is taking its own sweet time to complete building its lineup of DirectX 11 compliant GPUs to target all market segments, AMD, which got a 6 months' headstart into releasing its lineup, which ended up targeting all market segments in a span of 5 months, is readying the Radeon HD 6000 series for launch well within this year. Just as the Radeon HD 5000 series GPU family was codenamed Evergreen with its members codenamed after evergreen trees (such as Cypress, Juniper, Redwood, Cedar), the Radeon HD 6000 is codenamed "Southern Islands", with its members codenamed after islands in the Caribbean (not islands in the Mediterranean).

"Bart" (after Saint Barthélemy island) is the codename for the performance/upper-mid segment GPU, a successor to the "Juniper" Radeon HD 5700 series. "Cayman" (after Cayman Islands) is the enthusiast GPU, successor to Cypress, and will go into making SKUs that succeed the Radeon HD 5800 series. Finally, the king of the hill is codenamed "Antilles" (after Antilles Islands), it is the dual-GPU SKU that makes use of two Cayman GPUs, successor to the Radeon HD 5970 "Hemlock". AMD partners will be in a position to sell graphics cards based on these by November 2010. The Radeon HD 6970 "Antilles" should be out by December 2010. The lower-half of the family will likely release next year.