While trying to hack the PS4 in order to make it run Linux (in a bid to get Steam and possibly other programs running on the PS4's hardware), hackers hit a snag: they couldn't get the PS4's GPU to display any kind of output or process any kind of graphics. Like any good researcher would, when hit with a snag, the hackers turned to scouring the Internet in hopes of finding any kind of documentation that could help them harness the PS4's Pitcairn-based GPU.

AMD's upcoming Radeon R9 380X and R9 380 graphics cards, with which it wants to immediately address the GTX 980 and GTX 970, will be based on a "new" silicon codenamed "Grenada." Built on the 28 nm silicon fab process, Grenada will be a refined variant of "Hawaii," much in the same way as "Curacao" was of "Pitcairn," in the previous generation.

The Grenada silicon will have the same specs as Hawaii - 2,816 GCN stream processors, 176 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 512-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 4 GB memory. Refinements in the silicon over Hawaii could allow AMD to increase clock speeds, to outperform the GTX 980 and GTX 970. We don't expect the chip to be any more energy efficient at its final clocks, than Hawaii. AMD's design focus appears to be performance. AMD could save itself the embarrassment of a loud reference design cooler, by throwing the chip up for quiet custom-design cooling solutions from AIB (add-in board) partners from day-one.

Raijintek announced the Morpheus Core Edition, a matte-black variant of its popular universal VGA cooler. Armed with a large monolithic aluminium fin stack of 129 fins, the cooler features a nickel-plated copper base, with mirror finish. Six 6 mm thick nickel-plated copper heat pipes with dark / gunmetal finish, spread heat across the fin stack. The cooler can hold on to two common 120 mm fans for ventilation. It can soak up thermal loads of up to 360W, making it fit for a variety of feisty high-end GPUs, such as the GeForce GTX 780 Ti, the Radeon R9 290X, and other GPUs based on the GK104, GM204, and "Pitcairn" silicons. Heatsinks for VRM, and 24 heatsinks for memory chips, come included. Raijintek didn't announce pricing or availability details.A video presentation follows.

AMD announced market availability of several of its new Radeon R9 and Radeon R7 series discrete graphics SKUs. Leading the pack for today's launch is the Radeon R9 280X. Heavily based on the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, the card is priced at $299, and is designed to offer an interesting price-performance combination. In raw performance, it competes with the now $410 GeForce GTX 770, yet it's priced just $50 more than the $249 GeForce GTX 760. Based on the same 28 nm "Tahiti" silicon as the HD 7970 GHz Edition, it features clock speeds of 1000 MHz core, with 6.00 GHz memory. It features 2,048 stream processors, 128 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 3 GB of memory.

The next card on AMD's block is the Radeon R9 270X, which is designed to strike a price-performance sweet-spot at $199. Essentially an overclocked Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition, the card is based on the 28 nm "Pitcairn" silicon, featuring clock speeds of 1050 MHz core, and 6.40 GHz memory. It features 1,280 stream processors, 80 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 2 GB of memory. Lastly, there's the Radeon R7 260X, an interesting sub-$150 product, priced at $139. Based on the same "Bonaire" silicon as the Radeon HD 7790, it features higher clock speeds, and double the standard memory amount. It features clock speeds of 1100 MHz, and 6.50 GHz memory. The chip features 896 stream processors, 56 TMUs, 16 ROPs, and a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 2 GB of memory. The three cards will launch through the various AMD add-in board (AIB) partners, in their non-reference designs.

Here's a quick recap of AMD's updated product stack, spread between the R9 and R7 series. This article can help you understand the new nomenclature. AMD's lineup begins with the Radeon R7 250 and Radeon R7 260X. The two are based on the 28 nm "Curacao" silicon, which is a variation of the "Pitcairn" silicon the previous-generation Radeon HD 7870 was based on. The R7 250 is expected to be priced around US $89, with 1 GB of RAM, and performance rated at over 2,000 points by 3DMark Firestrike benchmark. The R7 260X, features double the memory at 2 GB, higher clock speeds, possibly more number crunching resources, Firestrike score of over 3,700 points, and a pricing that's around $139. This card should turn up the heat against the likes of GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost.

Moving on, there's the $199 Radeon R9 270X. Based on a chip not much unlike "Tahiti LE," it features 2 GB of memory, and 3DMark Firestrike score of over 5,500 points. Then there's the Radeon R9 280X. This card, priced attractively at $299, is practically a rebrand of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition with. It features 3 GB of RAM, and over 6,800 points on 3DMark Firestrike. Then there are the R9 290 and R9 290X. AMD flew dozens of scribes thousands of miles over to Hawaii, and left them without an official announcement on the specifications of the two. From what AMD told us, the two feature 4 GB of memory, over 5,000 TFLOP/s compute power, and over 300 GB/s memory bandwidth. The cards we mentioned are pictured in that order below.More pictures follow.

In addition to the Radeon R9 290X pictured earlier today, AMD will also be unveiling the Radeon R7 260X upper mid-range graphics card. Pictures of the card were leaked to the web. At the moment, we have no clue as to what chip the card is based on, but we're hearing two codenames, "Curacao" and "Bonaire XTX." "Curacao," in our best guess, is a variant of "Pitcairn." "Bonaire XTX" could be a higher-performing variant of the "Bonaire" silicon AMD launched the Radeon HD 7790 with. Given the way components are arranged behind the GPU, we're inclined to believe the card pictured below is based on "Curacao." Gotta give AMD marks for trying out something different with the cooler shroud design.

When AMD re-branded most of its Radeon HD 7000 series SKUs to HD 8000 series, for OEMs, we saw this coming from a parsec away. AMD's next discrete GPU family for the retail channel will be placed along the Radeon HD 9000 series, and it debuts no later than this October, according to a Guru3D report. Interestingly, the report states that the first parts in the family will be based on existing 28 nanometer silicon fab processes, and will be codenamed "Curacao" and "Hainan."

We've had our run-ins with "Curacao," from time to time. It's been rumored to be an upgrade of existing "Tahiti" silicon, with 2,304 stream processors based on Graphics CoreNext 2.0 architecture, 144 TMUs, 48 ROPs, and a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. The Guru3D report adds to that with the mention of an improved front-end, which adds four asynchronous computing engines (ACEs), and three independent geometry engines.

A presentation slide, allegedly by AMD, leaked by a Japanese distributor confirmed specifications of AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 7790 graphics card. According to the slide, the HD 7790 is indeed based on a brand new silicon, with a transistor count of 2.08 billion. Compare that, to the 1.5 billion TC of "Cape Verde," and 2.80 billion of "Pitcairn." The silicon is built on the 28 nanometer silicon fab process.

The clock speed mentioned in the slide could be core, which is clocked at 1.00 GHz. Next up is the stream processor count, which stands at 896. The HD 7790 is mentioned to feature a primitive rate of 2 prim/clk, suggesting that its component hierarchy is more similar to "Tahiti" than "Cape Verde," which could mean double the tessellation processing power. All said and done, the HD 7790 belts out 1.79 TFLOPs of floating-point performance. The source goes on to mention in its text that the card features a 128-bit wide memory interface, memory clock speed of 6.00 GHz (96 GB/s), a TDP of 85W, and a single 6-pin PCIe power connector. It is expected to launch no later than tomorrow (22/03).

It seems that one memory-light Radeon HD 7850 isn't enough for Gigabyte because the Taiwanese company is currently preparing a second such card, the GV-R785WF2-1GD. Seen below, this latest Pitcairn-powered offering features an Ultra Durable 2 design (Low RDS(on) MOSFET, Ferrite Core Choke, All-Solid Capacitors), a blue PCB, a WindForce2X (two fans, two copper heatpipes) cooler, a GPU clock of 860 MHz, a 256-bit memory interface, 1 GB of GDDR5 VRAM set to 4800 MHz, and DVI, HDMI plus dual mini DisplayPort outputs.

The GV-R785WF2-1GD hasn't been priced or dated yet.

Colorful's AMD Radeon-centric graphics card brand, ColorFire, is out with a new graphics card which keeps in tune with the design principle of backing a performance-segment GPU with preposterous amounts of features (VRM, cooling, OC features, etc.) The company showed off its Radeon HD 7870 XStorm graphics card at this year's Computex event in Taipei, though it is only now that we're seeing pictures of the card taken apart. Pictured below is the card of the hour. This Radeon HD 7870 graphics card is so long, that it comes with a support brace for workstation cases and Apple Mac Pro.

The card powers the otherwise cool and quiet "Pitcairn" GPU with an 8+1+1 onboard VRM, which can be expanded by a 4-phase VRM card that supports higher power draw. The card draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Despite a VRM design that's fit to condition power for the HD 7970 GHz Edition (or jump-start an SUV), the ColorFire HD 7870 XStorm ships with mildly-overclocked speeds of 1050 MHz core and 1250 MHz (5.00 GHz effective) memory. It packs 2 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 256-bit wide memory interface.

ASUS is working on its second Republic of Gamers (ROG) ARES graphics card, the ARES 2 dual-HD 7870. Its first ARES was dual-HD 5870. ASUS' decision to go with a pair of Radeon HD 7870 GPUs, instead of the premium HD 7970, certainly comes as a surprise. With it, one could deduce the target market-segment ASUS is aiming at: US $650-750, providing a solution that outperforms even the fastest HD 7970 GHz Edition and GTX 680 graphics cards, while being cheaper than Radeon HD 7990 (which is MIA), dual-HD 7970 X2, and of course, the GTX 690.

ASUS ARES 2 will back two 28 nm "Pitcairn" GPUs with all components unlocked; likely factory-overclocked speeds beyond those of the HD 7870 GHz Edition; and a total of 4 GB of GDDR5 memory (2 GB per GPU system). The card will draw power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, and will have a TDP of around 300W. It will take advantage of AMD ZeroCore CrossFire, with which it powers down the second GPU when not gaming, or with light 3D loads that the first GPU can munch on. With the monitor idling for a set amount of time, both GPUs power down. It's likely that ASUS will use a triple-slot cooling solution, despite the fact that the HD 7870 is a generally cool GPU. Pictured below is the first-generation ROG ARES (dual-HD 5870).Update Jun 26: We have received word from ASUS that "There is no plan to release a dual 7870 VGA".

The second new factory-overclocked graphics card to be shown by VTX3D at Computex, is the HD 7870 X-Edition. Unlike the HD 7770 X-Edition detailed earlier, the HD 7870 X-Edition comes with true non-reference PCB and cooler designs. The cooler appears similar to the one PowerColor (a sibling brand of VTX3D) used on the HD 7870 Eyefinity6. The card comes with out of the box clock speeds of 1100 MHz core, and 1225 MHz (4.90 GHz effective) memory, against reference clock speeds of 1000 MHz core, and 1200 MHz (4.80 GHz effective) memory. Based on the 28 nm "Pitcairn" silicon, the HD 7870 packs 1280 stream processors, and holds 2 GB of GDDR5 memory across a 256-bit wide memory interface.

ASUS displayed a nerdtastic motherboard design concept, at Computex. Called the Republic of Gamers ZEUS, ASUS' creation is a socket LGA2011 motherboard with a dual-GPU graphics hardware soldered onto the board, in the place otherwise assigned for expansion slots. The top half of the ZEUS resembles that of a conventional LGA2011 motherboard, with the processor being powered by a 10-phase Digi+ VRM, and eight DDR3 DIMM slots. ASUS somehow made the platform support up to 128 GB of unregistered DIMM DDR3 memory (double the 64 GB limit of the Sandy Bridge-E HEDT platform).

The second half of the motherboard has the X79 PCH, and two PCI-Express 3.0 GPUs in dual-GPU configuration. ASUS hasn't revealed which GPUs these are, but sources predict it's a pair of AMD Radeon HD 7970 (Tahiti XT) or HD 7870 (Pitcairn XT). Each GPU system has its own set of memory, and a set of 8-pin + 6-pin PCIe power connectors. The display outputs of this dual-GPU setup are given out on the rear panel, as two mini-DP + Thunderbolt ports, and one each of HDMI and standard DP. The ZEUS even has as many as 8 SATA 6 Gb/s ports, four SATA 3 Gb/s ports, and 12 USB 3.0 ports, besides two Thunderbolt 10 Gb/s ports. For now, ASUS' monstrosity is a design concept, and the company is undecided about launching it to the market. If nothing, the ZEUS serves as a testament of ASUS' mammoth engineering potential.

Tom's Hardware Germany found it difficult to explain lower than normal performance of an AFOX-branded Radeon HD 7850 graphics card. Upon looking at its stream processor count in GPU-Z, it was amazed to notice a value of 768, 25% lower than HD 7850 normal count of 1024. Attempts to replace its BIOS did not change the stream processor count, leading them to believe the stream processors were physically disabled. AMD was of little help, and they were redirected to talk to AFOX, which told them that since March, AMD has been shipping Pitcairn chips with 768 stream processor configuration to some OEMs. Could this be a new SKU under works? HD 7790? HD 7830?

The next "AMD Tuesday" is the coming one, on which the company plans to launch Radeon HD 7970M, its next high-end discrete GPU for notebooks. Codenamed "Thames", the HD 7970M will be based on the 28 nm "Pitcairn" silicon, on which desktop Radeon HD 7800 series, is also based. When launched, the HD 7970M could become the fastest notebook discrete GPU, since NVIDIA's fastest discrete notebook GPU, and the GeForce GTX 675M are based on previous-generation 40 nm GF114, over which Pitcairn already established a performance lead, in the desktop front. We are hearing that notebook vendors already have their designs based on this chip ready in the pipeline.

A part of the reason why NVIDIA's performance-segment GK104 is gunning for the performance crown from AMD's Tahiti GPU could be hidden behind two of its key specifications: transistor count, and die-size. 3DCenter.org compiled these two specifications for the GK104 from reliable sources, which pin the transistor count at 3.54 billion, and die-area at 294 mm². This yields a transistor density of 12 million per mm², which is slightly higher than that of AMD Tahiti, slightly lower than that of AMD Pitcairn, and certainly higher than previous-generation chips from both AMD and NVIDIA. If GeForce GTX 680 does in fact end up competitive with AMD's Radeon HD 7900 series, it could serve as a tell-tale sign of NVIDIA's Kepler architecture being a more efficient one.

Dutch add-in board maker Club 3D has joined the Radeon HD 7800 party too by announcing not two but four cards powered by the Pitcairn 28 nm GPU. Two of those cards are based around AMD's reference model while the other two come equipped with a custom fansink utilizing the CoolStream High Performance Cooling Technology.

According to Club 3D its CoolStream solution "features high performance heatpipes that keeps the components cool and outperforms standard cooling solutions. Transferring heat from the center area to each fin, ensuring enhanced heat dissipation. The result is a dramatic increase of performance for your gaming and multimedia experience."

The launch of AMD's Radeon 7800 series is on course for March, as AMD wants to complete the launches of the entire Radeon 7000 series before NVIDIA even has its first GPU out. Radeon HD 7800 will be designed to occupy key price points in the sub-$300 market segment, where it strikes price-performance sweetspots for gamers. Central to this series is a new 28 nm GPU, codenamed "Pitcairn", from which will be derived three SKUs: the Radeon HD 7870, Radeon HD 7850 2 GB, and Radeon HD 7850 1 GB. The specifications look like this:

Radeon HD 7850

• 20 Graphics CoreNext Compute Units, 1280 stream processors
• 80 TMUs, 24 ROPs (de-linked from the memory bus, of course)
• 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, 2 GB and 1 GB variants
• Clock speeds of 900 MHz core, 1250 MHz (5.00 GHz effective) memory

Radeon HD 7870 specifications follow.

AMD's Radeon HD 7800 series performance GPUs that target cost-benefit sweet-spots will be launched in the first half of March. The launch will include Radeon HD 7870 and Radeon HD 7850. The two SKUs are based on a new 28 nm ASIC codenamed "Pitcairn". Little is known about its specifications at this point, from reliable sources at least.

In April, AMD's rival NVIDIA will get its GeForce Kepler family of GPUs, all guns blazing. In April alone, NVIDIA is expected to launch a high-end part, the GeForce GTX 690, a performance part, the GeForce GTX 660, and mainstream part GeForce GTX 640. The three will be based on three new ASICs built on the 28 nm process, the GK110, GK104, and GK106, respectively.

April will be the most interesting month for PC enthusiasts as Intel will launch its third-generation Core processor family, codename "Ivy Bridge". Little is known about AMD's high-end Radeon HD 7990 "New Zealand".