Remember this backroom photoshoot by our friends at Legit Reviews, where AMD refused to let the the DirectX 11 accelerator face the camera? A photographer in China was luckier, and grabbed three pictures of the rest of the accelerator, intact. As it turns out, the card is based on AMD's next generation successor to the 40 nm RV740, codenamed "Juniper". The pictures reveal quite a bit about the card, which inherits quite some of its design from the Radeon HD 4770.

The cooler resembles the one found on Radeon HD 4770 (reference), and Radeon HD 3870, albeit opaque black. With the 40 nm GPU running presumably cool, its air vent on the rear panel is reduced in size, and makes way for an arsenal of connectivity that includes two DVI-D connectors, and one each of HDMI and DisplayPort, just as pictured earlier. The PCB is black in color, holds memory on either sides. The card draws its power from one 6-pin PCI-E power connector. Expect a lot more about this as we head toward September 10, when AMD plans to unveil its next-generation GPU technology. Juniper is part of AMD's "Evergreen" family of DirectX 11 compliant GPUs.

Yesterday, AMD unveiled its surprise for this year's Computex, with a demonstration of a DirectX 11 3D scene. Behind the scenes though, was what AMD claimed to be the "world's first true DirectX 11 graphics processor". The hardware itself however, wasn't publicly displayed, although a memento of AMD's partnership with TSMC, a wafer of 40 nm DirectX 11 GPUs, was made public. VR-Zone however, sneaked into the backdrops and pictured the machine that ran the demo (which ironically, was built into a case with a side-window).

The graphics card, a portion of which, is hidden behind the "wing" of the AMD Dragon logo graphic, is seen to be about 8.5 inches long, spans across two slots, and has a seemingly sporty cooler with the ATI-red shroud. It draws power from a single 6-pin PCI-E connector. The photographers note that this could be the RV840-based desktop accelerator, which forms the performance-mainstream product for the company's upcoming DirectX 11-compliant GPU lineup codenamed "Evergreen". The first product from this series is expected to be released in September, weeks ahead of the launch of Microsoft Windows 7.