A Closer Look

Taking the card apart takes a bit of patience because there are a lot more screws involved than on previous products. First we removed the backplate which has no cooling function but adds to the looks of the product.


Then we removed the main cooler which is a complex piece of hardware, it cools the GPU, memory and several smaller components. It is also quite heavy and looks like it adds quite some cost to the card's design. I am sure that we will see other solutions from AIBs soon.


Inside the cooler you find a fan and a large heatsink, which is connected to the baseplate using four heat pipes.


Due to reduced power requirements, AMD has decided to fit the card with two 6-pin power connectors only. If you look closer you can spot some extra space on the PCB to replace a 6-pin connector with an 8-pin connector.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Samsung and carry the model number K4G10325FE-HC04. They are specified to run at 1250 MHz (5000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


Above pictures show the important voltage regulation components. The most prominent are the two Volterra VT1165 MF Voltage Controllers that both support software control. You can also see that AMD has left some empty spots in their PCB design for possible improvements by adding more phases.


This AMD's new Cypress GPU, it comes with a whopping 2154 million transistors and is produced on a 40 nm process at TSMC Taiwan. The Cypress die size is 334 mm².