How about a sweet spot for a q9550? Hehe
I'm pairing it with 5850

hehe lets say if i use adjust the clock without touching the stock vcore and ram voltage, will it go to 3.2ghz?

[COLOR=blue]Some Cayman Radeon HD6970 specs[/COLOR]

1536 stream processors
We managed to get some specs of the soon-to-launch, well at least on paper, AMD Radeon HD 6970 card.

What we can share with you is that Cayman packs 1536 stream processors, 32ROPs, 96 Texture units and 2GB of GDDR5 memory.

We, the hard working people of Fudzilla, also have learned that the card comes with two DVI ports, 2 mini Display ports and HDMI, which is much better than what Nvidia's GTX 580 can offer.

TDP looks to be slightly lower than GTX 580’s but in worst case it looks to go up to the sky, something that we’ve seen with GTX 480 and almost 300W TDP in Furmark. Stay tuned, more specs will follow as soon as we can confirm them.

Bro, can i CF my old cooler 5850 wif new cooler 5850 ?

If other brand oso can? example xFx n sapphire?

AMD Radeon HD 6970 delay due to component shortage, launch date to be re-confirmed

Partners not getting their AMD Radeon HD 6970 boards in time has led many to speculate AMD is indeed facing yield issues with its upcoming flagship GPU. However, an insider has shared a contradicting piece of news: the card's delay is not due to yield issues - production is perfectly fine, but rather a shortage of a particular component from Texas Instruments (TI) is the root cause of the hold-up.

This TI component is an integrated driver-MOSFET (DrMOS) that was first used on AMD's Radeon HD 6800 Series. This DrMOS is so new to the point there is no information on it on the Web, not even from the manufacturer itself.

Supply of this DrMOS is limited, and since the Radeon HD 6800 Series and upcoming HD 6900 Series share the same VRM design, any (tight) supply from TI is shared between all the cards. This leads to a delay in HD 6970 card manufacturing, with partners receiving their final boards late as well.

It is interesting to note that AMD has also withheld the final BIOS from partners. It is an open question as to whether NVIDIA's just-launched GeForce GTX 580 flagship GPU and its performance figures has anything to do with this. That aside, the initial 22nd November date may be set to change; AIBs will only know the final launch date from AMD at the end of this week.

Cayman HD 6970 to launch November 29th

The latest info that we have received on Cayman is that there might be a launch this month. It appears to be delayed by a single week and that the company will make it for a late November launch.

We’ve been hearing November 22nd as the launch date and some other people have indicated mid of that week and now the date is November 29th, but again things tend to change far too often.

We are not sure on the quantities and availability but ATI might have more cards than the competition expected. We are not sure about the performance, early report was that the prototype was slower than GTX 580, but who knows, with a tweak or two as well as an increased clock and better drivers, Cayman might have a chance. In any case it will be a very close race.

The plan is to launch Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 together, while the X2 dual chip version aka Radeon HD 6990 comes later, most likely in early 2011.

Is it justified to replace my 5870 for gtx580 or wait for 69xx series?

i thought the media says that releasing date for hd6900 are delayed..nah...i hope they just bluffing...just hope they can get at least 25% performance increase for the same die size (but cayman die size maybe more)

Actually I'm quite shock that Nvidia 580 is even cheaper than 480. It will then force AMD to restrict their price below RM1500 if they want to get the sales. The price is also not to expensive. Right now we still do not know whether 6970 can beat 580 or not. Thats why AMD needs to delay it and tune it even higher to beat 580 O.o.

Even 5970 got its price cut already. I think is around 1.5k as well. Man... Too many choices for those who are getting high performance card. 

But the TDP is really make me , that kind of power hunger really scare me haha.

AMD Cayman pushed back to December 13

Still before Christmas

We just got a nice little tip from one of our trusted sources that AMD just gave an official new date for Cayman launch, the 13th of December. This means that despite a brief delay, Cayman will still be on retail/e-tail shops before Christmas, and if the performance is right, will end up to be the fastest single GPU card this year.

The new date was given by AMD officially and probably sent to all partners and selected editors. It looks like the problem is quite real and partners mostly don't care about this delay as they have enough other cards to sell and as long as the card comes before Christmas. According to what we know, partners didn't recieve the final BIOS or the final driver for that matter, but that should hopefully change by the end of the month.

We are quite sure that we'll hear more about AMD's Cayman once it gets its final driver, as until then, the performance details are purely speculative and any early benchmark figures seen so far should be taken with a grain of salt, as proper drivers could squeeze out a bit more performance.

AMD Radeon HD 6850/6870 Prices rise on inconsistent availability

AMD's Radeon HD 6800 series has been around for three weeks now. Despite being given a rude welcome by NVIDIA's major price cuts, the availability of Radeon HD 6800 cards had been very impressive for high value sweet-spot product. Earlier this week, there were strong signs of price increases, and this is confirmed by Tech Report's comprehensive availability survey. The Radeon HD 6850 seems to be most severely affected - with several vendors being out of stock. The median price has increased to $199 and only a single part is available at the original $179 SEP.

The Radeon HD 6870's availability is better, but prices have risen across the board. Only two parts are available at the $239 SEP and a majority are priced between $249 and $259.

Clearly, AMD is suffering from excess demand. Whether this is due to high demand, limited supply, or a combination of both, is unknown. Could it be due to the DrMOS shortages?

To make matters worse for AMD, GeForce prices are heading on the opposite direction - in steady decline. The GeForce GTX 470 is available for as low as $250. Many GeForce GTX 460 768MB parts are still available at $169, while the cheapest are as low as $159. Much of the overclocked 750-800 MHz GTX 460 1 GB are available in the $210-$220 range. The slightly overclocked Galaxy GTX 460 is now $189, and as low as $169 with rebates - a proper bargain. The best value is still the EVGA GTX 460 FTW, at $229, a card that trades blows with the now much more expensive HD 6870.

With Black Friday on the horizon, let's hope AMD can bolster supply and balance the market prices. Till then, NVIDIA has the decisive upper hand in terms of price/performance in the mainstream performance market.

AMD officialy comments Cayman delay

Week 50 launch

AMD's PR has come up with a new PR statement in which they try to explain why they have delayed the Cayman card. Back at Los Angeles, at the Barts HD 6870 and 6850 presentation, they said that Cayman should launch in late November and now the new date is the week of December 13th aka week 50th.

Here is the official note and then we will translate it to real non-PR language. We only wish George Carlin was around to lend us a hand.

“Demand for the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series continues to be very strong, the ATI Radeon HD 5970 remains the fastest graphics card in the world and the newest members of the AMD graphics family, the AMD Radeon HD 6850 and HD 6870, have set new standards for performance at their respective price points, and are available in volume.

With that in mind, we are going to take a bit more time before shipping the AMD Radeon HD 6900 series. As of today, the NDA lift for information relating to the AMD Radeon HD 6950 and HD 6970 will be week 50. We will be providing additional information on these products, including the exact date and time of the NDA lift, in the weeks prior to launch." said Chris Hook and his crack spinner team.

This is how you should read it. Our dual-chip is still the fastest but we dropped it to below €400 to put more pressure on Nvidia, simply as Cayman might not be fast enough to beat the GTX 580, at least not the original spec.

We (AMD) now have three more weeks to try to get more performance and do some additional testing and hope that Cayman HD 6970 and 6950 will be enough to beat the GTX 580.

The card will barely make for Christmas but for most of people mid-December is too late for Xmas shopping. Let’s hope for AMD’s sake that the tweaked Cayman Radeon HD 6970 can beat the GTX 580, but considering the delays, this is becoming increasingly unlikely. We are giving Nvidia a three week advantage because we have to, not because we like to.

One more thing, component shortage is not the reason for the delay, we got that cleared out as Barts had the same issue, and still launched / shipped on time.

Antilles, Radeon HD 6990 dual card now slip into 2011 and it looks that Nvidia's dual-card comes in 2011 as well. We we're hoping to see both of them before the end of the year, but it appears that both the red and the green team had to change their plans.

Is the extra 1 year warranty from MSI compared to Sapphire worth the extra few bucks for 6870?

Just to make sure, MSI warranty here is 2 years or 3 years? How's their warranty service?

If Cayman XT is 300w, then AMD will not able to make hd6990 within 300w TDP even with 2 underclock cayman. U dont want a HD6990 become a 500w graphic card.

The way I see it is Cayman vs GTX580 is going to be like 5870 vs GTX480. If AMD want to fit 2 Cayman chip within 300w TDP. It just mean they cannot make a huge high power chip alone, this doesnt even fit AMD "Sweet spot design".

Even tho Cayman may be more efficient than Fermi, but I dont think it can be twice as efficient as Fermi. Cayman performance will be about 80-90% of GTX580. The delay is more like because AMD take another month to look into any additional tweaks to get extra performance, so Cayman performance wont fall too far away from GTX580 & repeat the success of 5870.

As the chip goes bigger, there will be more transistor leakage (IINM it rises exponentially). Which means AMD will have to run the GPU at higher voltage.

Which is just about the speed of GTX580. It is less likely Cayman XT be significant faster than the already quick GTX580. The only question is where it stands on the TDP. AMD said <300w it could be anywhere between 250w-300w

Juz wanna ask noob questions here:
1. Im now using HD4870...and i want to upgrade to let say HD5000 and HD6000 series...the slot is still same right?
2. Is there much power different between them(mentioned above)..i scared my psu not enough...