It looks like AMD has sneakily launched a pair of new mobile GPUs as a part of its Radeon HD 6000 series by posting full details of the GPUs on its website.
The Radeon HD 6500M-series chips will replace the HD 5600/5700-series mobile GPUs as the company's mid-range offering. However, the new graphics chips look very similar to the older parts, with both families packing in 400 stream processors, 20 texture units, 32 Z/stencil ROPs and 8 colour ROPs. Clock speeds will be in the range of 500MHz to 650MHz - the same as the HD 5700M-series - though the manufacturer hasn't given any details on the speeds of specific parts yet.
For the entry-level user, AMD will be launching the HD 6300M-series to replace the Mobility HD 5400-series. These will include 80 shaders, 8 texture units, 16 Z/stencil ROPs and 4 colour ROPs at frequencies of between 500MHz and 750MHz.
Of course, there are a couple of features that distinguish the new range. Both the HD 6500M and HD 6300M GPUs will support OpenGL 4.1, morphological anti-aliasing - although this might come to Mobility HD 5000-series GPUs via a driver update, as it did with the desktop variants - and AMD's new HD3D technology. Interestingly, they will also feature 'Dynamic Switchable Graphics' - akin to NVIDIA's Optimus technology - although no details on the technology have been provided.
It should be clear that these new parts are very similar to the older HD 5000-series mobile GPUs, and the fact that they only support UVD 2 - not UVD 3 like their desktop counterparts - suggests that these might be straight rebrands. However, there are still a few upgrades - even if they are only in software - that might justify the jump in model numbers.
Even though AMD has only just announced the components, it already looks like manufacturers are hard at work integrating the parts into new laptops. TechConnect is reporting that Acer is preparing an HD 6370M-powered TimelineX notebook, while one of the Sandy Bridge laptops that surfaced earlier today made use of AMD's new mid-range GPU.
