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AMD pulls switcheroo and renames Radeon HD 5700 to HD 6700

by Pete Mason on 21 January 2011, 15:29

Tags: Radeon HD 5750, AMD Radeon HD 5770, AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qa35m

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Renaming GPUs between generations just doesn't come as a surprise anymore. Even though NVIDIA is usually associated with such shenanigans - a reputation that it's slowly starting to shake - AMD has been just as guilty of switching names in the past.

Now, the company is back to confound ordinary consumers by rebranding the 'Juniper' based Radeon HD 5700-series cards to become members of the HD 6700 family.

Although the entire HD 6000-series of cards are based on the older Evergreen parts, the other GPUs so far have received some serious tweaks to the underlying architecture. That doesn't seem to be the case here, though.  Based on the spec sheets, the HD 6770 will feature 800 stream processors, while the HD 6750 will have 720 - the same as their 5000-series counterparts.

Although clock speeds aren't listed, the fact that the compute performance and memory bandwidth are the same as the older parts suggests that they're probably the same.

This is an HD 5770 but...well, you get the idea

The only differences on paper are support for AMD's HD3D technology and OpenGL 4.1. However, the latter has already been enabled on 5000-series cards through a driver update, and the former is rumoured to be patched in at some point in the future. The new cards will support HDMI 1.4a, although this is hardly enough to justify the jump up to the 6000-series.

This isn't something that most consumers will have to worry about, though. According to the manufacturer's web page, the rebranded boards are for OEMs only. Although retail versions might show up at some point in the future we won't be holding our breath waiting for them.



HEXUS Forums :: 7 Comments

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Looks like AMD have learnt a thing or two from Nvidia!:p
What? Not even upping the clocks?

I'd have been happy with calling them HD56** or something.
Presumably you mean HD66*0, since the HD5670 already exists ;)

Given this is the exact rumour that started circulating more than 6 months ago, it's not a huge surprise. It also pretty much guarantees that the lower end cards won't get a 6-series update either, since there's not a huge amount of performance space or price between them. Looks like we're waiting another generation for that high performance bus-powered card…
I though that the HD6350 was replacing the HD5450:

http://www.techpowerup.com/130456/AMD-Caicos-Radeon-HD-6300-Series-Reference-Board-Pictured-Too.html

Supposedly,the HD6350 is around 30% faster than an HD5450.
This is annoying news. I was hoping to buy a new graphics card in the next few months, and was thinking that a new mid-range card might be able to use a lesser power-draw compared to the 5000 series.
Boooooo. :rant: