AMD's reference card
Here's the AMD-supplied reference card.
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Even though we've determined that the underlying GPU is reasonably similar to the HD 5670's, the new card chips away at the bill-of-materials cost by having a half-height PCB and puny cooler that blows warmer air directly upwards.
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Equipped with 1,024MB of memory that runs at an effective 1,800MHz and is linked to the GPU via a 128-bit bus, the frame-buffer setup has been seen on cards that are over two years old. But why fix something that's not broken, and GDDR3 RAM is both ubiquitous and cheap.
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We reckon that adventurous partners will engineer solutions with passive heatsinks. The cooler on the reference card is quiet in 2D - throttling down to 157MHz engine and 300MHz memory - but a little noisy when running games or GPU-accelerated applications.
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Supporting CrossFire via the motherboard's PCIe x16 lanes, frugal power-draw means no additional connectors are necessary. The cooler, too, only takes up one slot.
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Here's one area where we will see product differentiation. The HD 5570 is outfitted with AMD's Eyefinity support, enabling an up-to three-display setup. The reference card opts for VGA, HDMI, and dual-link DVI.
