The launch of AMD’s new HD 8000 series if close enough for sources to now have detailed specifications on the HD 8850 and HD 8870 graphics cards.
As you can see from the specifications, AMD will shoot for much better performance per watt. In fact TDP changes very little on both the HD 8870 and HD 8850 while compute performance rises between 60-75% – although do not expect the increase in compute performance to correspond with increases in gaming performance as Nvidia’s Kepler cards are notoriously poor at compute yet compete comfortable with AMD’s HD 7000 series in games.
The increase in transistors of 21% on both GPUs is probably more reflective of the performance boost, expect around 15-25% increase in most 3D applications. AMD are also going with the boost clock technology on all cards, as currently it is only implemented on a few cards like the HD 7970 GHz Edition.
We are pleased by AMD’s pricing, both the HD 8850 and HD 8870 are cheaper than their predecessors by 25% and 20% respectively. Even though AMD have failed to trim power consumption down most people won’t be that bothered since the TDPs are still much lower than you’d be able to find on other equivalent performance graphics cards.
Memory bandwidth is up on the 256 bit interfaces which is always good to see especially for multi-monitor gaming, we aren’t sure about how much VRAM these graphics cards will have but 2GB or 3GB seem likely amounts.
WOW look at those price.. yummie 🙂