AMD has expanded its Radeon 7000M laptop video card series with three new SKUs which populate higher-end segment.
Besides the lower-end 40-nanometer Radeon HD 7000M GPUs which are rebrands of the old 6000M line with some minor changes, AMD now offers the Radeon HD 7700M, 7800M, and 7900M based on the new 28nm production process and Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture. The new DirectX 11 GPUs are aimed at use in higher-peroformance and gaming laptops. The chips bring improvements in performance and power consumption and they compete against Nvidia’s “Kepler” GeForce 600M mobile chips for the same notebook segment.
The first 7000M models listed on AMD.com are the Radeon HD 7770M, 7870M, and 7970M. In the table below you can see their specs. We also included the 40nm 7670M for comparison purpose. AMD is also expected to release the top-of-the-line 7990M, but the card hasn’t been announced yet.
AMD Radeon HD Model | HD 7670M | HD 7770M New! | HD 7870M New! | HD 7970M New! |
Stream Processors | 480 | 640 | 640 | 1280 |
Texture Units | 24 | 40 | 40 | 80 |
Z/Stencil ROP Units | 32 | 64 | 64 | 128 |
Color ROP Units | 8 | 16 | 16 | 32 |
Memory Interface | 128-bit GDDR5 or DDR3 | 128-bit GDDR5 | 128-bit GDDR5 | 256-bit GDDR5 |
Memory Amount | 1GB | Up to 2GB | 2GB | 2GB |
Engine Clock | 600 MHz | 675 MHz | 800 MHz | 850 MHz |
Memory Clock | 900 MHz | 1000 MHz (4.0 Gbps) | 1000 MHz (4.0 Gbps) | 1200 MHz (4.8 Gbps) |
Bus Interface | PCI Express 2.1 x16 | PCI Express 2.1 x16 | PCI Express 3.0 x16 | PCI Express 3.0 x16 |
AMD has also unveiled Enduro solution for dynamic switching between the Radeon dedicated video cards and integrated on-CPU GPUs, optimizing graphics performance and battery life on laptops. For the same purpose Nvidia uses Optimus technology.