AMD/ATI has been busy recently launching one card after the another. First they launched the high end HD 5870 and HD 5850 accelerators. Few weeks later they launched the more mainstream oriented parts in the form of HD 5770 and HD 5750. Recent reports have given birth to fresh speculation when these device IDs were found in leaked drivers.

“ATI Radeon HD 5900 Series” = ati2mtag_Evergreen, PCI\\VEN_1002&DEV_689C
“ATI Radeon HD 5900 Series ” = ati2mtag_Evergreen, PCI\\VEN_1002&DEV_689D

There was speculation that these upcoming HD 5900 series could be chip refresh just like HD 4890 was to HD 4870. But our sources tell us that ATI has decide to drop the “X2” nomenclature and its upcoming dual GPU on a PCB cards. The card that was supposed to be HD 5870X2 will now be called the HD 5970 and the HD 5850X2 will be called the HD 5950. These cards will be much like older brothers HD 4870X2 and HD 3870X2, featuring two GPUs on a single PCB and employing onboard crossfire support. They will take their place as the top two performing cards in ATI’s evergreen lineup upon release.

Our source who wishes to be known as DJ (kind of ironic that Nvidia leaks come for a source named CJ!) tells us that ATI is pretty confident that they will win this round of GPU war with Nvidia’s Fermi architecture. He goes on to say, that ATI have something special up their sleeve, but are waiting for Nvidia to release their cards first. All I can say is that although the above information may be correct in due time, but at the moment it should only be taken as unconfirmed rumor so as to avoid flamewars in forums around the net over who wins this round between ATI and Nvidia.

DJ was kind enough to provide us with a glimpse of the performance to expect from this card when it releases. The drivers used are unknown at this time, but the GPU-Z shows as 8.14.10.708 version for the Direct3D driver. It is unclear whether these are the leaked Catalyst 9.11 beta drivers or some other special drivers made for this card. A quick glance at my Catalyst 9.10 installation shows version 8.14.10.700 for the Direct3D driver. Here’s a shot of the Catalyst Control Centre information tab.

Other information that maybe of interest to some is that the fan runs at 4700rpm at 100% speed.

Test System:

• Intel Core i7 920 @ 4016 Mhz
• ASUS P6T Deluxe v2
• Patriot Viper 1600 MHz 6 GB Triple Channel Kit @ 1700 MHz
• Windows 7 x64 Ultimate
• HD 5870X2 (HD 5970) running at stock speeds

Check out the thumbs for some priliminary and early numbers based on VERY beta drivers 

[via alienbabeltech]