Dodgy Radeon HD 8000 Series GPU Specifications Surface

Yesterdau we already reported that AMD is to launch Radeon HD 8000 series in 2Q13. AMD's Radeon HD 8000 "Sea Islands" family of GPUs may arrive some time in Q2-2013, but they won't arrive without a specifications overhaul. While NVIDIA is counting on performance enhancements to come out of higher clock speeds on existing silicon, while maintaining current (or lower) power-draw, with its "Enhanced Kepler" family of GPUs that will include the "GK110" juggernaut, AMD is counting on physically bigger chips with more components. AMD could step up transistor counts of its chips by as much as 20 percent, on existing 28 nm process.

According to TPU, the biggest chip from AMD's fold could pack 5.1 billion transistors, amounting to 2560 stream processors, and an updated raster processing engine, with 48 ROPs ("Tahiti" has 32). While the Radeon HD 8970 maxes out the chip's capabilities, the HD 8950 could feature 256 fewer stream processors, at 2304. It could also go light on the clock speeds. AMD's performance-segment chip, codenamed "Sun" could see a similar stream processor increase to 1792, with the Radeon HD 8870 maxing it out, and HD 8850 featuring 1536. It maintains the memory bus width and raster engine layout of its predecessor.

AMD's mainstream chip, codenamed "Oland," which succeeds "Cape Verde," could address the problem of memory bandwidth, which is giving competing NVIDIA GPUs an upper hand in its segment. It could feature 896 stream processors, and a wider 192-bit GDDR5 memory interface. The Radeon HD 8770 maxes its specifications out, while the Radeon HD 8750 features a slimmer 128-bit memory interface, and 768 stream processors.

The authenticity of this information can't be vouched for, but presents the only way in which AMD can end up with a competitive GPU lineup against NVIDIA, over 2013 - Via TPU.