VR-Zone

A forum poster at Chinese forums ZOL has leaked pictures of what is purported to be the reference design of AMD's Cayman XT - Radeon HD 6970. At first glance, the card looks much like a longer and heftier version of the reference HD 6870. The similar boxy design is retained, and the "Batmobile" HD 5000 design is abandoned. Not surprisingly, the HD 6970 is a very long card, approximately 11 inches long, in the same ballpark as the outgoing HD 5870 and the upcoming GTX 580. A massive blower-type fan is visible, larger in diameter than the HD 5870's reference fan. This reflects NVIDIA's decision to use a bigger fan for the GTX 580.





The underside is very similar to the Radeon HD 5870. The GPU bracket is similarly sized as well, if not just slightly larger.



The card sees the return of two CrossFire connectors, enabling 4-way CrossFireX. Like the Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity 6, the HD 6970 features the 8-pin+6-pin PCI-e power configuration. The TDP will be between 225W and 300W, and is expected to be closer to 225W. The display outputs are not clearly visible but are likely to be as on the HD 6870 - 2xDVI, 2xDisplayPort and 1xHDMI.

The poster also reveals the provisional core clock - 860 MHz, and 2GB GDDR5 memory. The HD 6970 is expected to release in the second half of November, and will be in direct competition with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 580. The extent of availability for either cards this month remains unknown.

Source: ZOL