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To begin with, the GPU is AMD's overhaul on transistor counts, and a bold work of engineering on the 40 nm manufacturing process, given the kind of problems foundry partners had initially. Apparently they seem to have recovered with most of them, as AMD's AIB partners are coming up with new products based on the 40 nm RV740 GPU on a weekly basis. The package holds a "diamond-shaped" die that is angled in a way similar to RV740, RV730, or more historically, the R600. The seemingly huge die measures 338 mm˛ (area), and for 40 nm, it translates to "huge", and is vindicated by the transistor count of ~2.1 billion. In contrast, AMD's older flagship GPU, the RV790 holds 959 million, and NVIDIA's GT200 holds 1.4 billion.
The PCB has three distinct areas: the connectivity, processing, and VRM. To fuel the GPU is a high-grade 4 phase digital PWM power circuit, while the PCB has placeholders for an additional vGPU phase. The 8 (or 16 on the 2 GB model) memory chips, is powered by a 2 phase circuit. Power is drawn from two 6-pin PCI-Express power connectors, but there seems to be a placeholder for two more pins, i.e., to replace one of those 6-pin connectors with an 8-pin one. Bordering the GPU on two sides are the 8 GDDR5 memory chips, which AMD calls says is generation ahead of present GDDR5, and supports reference frequencies as high as 1300 MHz (2600 MHz DDR, 5.20 GHz effective). In the 2 GB variant, 8 more chips seat on the other side of the PCB. This is what perhaps, the backplate is intended to cool. On the connectivity portion of it, are the two CrossFire connectors, DisplayPort, HDMI and a cluster of two DVI-D connectors. There has been a raging debate about how adversely the small air vent would affect the card, but AMD is promising some energy efficiency breakthroughs, plus given how roomy the card is, the vent seems sufficient.
Finally, information from ArabHardware.net suggests a pricing model on three of the first SKUs based on Cypress: HD 5870 2 GB, HD 5870 1 GB, and HD 5850 1 GB. All three use the same GPU and memory standard (GDDR5), but differ in clock speeds and GPU configurations. While HD 5870 sports 1600 stream processors, 80 TMUs, and 32 ROPs, HD 5850 has 1440 stream processors, 72 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. Although 32 ROPs puzzles us for a 256-bit wide memory interface, we suspect low-level design changes that make "32 ROPs" more of an effective count than an absolute count. While HD 5870 features over 800 MHz core clock and 5.20 GHz memory, its little sibling has over 700 MHz core clock and 4.40 GHz memory. Price points expected are US $449 for Radeon HD 5870 2 GB, $399 for HD 5870 1 GB, and $299 for HD 5850. AMD is expected to announce all three models on the coming 23rd.
