Radeon HD 5900 cards may have dual GPUs

As we noted yesterday, AMD’s latest OpenCL drivers include explicit support for two unannounced, unreleased Radeon HD 5900-series graphics cards. The drivers give no hints as to what the future products might actually be, but the folks at NordicHardware claim to have an answer.

Quoting no sources in particular, NordicHardware says it has confirmation that the Radeon HD 5970 is a Hemlock part. Hemlock, as you’ll know if you read our review of the Radeon HD 5870, refers to AMD’s upcoming dual-GPU graphics card. That product will wield two Cypress graphics chips and no doubt fearsome pixel-crunching power.

If this report is accurate, AMD will stray somewhat from branding tradition—its previous high-end dual-GPU cards were the Radeon HD 4870 X2 and Radeon HD 3870 X2. Since the driver includes two "Radeon HD 5900" strings, the company may also have a second DirectX 11 dual-GPU offering in the works. NordicHardware says that product could be a Radeon HD 5950, a name that suggests fewer stream processors and texture units, kind of like the current Radeon HD 5850.

Time will definitely tell. AMD plans to introduce Hemlock-based cards before the end of the year.

Source: The Tech Report