AMD HD8970M Emerges on Ebay

[N.Broekhuijsen]

AMD's upcoming HD 8970 flagship mobile part has just emerged on Ebay, and we're hoping that there's more to this story than what meets the eye.

AMD HD8970M Emerges on Ebay : Read more

 

[joytech22]

Man that's a lot to ask for an MXM upgrade.
$850 is a lot to ask for a "side grade". (coming from a M17X with 7970M)

Also.. Why can't I post from the comments section on almost any pages? I have to post it differently.

 

[smeezekitty]

joytech22: The new comment system is ultra buggy

 

[ddpruitt]

And of course everyone on eBay is the most honest person in the world.

 

[mouse24]

I haven't had a single problem with the comment section. Maybe I'm just lucky though.

 

[DRosencraft]

Yeah... I don't think there is any legitimacy to this thing at all. Not saying it's not something AMD would do, though it'd be horrid, but what are the chances that someone got their hands on the 8970 already and would list it on eBay? They've been working on the APUs and on the 7990.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

Yeah... I don't think there is any legitimacy to this thing at all. Not saying it's not something AMD would do, though it'd be horrid, but what are the chances that someone got their hands on the 8970 already and would list it on eBay? They've been working on the APUs and on the 7990.

The lower tier of the HD8000m series has already been introduced, which are essentially rebrands of their HD7000m counterparts. So this may not be quite as illegitimate as you might think. Remember that laptop OEM's tend to keep AMD and Nvidia on a pretty tight annual update schedule, which conflicts with ever lengthening GPU generations. The two don't always align, and unfortunately sometimes this has to happen.

That being said, somehow I doubt the higher-end HD8000m's will be simple rebrands, and not utilize AMD's updated GCN architecture. It's not unusual to see lower-end parts get rebranded given similar feature sets between 2 generations. But a high-end mobile GPU would be a little strange.

 

[SteelCity1981]

what was wrong with the old comment system to change it in the first place?

 

[de5_Roy]

is that a mobile version of pitcairn?

 

[Cataclysm_ZA]

The lower tier of the HD8000m series has already been introduced, which are essentially rebrands of their HD7000m counterparts.

This is actually incorrect. AMD's low-end mobile HD7000 series is actually based on VLIW4, GCN was reserved for the higher-end parts. With the HD8000 series GCN now filters into the low-end SKUs, but the high-end cards are rebranded and clocked a little higher.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

The lower tier of the HD8000m series has already been introduced, which are essentially rebrands of their HD7000m counterparts.

This is actually incorrect. AMD's low-end mobile HD7000 series is actually based on VLIW4, GCN was reserved for the higher-end parts. With the HD8000 series GCN now filters into the low-end SKUs, but the high-end cards are rebranded and clocked a little higher.

Thanks for the info, I'm not sure how I got the low-end mobile rebrands mixed up. I think it had something to do with an article I read on Anandtech a couple months ago. It mentioned rebrands for AMD mid-range HD8800m, but it looks like everything below that does indeed use a new low-end GPU based on 1st gen GCN.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6571/amd-releases-full-product-specifications-for-radeon-8000m-series

I still haven't seen any definitive information about the high-end SKUs though. Could you provide a link if you have one?

 

[Cataclysm_ZA]

I still haven't seen any definitive information about the high-end SKUs though. Could you provide a link if you have one?

When Tom's did their preview of the HD8790M, they mentioned the high-end HD8800 rebranding on the first page.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-8790m-mars-benchmark,3382.html

It doesn't help that AMD's been completely vague about their plans for this year. Even when they had that conference call to clarify their position in the market and Nvidia's Titan, they still didn't provide enough information to make any details about their future concrete.

http://techreport.com/review/24368/fate-of-amd-sea-islands-obscured-in-the-fog

Regardless, that HD8790M looks immensely tasty.

 

[laststop311]

I was under the impression all the lower and mid tier 8000 parts would be rebrands but the flagship 8970 would be the updated gcn 2.1 or whatever. Not that I care AMD's mobile drivers are possibly the worst in the industry. Just ask any early adopter of the 7970m in crossfire. Half a year went by before they even had semi stable working drivers for it. People were using hacked drivers just to get thier m18x 7970 crossfires semi working. When I upgraded from 6990m crossfire to gtx 680m sli in my m18x every single aspect of my graphics capabilities improved tremendously and this laptop runs all my games at 2560x1440 on external monitor buttery smooth with max details. So I will never use another radeon card again after thier huge screw up with 7970 in crossfire. I mean how can you release a card then take half a year to get stable proper drivers for it. Sure the single card drivers were working but whoop dee doo