AMD is continuing its work on the new GPU generation codenamed ‘Sea Islands’. The new series is prognosticated to be released in the coming winter. All the products with this GPU will be branded Radeon 8000. AMD manufacturers claim that their new graphic processing units will be 40% more efficient due to the implemented advanced technologies. There is not so much news about the future GPU architecture, although cardinal changes are barely possible.



Sea Islands chips will be equipped with 5.1 billion transistors as compared with the current 4.3 billion items applied in the products. This augmentation will facilitate the increment of efficiency. The chips will be developed according to the already tried-and-proven 28 nm technological requirements. The increase of transistors is not as large due to the adherence to the ascribed norms. It should be underlined that the implementation of the old technologies does not imply the considerable warming up of the chips; the developments …

American vendor XFX is about two weeks to release a Radeon 7970 Edition Double Dissipation (model code — FX-797G-TDF). It combines the capabilities of GPU Tahiti XT2 with a higher overclocking potential and the TDP, rather than at Tahiti XT, PCB reference design, but without a single phase power supply (6 +1), and the cooling system in the vaporizing chamber, an array of aluminum fins, PA plate (the same heatsink for the VRM and memory), as well as the two fans standard size 90 mm.



New model will get the recommended for the Radeon HD 7970 GE frequency ratio 1000/6000 MHz for core and chips GDDR5. The graphics chip will operate at 1050 MHz in the load. Recall that the “usual” HD 7970 was limited to regular frequencies 925/5500 MHz and did not support dynamic overclocking.


The configuration of video outputs is almost standard: from the five of DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI and 2x Mini DisplayPort for some reason excluded DVI-D. The additional power is supplied by one 8-pin and one …

Thermaltake Technology introduces a new PC case codenamed Urban S21. This is a regular mid-tower chassis with, as usual, high-quality framework and wide spectrum of destinations. Urban S21 is developed in a minimalistic design with all black coverage (external and internal) and little detailing. The model is housed in a steel casing (SECC) and contains a single transparent side window. Its overall dimensions equal to 438x185x497 mm.



This PC case is expected to accommodate motherboards of ATX and micro-ATX standard, CPU coolers of up to 155 mm in height, and graphics cards which length does not exceed the admissible 320 mm. The layout offers seven PCI expansion cards, three external 5.25-inch drive bays, one external 3.5-inch drive bay, and five internal bays for the integration of 3.5/2.5-inch drives.


Urban S21 is equipped with a frontal interface panel that is represented by a pair of USB 3.0 ports and a pair of 3.5 mm audio slots. The top panel contains handy ‘Power’ …