Published in Graphics

A Partner spills the beans on RV670

by on03 November 2007

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Clocks lower than expected

The
chaps at TechConnect magazine were on the wrong page at the wrong time and managed to snap a few screenshots of some RV670 spec sheets. Apparently, a partner listed three HD38x0 cards on its site by mistake, and there are a couple of surprises in the specs.

First of all, the clocks are a bit lower than expected. The HD3850 runs at 668MHz core, while the GDDR3 memory runs at 828MHz, and two versions were listed with 256 and 512MB of memory. The HD3870 runs at 775MHz, or 50MHz less than the rumored 825MHz, and its 512MB of GDDR4 memory is clocked at 1200MHz. Both the HD3850 and HD3870 support Quad Crossfire on 790FX based motherboards; the only trouble is that many 790FX motherboards manufacturers will have just two PCIe slots.

If these specs are indeed genuine, and they seem to be, they raise some questions, mainly regarding the relatively low clocks. The 80nm R600 runs at 743MHz, while the 55nm RV670 manages just 4 percent more. Frankly, this just seems strange. The HD3850 ends up at 668MHz, although many speculated that it will end up clocked at 750MHz.

We already told you that the launch clocks haven't been finalized, here, but these are certainly well below our expectations.

Last modified on 06 November 2007
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