AMD Launches Radeon HD 8970M: Worth The Hype?

Updated: May 16, 2013

For the fans of AMD who have been in high anticipation of the new 8 series video cards news has now broken of the first rendition of the series in the form of the new 8970M. Now take note though, this is only for the mobile sector at the moment and in reality it is more of a product rename than anything truly original as far as the technical details are concerned. Most assuredly the new 8970M will be there fastest mobile chipset offered from AMD and in the charts you cannot see the specs of the previous of the 7000M, but if you could you world see there is no difference between the 8970M and the 7970M other than the 900MHZ Boost Clock offered on the 7970M. The charts do however show the new 8000M series chipset lineup that begins with the HD 8500M all the way up to the top dog HD 8970M.

Both the 7970M and the 8970M share the same Picairn core (Codenamed Neptune for the 8970M and Wimbledon for the 7970M) with 1200MHZ GDDR5 (4.8GHz effective), with the only difference being an increase in clock speeds. This does not leave a lot of room for discussions on hardware or architecture, as there is just not enough new technology being introduced to warrant a lot of wasted words on. The real story within the story is the relationships with game developers a territory AMD has always lost to NVIDIA, as until recently there were many more games with the NVIDIA logo popping up at the beginning of your game. NVIDIA has been seen to work very closely with the gaming community and many of the AAA titles released within the last few years have sported the NVDIA logo on the box. Check out what NVIDIA has got their name on, (both Batman games, Battlefield 3 and before that Bad Company 2, Borderlands 2, Mafia II, and Metro 2033 to name a few). More titles are also sporting the NVIDIA branding, like the just launched Metro: Last Light, Lost Planet 3, and Star Trek, with ARMA 3 coming down the pipeline soon.

That has been the way things have been going on now for years, but check this times they are a changing as AMD has now started to take things more seriously as the game gets tougher and smaller. The last year has seen AMD bring to the table titles like Far Cry 3 (and the spin-off FC3 Blood Dragon), SimCity, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, Crysis 3, DmC (Devil May Cry), Hitman: Absolution, Sleeping Dogs, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution are all on the list, and outside of DmC and Sleeping Dogs most of the titles were on the “A” list of game released so far. If AMD can keep up a pace like this they may just be able to keep NVIDIA on their toes and their competitiveness will only be to the benefit of the gamers who support either camp. Another aspect that has really propelled AMD are they’re unprecedented gaming bundles as the Never Setting ands Never Settle Reloaded campaigns are quite possible the best bait ever used to catch a gamers attention. I mean lets face it what is the single coolest thing you can give to a gamer with a new graphics card in their hand? I will tell you a bunch of really cool games given with every GPU purchase was a marketing move of sheer genius and one that has pain off in spades for the folks in Texas.

It is never a shock to see AMD branded titles performing better on AMD powered graphics and the same can be said of NVIDIA’s titles as well and in the current market the 7970M and the NVIDIA 680M are showing equal footing and the 8970M should not rock the boat in any life altering way, but we also know that NVIDIA is also about to break loose with their all new GTX 780M that could put pressure again on AMD if NVIDIA really decides to compete in this arena. NVIDIA usually sets their sites on the high-end and lets AMD putter around until they see themselves losing ground, then it becomes a different game. What we do know though is this, the first product to ship with the new HD 8970M will be the MSI GX70 3BE and soon many others will follow as AMD always hungry will have very appealing prices top offer, which in turn will make manufactures take a hard look at the numbers that will be hard to resist in a decaying market. There is no real hard story with the release of the HD 8970M as it is just a rebranded alternately clocked version of the same Pitcairn corn. NVDIA has done nothing to improve their price point in the mobile market, as apparently they have no need to leaving the gates wide open for AMD to make a move. For all the specs and information check out the pictures below. Thank you taking the time to read this article and if you would like to share your ideas your voice always has a place in the comments section below here on Tech Of Tomorrow.

Source: Anandtech