AMDs Radeon 6800 and 6900 Series graphics cards get price drops

AMD finalized its recalibrated product pricing of Radeon HD 6800 and Radeon HD 6900 series products in the wake of NVIDIA's launch of the GeForce GTX 560 Ti later today. NVIDIA's new GPU is expected to revive the green giant's competitiveness at a key sub-$300 price-point, which could destabilize AMD's SKUs in the price-proximity. Without many options left, AMD is setting the following new prices (prices in EUR and USD):

• Radeon HD 6870 1 GB: 189.99€, $219
  Radeon HD 6950 1 GB: 225.00€, $259
  Radeon HD 6950 2 GB: 239.99€, $269~289

The prices should be in effect very soon. Prices apart, AMD will also release a new driver that will bring about considerable performance improvements to all Radeon HD 6000 series GPUs.

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Asus prepares to unleash its Radeon 6970 DirectCU graphics monstrosity

ASUS displayed a huge new graphics card based on the AMD Radeon HD 6970 GPU. The EAH6970 DirectCu is perhaps the largest among the company's graphics cards that use a "direct-copper" GPU cooler in which heat pipes make direct contact with the GPU die. Such is the size of the cooler, that the card requires three expansion slots in your system. To make optimal use of the expansion brackets, ASUS wired out all TMDS links from the GPU, yielding a display connectivity consisting of two DVI and four full-sized DisplayPort 1.2 connectors.

The GPU cooler makes use of a large aluminum fin array which uses at least three 8 mm thick copper heat pipes. The aluminum fins are cooled by the airflow of two 120 mm fans. The card uses 2 GB of high-speed GDDR5 memory over a 256-bit wide memory interface, it packs 1536 VLIW4 stream processors. The card also seems to be using a 9-phase VRM that allows software voltage control. Power is drawn in from two 8-pin PCI-E power connectors.

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