Pics of upcoming ATI display adapter leaked to public

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

The internet at large got a sneak pic of ATI's upcoming Radeon HD 5970 graphics card this week, which will feature two of the company's 5870 graphics processing units linked together to provide higher performance.

Tech website Reg Hardware says that ATI commonly releases dual-processor versions of many of its display adapters, linking them together with modified display driver firmware. The site to which the device was leaked, AlienBabelTech, attempted to post performance figures for the high-end graphics card but was forced to remove them by ATI.

The hardware community is generally in agreement that the HD 5970 is a beast of a device, fully 12.5 inches long. Experts say that this could seriously hinder its ability to fit inside many PCs, where space is at a premium. ATI reportedly told AlienBabelTech that the leaked device is an engineering sample, and that the finished device would have a different form factor.

ATI rival nVidia is expected to release its own line of DirectX 11-capable graphics cards soon, codenamed "Fermi," but ATI is said to be confident of outperforming its Intel-backed competitor.