AMD Radeon HD 7900 graphics card to use XDR2 memory

With Nvidia’s Kepler GPU being pushed to early 2012, hopefully we can look forward to AMD’s next-generation GPUs in November. The next high end GPU codenamed ‘Tahiti’ is shaping up to be a monster of a card thanks to some new information from NordicHardware. To start off with, the 7900 series will come with PCI-E Gen 3 interface which gives it a bandwidth of 32GB/s. It will also be based on the next generation VLIW4 architecture, referred to as ‘CoreNext Architecture’ which is expected to boost performance quite a bit compared to the existing 6000 series.

Looking good so far

What’s more surprising is that ‘Tahiti’ will be using XDR2 memory instead of GDDR5 which offers higher bandwidth and is more power efficient. This is the same sort of memory that’s used in the current generation consoles. Rambus will be manufacturing the memory chips which is said to begin high volume production soon. NordicHardware has also compiled a little chart of what the new series could look like. We’ll know more in a few months when they announce it.