News AMD Radeon HD 8970M mobile graphics unveiled

AMD introduces its new HD 8000M mobile graphics series.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2013/05/15/amd-radeon-hd-8970m-mobile-graphics-unveile/1

 

Reads like an advert - you could have mentioned that it's a 7970M with a 50mhz higher boost speed (something 7970M's could already achieve pretty easily). It's a rebrand!

 

bout amd and Nvidia are rebranding so the 8XXX and 7XX (especially 770) series are boring. amd only rebrands mobile gpu's and OEM it might be a new stepping. I think they are waiting for 20nm to come out in the end of the year or starting of next year.

 

I never understood the purpose of mobile versions of either CPUs or GPUs, because they tend to not be anything like their desktop counterparts, as they are either severely underclocked or are physically lacking something, or both.

As for the laptop using this chip, why use an APU? That makes no sense at all, you can't crossfire an A10 with an 8970, so they might as well have gone for a regular FX series CPU.

 

How else would you save power on a mobile chip if you didn't cut cores or drop clock speeds/voltages?

With AMD's Enduro graphics switching, it allows only the integrated graphics on the APU to be used when not gaming, saving power. Same concept as Nvidia Optimus.

 

How about by not putting a 8970 in it? Lets suppose the 8970M has the total performance and power consumption of a desktop 8750 (it is likely some tasks would perform better, some would perform worse). Why not just use the 8750?

Oh, I never knew this existed.

 

A Radeon 8970M is superficially similar to the 88870. Same number of cores, same amount of memory but slightly lower clocks. The difference is the TDP of the 8870 will be around 150W, which is far too much for a laptop while the 8970M will presumably be around the 100W mark.

Clock speeds alone don't account for this difference in power - the difference comes from the voltage used, which is influence by the manufacturing process. Mobile GPUs will typically be fabbed with lower power, less leaky transistors - these chips won't clock as high, but they'll a) consume less power than the desktop equivalent at a given voltage and clock speed and b) allow for using lower voltages while still giving correct operation at a given clock speed. These chips are binned as mobile GPUs that are suited to laptop use. Hence, they have different chips for desktops and laptops.