Prototype: However, this card will only go on sale with 1024 shader units Engineering samples like the one we are dealing with serve as a compromise: Electrically and thermally, they reflect the later chip well and allow the manufacturers to develop their boards relatively early while AMD does not have to fear revealing anything about the performance. On the other hand, from AMD’s point of view, due to inevitable leaks, it is again a concern not to let the performance of the final product be known too early. What is the purpose of such a chip then? It is important for AMD’s board partners to get GPUs as early as possible so that they can develop the boards. After lively correspondence and several phone calls with AMD and the board manufacturer in question, it could be clarified without a doubt that the installed chip is a special chip that was only used by AMD Shanghai for in-house development purposes and should never be sold in this form, let alone in test labs like ours. Why do you think there was no HD 7830, but the rather unloved HD 7790? We had reported in a news item back then that we came across a board during the test of a new Radeon HD 7850 in the rare singleslot design, which didn’t contain a normal Pitcairn chip with 1024 shader units, but a weaker engineering sample with only 768 shader units.

768 starcraft ii