The first images of what is claimed to be the next-generation high-performance ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics card have emerged on the Internet. The graphics card seems to be unusually long and more resemble single-chip solutions from Nvidia Corp. rather than from ATI, graphics business unit of Advanced Micro Devices.

For years ATI did not use cooling solutions that covered the whole graphics card for its single-chip offerings. However, with the new Radeon HD 5870 the company decided to change its mind and introduce a new cooling system. The reason for this might be increased power consumption, very complex power supply circuitry and some other factors. Traditionally such cooling systems have been used by Nvidia for its high-end offerings.

As it can be observed, the new graphics board is very long, which clearly points to complex voltage regulating mechanism and print circuit board (PCB’s) design. Increased demand for energy may also point to positioning of the product, which is expected to substantially outperform existing graphics cards and also offer DirectX 11 functionality. The graphics board is also expected to support output to three displays at once using its DVI-I, DisplayPort or HDMI connectors.

In fact, long PCB is something that may not fit into mainstream desktop systems. Moreover, if the code-named RV870/Cypress chip (made using 40nm process technology at TSMC) consumes truly high amount of power, then it should be quite hard for ATI to mount two of such graphics processing units (GPUs) onto a single PCB on the ATI Radeon HD 5870 X2 product code-named Hemlock.

The first images of ATI Radeon HD 5870 code-named Cypress graphics cards emerged at Tweakers.net web-site. Even though the authenticity of the photos cannot be verified, the graphics card looks like a schematic image that emerged on the Web several weeks ago and thus can indeed be the new single-chip flagship product by AMD’s graphics business unit.

ATI demonstrated its first DirectX 11 graphics processors at Computex Taipei 2009 in early June, however, it did not outline any actual timeframes for introduction. There are unofficial reports over the Internet that ATI may release its chip known under “RV870” and “Evergreen” code-names in September or October.

Officials from ATI/AMD did not comment on the news-story.

Tags: ATI, AMD, Radeon, Evergreen, Cypress, Hemlock, 40nm