ATI, graphics business unit of Advanced Micro Devices, on Wednesday unveiled its new dual-chip top-of-the-range graphics product. The novelty is the fastest graphics card in the world to date, besides, its supports DirectX 11 functionality and ATI Eyefinity technology that enables 3D rendering on three displays at once, another never-before-seen capability for a dual-chip graphics card.

“With the arrival of the ATI Radeon HD 5970, the fastest graphics card in the world, we’ve cemented AMD as the unquestioned graphics leader. With the holiday shopping season right around the corner, the new card, coupled with the awesome power of ATI Eyefinity technology, is the ultimate setup for serious gamers,” said Matt Skynner, vice president and general manager of AMD graphics group.

ATI Radeon HD 5970 is powered by two Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress, RV870) graphics chips with 1600 stream processors, 80 texture units, 32 render back ends and 256-bit memory controller. The graphics processing units (GPUs) on the card are clocked at 725MHz, which is lower compared to clock-speeds of single-chip ATI Radeon HD 5870 card. The novelty is equipped with 2GB of 4GHz GDDR5 memory.

The developer of the graphics card said that it limited stock frequencies in order to keep maximum power consumption at 294W. However, the company said that end-users will be able to overclock the  new “X2” card as they wish with supplied software, but the firm’s warranty will not cover graphics cards that got broken as a result of overclocking.

The company also stressed that ATI Radeon HD 5970 is based on a pair specially selected chips with reduced leakage. Thanks to that as well as ATI Power Play technology and ultra low power state, the card consumes 294W when fully loaded and only 42W in idle mode.

One of the unique features of ATI Radeon HD 5970 is support of 3D rendering acceleration on up to three monitors at the same time with up to 7680x1600 resolution, which is the first time when a multi-GPU graphics solution supports 3D acceleration on three displays.

At present the Radeon HD 5970 is the fastest graphics card on the planet, besides, it supports DirectX 11, a combination that ATI’s arch-rival Nvidia cannot offer. As a result, the price tag of the novelty is $599, an extremely high price for the current state of the economics.

ATI Radeon HD 5970 is supported by a wide range of add-in-board companies, including ASK, Asustek Computer, Club 3D, Diamond, Gigabyte, High Tech, MSI, Sapphire, Tul/Power Color, Visiontek and XFX.

Tags: ATI, AMD, Radeon, Cypress, Evergreen, 40nm, RV870