First appearing in 2009's Radeon HD 5700 products, AMD's Juniper graphics processor has reemerged with a fresh disguise courtesy of the "new" Radeon HD 6700 series. Although we've known since earlier this year that the Radeon HD 6750 and 6770 would be rebranded 5750 and 5770 cards, it was believed that they would remain exclusive to system builders. Apparently, that isn't the case as a flurry of AMD's board partners have just unleashed consumer versions.
AMD says the 6700 cards will replace the 5700 products at the retail level over the coming weeks. As you can see by the table below, the main specifications between the Radeon HD 5750/5770 and Radeon HD 6750/6770 haven't changed at all. This is also reflected by the fact that the prices haven't been increased – at least judging by the current PowerColor and Sapphire 6700 boards available through Newegg. The 6750 is set at about $105 while the 6770 is $120.
HD 5750 | HD 6750 | HD 5770 | HD 6770 | |
Fabrication | TSCM 40nm | TSCM 40nm | TSCM 40nm | TSCM 40nm |
Transistors | 1.04B | 1.04B | 1.04B | 1.04B |
Die size | 170mm² | 170mm² | 170mm² | 170mm² |
Stream processors | 720 | 720 | 800 | 800 |
Texture units | 36 | 36 | 40 | 40 |
ROPs | 16 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
Core clock | 700MHz | 700MHz | 850MHz | 850MHz |
Memory clock | 4.6GHz GDDR5 | 4.6GHz GDDR5 | 4.8GHz GDDR5 | 4.8GHz GDDR5 |
Memory bus | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit | 128-bit |
Memory size | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB |
Power rating | 86W | 86W | 108W | 108W |
Despite being rebadged versions of their numerical predecessors, AMD has added a few extra features to the 6700 series. The new cards have received support for HDMI 1.4a connectivity and hardware-accelerated Blu-ray 3D video playback. It's also worth noting that AMD isn't exactly trying to hide Juniper's identity crisis. The company has admitted that it wants to update the branding of the products from ATI 57xx to AMD 67xx to reflect their standing among the current generation.