1 GB Radeon HD 6970 to Cost US $279

Cheaper than HD 6950 2 GB, and at a price point of US $279, AMD's new 1 GB Radeon HD 6970 stands testament to the competitiveness AMD left for itself in the performance segment, a crucial market segment. AMD's Radeon HD 6970 with 1 GB of memory will be launched by partners soon, along with 1 GB Radeon HD 6950. The two will compete with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 560Ti which is slated for 25th of this month.

The new Radeon HD 6970 was able to shed $100 (or close to 26.5%) of its price by halving its memory amount. The original 2 GB version sells for an average $379. The 1 GB cards use eight 1 Gbit memory chips over a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface. Memory clock speeds and bandwidth remain unchanged. Apart from memory amount, partners will most likely use cost-effective board and cooler designs. Apart from the HD 6970, AMD will also introduce "Turbo" variants of the Radeon HD 6870, which will feature very high GPU core clock speeds.