Did AMD quietly launch the 6990m already??

So the m18x has the 6990m crossfire available for order in the UK(at half the price of the 580m btw) but how can that be possible as AMD has not even launched the card. But apparently they already launched it on June 15, a member called AMD and found out from one of their guys that the 6990m was has been available since 15 June and it has been upto to companies and resellers to use it.
Is any of this possible or is this just one huge mistake??
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...d-6990m-crossfire-available-uk-now-order.html

 

I'm glad I waited on getting a 6970m. There's a good chance this will be similar to the 1120sp ES cards floating around.

 

If it's available by phone for pre-order i guess it might appear on the websites in configurator by the end of the week!

 

Well I hope ATI should confirm that the 6990M is an unlocked 1120SP 6970M.

 

I know, it is weird that Dell already has the card and there is no info at all. I was honestly surprised to find out it was out already, i was expecting a September/October launch.

 

Hawk, I am the guy who chatted to the AMD agent, I also now have email confirmation, and we have several posts from across Europe that the 6990 is available ... still can't get it in North America though

 

Yeah , read that thread. A guy has even ordered the m17x r3 with a 6990m from The Netherlands, it is apparently available all over Europe, it just seems strange to me that Dell decided to launch the card in Europe first, very unlike them. Though they also launched the m18x in Europe first. It is possible but what concerns me is the lack of any info. All rumors said that the AMD card would launch sometime in September - October period. Just that the whole situation seems a bit weird. I will a wait a few days I mean all we know all those who ordered the 6990m will receive an email explaining some kind of error and the card is actually a 6970m. The thing that doubles my suspicion is the upgrade costs 10 bucks more than the 6970m, highly unlikely.

 

I'd be curious to see if the 6970m can be flashed with a 6990m vbios. I'm all about having 1120sp.

 

if the cards are identical then 99% chaces yes amd does not have an history of locking down hardware

but 1120 SP hell yeah next gen will likely hit the 1600 on one signle card and signal me it's time to upgrade

 

That would be awesome. I'm kinda bummed since I just got my laptop w/ a 6970M so unlike most 485m owners, the 6990m actually represents a significant performance bump if it has the 1120sp's rather than an overclock/core optimization with the 580m. Here's hoping they all get released soon and vbios start flowing in.

Incidentally I know some have flashed ES cards to 6990m specs - do we know if any of those hacks work on non-ES cards? I can't seem to find the previous discussions - but I see sigs

 

hopefully soon i can find a laptop thats only slightly slower than my 2year old desktop for under 1500

 

Dell has removed the 6970m from their European sites. So chances are the 6990m should up on the websites soon.

 

That is great news!! I hope we don't need to physically mod the card to make it work like 6990M, 1120SP sounds awesome!!

 

Don't count on it guys. I doubt that just by flashing the BIOS it will activate additional SP's. Most likely they are shut off completely.

 

Won't work, I tried a lot of different VBIOS versions (not because of the shaders, but because of the fan issue) and it never changed the shader count.
And I have to advise you all against trying the VBIOS of an early engineering sample 6970m with 1120 shaders on a regular 6970m, they don't mix well...

 

So does anyone have any information about the 6990?

I'm just in the process of ordering a new laptop and have been offered the 6990 in XFire on an M18x (for less than half what they want for the 580's) - but am trying to find out more about the 6990 before I make a final decision........

 

*If* the 6990m has 1120sp and is clocked similarly to the 6970m - I would assume it would be as fast if not faster in some things as the 580m - 580m's are mostly just a core optimization (cheaper for nvidia to manufacter) and overclock of the 485m.

The 6970m is pretty close to the performance level of the 485m and with an additional 160sp it'll probably be significantly faster. I'd say the 6990's would be a good bet for the price.

 

Well, an extra 160SP is a 16.6% increase in shaders, so, assuming that the # of shaders directly translates to the performance increase, it'll beat the 485M, and be close to the 580M, if not faster. However, it'll more likely be a 10-12% increase.

 

Btw to those talking about the AMD 7 series, its likely they will use compute cores rather than VLIW-4 or 5.

 

It was sonfirmed the 7 series would use VLIW-4?

 

AnandTech - AMD's Graphics Core Next Preview: AMD's New GPU, Architected For Compute

There you go.

 

I stand corrected. There was an aricle somehwere that said it still used VLIW, I'll see if I can dig it up.

 

Nice to see I was wrong regarding the 6990m's release date, the lack of fanfare surprises me though especially if this upgrade is more than a simple overclock like the 580m.

 

HOLY $*($

i said we seen the influence of amd on ATI (aka better driver stronger card etc) but we had yet to see the influence of ATI on amd well i guess we are seeing it now

 

wow that article just goes on for 10 pages. if someone could throw up a few bullet points for what it reveals about the 6990m that would be awesome.

 

nothing it's about fusion and it was what was anounced to be the big anouncement during the week