AMD launches the Radeon HD 8970M

AMD has officially launched the Radeon HD 8970M this week and is advertising the GPU as the fastest notebook graphics card available. Though the GPU runs at the same 900 MHz base clock rate as the HD 7970M, its maximum Turbo clock is 50 MHz higher for an approximate 6% boost in raw speed. AMD boasts this increase in its press releases and slides against the competing GTX 680M. Our own comparisons between the GTX 680M and HD 7970M can be seen in our full head-to-head review here.

Note, however, that AMD has made no mention of the GTX 780M in its press release slides. This certainly doesn't have us worried as the AMD advantage has always been price when compared to Nvidia offerings. Whether or not this will continue remains to be seen as the official pricing of the HD 8970M is still under wraps.

The HD 8970M is set to make its first appearance in the upcoming 17.3-inch MSI GX70 equipped with the A10-5750M "Richland" processor. Due to the incremental architectural updates of the processor and GPU from their respective predecessors (a base clock increase of only 200 MHz on the CPU), we expect final performance and benchmark numbers to be similar to that of our GX60 review late last year.

For more information and constantly updated benchmarks on the HD 8970M and other GPUs, visit our dedicated GPU benchmark page here and our see our full comparison list.