In October AMD released a refresh of the Radeon brand called the HD 6800 series built around the Barts GPU – a slightly modified version of the Cypress GPU used Radeon HD 5000 series last year. The reviews of the Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 were positive but not glowing simply because the markets they addressed were crowded with other worthy options from their own previous releases as well newer cards from NVIDIA. At the time of our initial briefing about Barts we also started to hear about Cayman, the true next-generation architecture that would be the successor to the Cypress design.

After a couple of small delays, Cayman is finally here as the Radeon HD 6900-series of graphics cards and represents a modestly dramatic shift in GPU computing architecture compared to previous cards. The results are likely not exactly what AMD had expect, thanks to some issues beyond its control, but the Radeon HD 6970 and HD 6950 update AMD’s lineup of graphics cards for the holidays and continue the recently-renewed march-step of competition between two bitter rivals.

• READ MORE (Source): PC Perspective – AMD Radeon HD 6970 and 6950 Review – The Cayman Architecture Revealed