AMD has launched its AMD Radeon HD 7970 – which it bills as the “world's fastest single-GPU graphics card” – for serious gamers and those looking for high-end graphic capabilities.

The card, which sports the company’s new Graphics Core Next Architecture, apparently offers an 150% improvement as compared to the previous generation of graphics solutions.

“This graphics card represents a revolution in the graphics industry. To put it bluntly, at 28 nm the AMD Radeon HD 7970 changes everything," enthused Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager, GPU Division, AMD.

Feature set

The card, which boasts the latest PCI Express 3.0 standard and GDDR5 memory, also includes AMD App Acceleration, which enables high-definition video images and “exceptional” performance improvements for everyday applications.

Additionally, the Radeon HD 7970 offers a refined AMD PowerTune technology, which enables users to convert unused power into extra performance by dynamically controlling clock speeds, allowing gamers advanced performance.

And, for the ecologically minded, the card further offers AMD ZeroCore Power Technology. The company asserted that this ensures that no power is wasted when the graphics card is not in use, by enabling lower idle power than any other currently available graphics card. With support for AMD CrossFire technology, AMD ZeroCore Power also eliminates wasted power, as well as additional heat and noise from extra cards when these are not in use.

Finally, the next generation of AMD’s Eyefinity technology is also onboard. The technology enables gamers and PC enthusiasts to connect up to six displays to one graphics card, delivering immersive stereoscopic 3D experiences.

The next version, AMD Eyefinity 2.0, features new support for stereo 3D, new display configurations and an expanded and more immersive field of view. This allows users with 2560 x 1600 monitors in an AMD Eyefinity 5 x 1 landscape configuration to achieve a horizontal resolution of 12 800 pixels, driving more than 20 million pixels of screen real estate.

The company added that more than 70 game titles have been AMD Eyefinity-validated, and hundreds more are AMD Eyefinity-compatible.

The AMD Radeon HD 7970 is set to become available worldwide from January 9, 2012 with select models starting at $549 (R4500). No official local pricing or availability has been announced as yet.

In recent news, AMD announced its first memory branded desktop system memory modules, similarly targeted at gamers and performance enthusiasts.