AMD To Launch Radeon HD 6300M, 6500M Processors

The chipmaker on Monday added the Radeon HD 6500M and Radeon HD 6300M to the products listed on its Website , without making an official announcement. The 6300M and 6500M both include 400 stream processors, 20 texture units, 32 Z/stencil ROPs and eight colour ROPs.

The high-end 6500M for graphics-intensive gaming is based on the TeraScale 2 Unified Processing Architecture. It runs at a clock speed of 500MHz-650MHz and GDDR5 or DDR3 memory clock speed of 900MHz.

AMD will also offer the HD 6300M for midrange users, which will replace the Mobility HD 5400-series. It includes support for DDR3 memory, clocked at 800-900MHz. The processor clock speed is between 500 and 700MHz.

Both models will support OpenGL 4.1 capability, Direct X11 as well as AMD's new HD3D Eyefinity multidisplay technology. The Radeon 6500M processor supports up to six displays simultaneously, while the 6300M supports up to four.

AMD has also included "dynamic switchable graphics," a technology whose details have yet to be unveiled, under the specifications for both new 6000 cards. AMD, which declined a request for comment on Monday, has yet to offer details regarding pricing or release date.

Aside from these new features, AMD's latest graphics card seems to be a continuation of its current Radeon HD 5000 series GPUs, which could explain the lack of any fanfare or even an official announcement. AMD has dealt with some negative publicity stemming from confusion over the branding of its highest-end 6000 GPUs, released last month. The company's decision to give the highest model number to its most power-efficient and price-efficient cards, rather than its fastest cards, suggest a shift of strategic emphasis based on the recognition that most end-users do not require the most powerful graphics available.

It may also be a shift in emphasis toward the graphics space. In addition, according to a report from analyst firm Jon Peddie Research last week, AMD seems to have withdrawn completely from the CPU market for workstations. The firm said Intel supplied 99.9 percent of microprocessors for workstations in the third quarter of 2010. The report suggests AMD is focusing on the GPU market instead.