RumorTT: AMD to skip HD 8000 series and launch the HD 9000 series in October

It looks like AMD could be jumping right into the HD 9000 series, skipping the HD 8000 series altogether, and this new next-gen GPU would be launching as soon as October.

The first HD 9000 series parts are set to be Curacao and Hainan, both 28nm-based chips on the GCN 2.0 architecture. The new architecture features an improved front-end with 4 asynchronous computing engines (ACEs) and 3 geometry engines, as well as more stream processors crammed in.

The reason for skipping the HD 8000 series is most likely because AMD are already re-badging HD 7000 series GPU's as HD 8000 series parts to OEMs. We should expect the Curacao XT to feature 2304 stream processors (36 compute units) 144 texture units, 48 render back ends and a 384-bit memory controller. The Hainan will be less powerful, featuring 1792 stream processors (28 compute units) 112 texture units, 32 render back ends and a 256-bit memory bus.

The next few months will be interesting, and I have a feeling AMD are going to launch their next-gen Radeon GPU's at the same time the next-gen consoles arrive, riding the wave of AMD-powered consoles hitting the market.