A few days ago, ATI started to present their new line of high-performance graphic cards from the Radeon HD 5800 family, compatible with the DirectX 11 APIs, more precisely, the Radeon HD 5870 and HD 5850 models, featuring a single-GPU architecture and based on the 40nm Cypress core, differing from each other only by the number of stream processors and clock frequencies on both GPU and memories.

The enthusiast level model that ATI will offer in the next few days was first known with the codename Hemlock and it’ll be commercialized with the Radeon HD 5870 X2 name. It’s a dual-GPU solution with a single PCB, feauring two Cypress cores that work in parallel (3200 stream processors in total). The cooling system uses the same model as the HD 5870 but looks a little longer, and with little changes to give the second core a better cooling. The card also needs a second 8-pin PCIe connector, together with a 6-pin one, in order to function.

The core frequencies, the launch date and price haven’t yet been announced.