According to industry sources we spoke with, multiple leading AMD add-in board partners lack plans to launch Radeon HD 7870 "Tahiti LE" graphics cards. The new performance segment SKU is slated for November 27, and already lacks an AMD reference design. The new SKU is being designed as a limited-edition model, targeting limited markets, to help AMD score big on the winter shopping season. Earlier this week, Club 3D defied the November 27 launch date to release the HD 7870 jokerCard, which is believed to stick to the final specifications of "Tahiti LE." Since TUL is the contract manufacturer for Club 3D, one can safely confirm that two AIB brands owned by it, PowerColor and VTX 3D, will announce HD 7870 "Tahiti LE." Incidentally, the three are also among the only AIBs with a Radeon HD 7990 dual-GPU graphics card, apart from HIS.
Based on the 28 nm "Tahiti" silicon, the limited edition Radeon HD 7870 "Tahiti LE" is configured with 1,536 Graphics CoreNext stream processors, a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface holding 2 GB of memory, and clock speeds of 925 MHz core, 975 MHz PowerTune boost, and 6.00 GHz memory (192 GB/s). It is said to be priced competitively with NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 660, while being allegedly 15% faster.
