For the last 12 months, AMD has had the Radeon HD 6970 be its premier single GPU graphics card, competing head to head with the GeForce GTX 570 and at times challenging the mighty GTX 580. For about $369 today, you can still get one hell of a graphics card, comprised of 2.6 billion transistors, a die measuring 389mm2 and a 250W TDP rating, but most importantly capable of running all modern PC games fluidly except for some extreme scenarios.When compared to its previous generation board (the Radeon HD 5870), the Radeon HD 6970 was on average 24% faster. Now a year later AMD is launching its Radeon HD 7000 series which has been given the codename 'Southern Islands'. The Radeon HD 7970 is the first of a series of upcoming graphics cards that are making the jump to the 28nm fabrication process. The new HD 7970 will effectively become AMD's new flagship single GPU graphics card come January, when the board is expected to ship.