AMD has started shipping its dual RV870, 40nm-based DirectX 11 card and it turns out that we were correct regarding its specifications that we posted here and here.

Let us remind you, the card features a  725MHz core clock, 2GB of GDDR5 memory, 3200 shaders and is the fastest single card to ship. It will lose from two Radeon HD 5870 cards but it also sells for less, but when it comes to competing with any single card, Radeon HD 5970 is the fastest.

In a general perspective, the Radeon HD 5970 ends up some 25 to 30 percent faster than Geforce GTX 295 and it will be the performance leader until the Fermi dual-chip cards release.

The card sells for $599 in the US and in Europe, but it is currently listed on very few etail sites, not to mention it is not even available.

You can check one of the many reviews here and we will follow up with our own in due time.