Guru3D got their hands on a leaked confidential email from AMD that stated that the HD 7950 will be launched and available for purchase in February of 2012, instead of the previously reported date of January 9th. I'm glad that this card will be launched and available on the same day unlike the HD 7970 which is still 5 more days away from commercial availability.

The intrepid reporters over at Fudzilla have some pictures of PowerColor's non-reference HD 7970 design. The card will have 'beefier' RAM and it will sport PowerColor's Vortex cooling fan.

Nvidia is rumored to be rushing out (February is the word on the street) a high-end card featuring the Kepler 104 GPU in order to compete with the recently released HD 7970. So far this mysterious card is said to have 2GB of GGDR5, a clock speed of 780Mhz, a 225W TDP, and (only) a 256-bit memory bus.

A 256-bit memory bus seems a little weird to me. Nvidia has used a 384-bit bus on their GTX 480 and 580, and a 320-bit bus for their GTX 470 and 570. The 256-bit cards have all been strictly mid-range parts in the last two series.

The Kepler 104 is supposed to be competitive with the HD 7970, but the sources are saying that it is not the highest-end GPU being developed by the green team. The real new flagship is said to be the Kepler 110, which will be released sometime in March or April.

Today Galaxy is launching the first 2GB GT 440 exclusively at Best Buy and Best Buy.com for $107.99. That might seem a bit pricey when compared to online prices, but at Best Buy it is actually a decent price for a card of this caliber. Although Galaxy's 1GB GT 440 is currently priced at $129.99...

In this performance review you will find out what you can expect from Galaxy's 2GB GT 440 in some of the latest PC games.

Thanks to images released by OBR-Hardware.com, we now know that the Radeon HD 7950 will not share a common reference design with the HD 7970, meaning the chances of "unlocking" the card into a 7970 have all but dissipated.