AMD announces the Radeon HD 8900M notebook graphics card series with the 8970M-- reportedly the fastest GPU for desktop-replacement laptops yet, featuring an adaptation of AMD's Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture.

For those in the know, big tech spec numbers include 1280 stream processors, 80 TMUs, 128 Z/Stencil ROPs and 32 Colour ROPs. The GPU clocks at 850MHz (with a boost speed of 900MHz) while the card packs 2GB GDDR5 RAM running at 4.8GHz over a 256-bit interface.

AMD claims the card's single precision compute power reaches up to 2304 GFlops, making it rank higher than the competition at the usual benchmark tests (3DMark, Crysis 3, Bioshock Infinite).

The announcement also names the first machine carrying the 8970M-- the MSI GX70 laptop, the successor to the GX60. As well as the GPU, the GX70 features a 17.3-inch display, an unnamed Richland-based AMD A10 processor, Killer networking and a SteelSeries keyboard.

Go AMD Introduces the World's Fastest Notebook Graphics Card