AMD: R8xx Speculation

How soon will Nvidia respond with GT300 to upcoming ATI-RV870 lineup GPUs

  • Within 1 or 2 weeks

    Votes: 1 0.6%
  • Within a month

    Votes: 5 3.2%
  • Within couple months

    Votes: 28 18.1%
  • Very late this year

    Votes: 52 33.5%
  • Not until next year

    Votes: 69 44.5%

  • Total voters
    155
  • Poll closed .
HD5400 replaces HD4350/4550. It has similar configuration and higher clock-speed... I can't imagine why is it slower.
 
Meh, they're basically on par. It's the cache bandwidth's fault i would assume.

@no-x: OK, removed my question because of edit above
 
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I edited the post. HD4500 is clocked at 600MHz, while the highest performing RV810/Cedar part was expected to be clocked at 750MHz. Now HD5450 is "only" 650MHz... hmm
 
I guess shader-based interpolation is exacting quite a cost. I wonder if the compiler is any good at this, yet...

Jawed
 
Yes, it seems to be logical... this GPU has only 2:1 ALU:TEX, so performance hit can be twice as high as on Juniper/Cypress...
 
Not sure though that's really only due to shader based interpolation.
The card is clocked 8% higher while being about the same 8% slower. Seems a bit too much just for shader based interpolation.
All in all, not very exciting...
The good: still enough to beat a (despite what anand claims, near identical die size) g210. Though that might only be due to ddr3 ram... Power consumption also decreased from 4550. And of course DX11, Eyefinity, etc. compared to last gen.
The bad: cards with ddr2 ram and the same name :(. Slower than 4550. Apparently still can't quite do all video processing the faster cards can do. At least the 1GB versions (which are pointless anyway why send the reviewers these...) are terrible from price/performance view right now.

Actually, here's another review: http://ht4u.net/reviews/2010/amd_radeon_hd_5450/index6.php - interestingly they got a 512MB DDR3 card (with 900Mhz clock) with a screaming fan as reference. While stating cards in the market will either be 512MB DDR2 (with no Eyefinity) or 1024MB DDR3 (with Eyefinity). I guess that would be the reason reviewers got the 1024MB versions... And btw in this review they also tested a g210 with ddr3 ram, and it indeed makes up most of the performance deficit.
The lineup certainly is a letdown. What's the point of ddr2 memory anyway? Thought there's now pretty much price parity between the two. But really the only card which might achieve acceptable price/performance is missing - the 512MB ddr3 version... Though from the announced cards so far it doesn't actually look like that'll matter - seems like they'll release whatever they like, with all combinations of 512MB/1024MB ddr2/ddr3 and different ports configuration.
 
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All in all, not very exciting...
Now there's an understatement! I've found the performance to be positively shameful (relative to the predecessor, of course), but then again this is what we get when the competition sets the bar low with even more underwhelming cards. This should have been an IGP by now... :cry:
 
No, it pretty much is the interpolation. The other cards have twice the ALU's per SIMD so they generally are able to "soak up" the interpolation easier, to the point where it can be an improvement on many current apps.
 
Awesome, can't wait to get my hands on one and throw it in the HTPC. And I'll finally be able to retire my poor old trustworthy 3450. :)

Regards,
SB
 
Read anand's and the 5450 is a huge let down to me its slower than the dx 10 parts

I'd have to agree on the let down.. considering nearly all of ATI's new parts do more than enough to distance themselves from their predecessors (5800 > 4800, 5700 > 4700, 5600 > 4600) the 5400 just falls flat on it's face in comparison, eyefinity is barely useful.. performance is barely above the previous generation IGP. Honestly I can't think if a single reason to upgrade and would consider it more of a waste of $ and a side-grade at best. The only area I see it as being decent is as an OEM check list part (Direct X 11 .. "Check").

If the 5800 series was "designed by/for the gaming community" then the 5400 series was designed by/for the OEM market.
 
Ummm I think that the 5450 is the new 2400/3450/4350. It's not supposed to be impressive, it's supposed to sell for $30. I've picked up a few of its predecessors to use as ultra basic Bluray accelerator cards in some HTPCs. Actually I've had one overheat while doing it too because the ultra mega cheap heatsink sucked too much. :D
 
If u compare the die are savings from 55nm->40nm than u realy need to wonder why the hell they couldnt give it another SIMD. That single SIMD need to take realy small area compared to the rest of chip.
 
If u compare the die are savings from 55nm->40nm than u realy need to wonder why the hell they couldnt give it another SIMD. That single SIMD need to take realy small area compared to the rest of chip.
You need to consider that it has very little RAM bandwidth too so what's the point really? This thing really just needs to be as cheap as can be while maintaining the full feature set.
 
No, it pretty much is the interpolation. The other cards have twice the ALU's per SIMD so they generally are able to "soak up" the interpolation easier, to the point where it can be an improvement on many current apps.
Oh, thanks for confirming. I wouldn't have expected that to make a ~15% difference - since it can do one 2-component interpolation per clock using all 4 simple alus in the vec5 unit if I got that right.
All the more reason why simd array length should have been increased to 12 or 16 for this chip :).
swaaye said:
You need to consider that it has very little RAM bandwidth too so what's the point really? This thing really just needs to be as cheap as can be while maintaining the full feature set.
The ddr3 version doesn't really have that little memory bandwidth. The alu:mem bandwidth ratio is even higher than what the HD5670 provides, a card which has by far the highest memory bandwidth in relation to its alu/tex/rop abilities of all (except Cedar) Evergreen cards.
 
Isn't it still 64bit though? (Here's to hoping at least the 55xxs will skip that limitation...)
Sure. The DDR3-800 version has 12.8GB/s memory bandwidth. A HD5670 has 64GB/s memory bandwidth. 5 times more. But it also has 5 times more alus - which are clocked 20% higher.
Of course, in terms of tex:bandwidth or rop:bandwidth the 5450 has higher ratios. But that's not a good excuse for the pathetic alu capability, since clearly by comparing it to 4550 it's obvious it would benefit from more alus.
 
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