AMD: R9xx Speculation

[PeterT]

I wonder whether NV will feature match MLAA via drivers. Driver-level improvements/"hacks" are usually their thing (ie. SSAO, SSAA in DX10/11) so it seems not entirely unlikely. I certainly hope they do so.

Oh yeah, sounds like a horrible problem..getting more shaders than you paid for..everyone, beware!!!!

The problem would be if reviews are done using a configuration that not all customers will get.

 

[UniversalTruth]

Where is the official 10.10 driver? So those new cards are released with a beta driver. Right? What is in the install CD?

 

[Mize]

So when do we get to see Cayman?

 

[jimbo75]

I'm really looking forward to seeing how this works with Eyefinity.

 

[neliz]

Where is the official 10.10 driver?

It will be released today, East Coast hasn't woken up yet.

So those new cards are released with a beta driver. Right?

Yes, you should see how many reviews are done with beta drivers and whole tribes run NV's beta forceware.

What is in the install CD?

Why, that might be a beta of 10.10!

You still call this 5770 replacement a fail?

 

[Gipsel]

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_6850/

Oh yeah, sounds like a horrible problem..getting more shaders than you paid for..everyone, beware!!!!

I'm more curious about that part:

One major issue with the sample I received was that it came with 1120 shaders enabled. The HD 6850 specification requires 960 shaders. Unfortunately neither HIS, nor AMD could provide help with getting the board fixed so I had to reconfigure the shaders on my own.

How did he do that? Editing the BIOS and reflash it? Would be quite an achievement if he did that en passant.
The next step after unlocking cores in AMD CPUs we are now getting to unlock shaders in their GPUs?

 

[no-X]

Anyone noted this (from Rage3D's review):

Additionally, Bart's drops support for the narrow and wide tent anti-aliasing modes.

Noooo! 16x WT was the best mode for old games... Much better than ED 24x. I can't believe it... They finally fixed AF, but they banished AA modes on the other hand. Why?

 

[UniversalTruth]

...You still call this 5770 replacement a fail?

I am really confused. The cards themselves are not bad. We will see what Cayman is able to offer.

 

[fellix]

Noooo! [...]

Use this to relieve the pain!

 

[Dave Baumann]

Wow, reducing the quality of default texture filtering on Evergreen is exactly what everyone was asking for

You mean 5800, not Evergreen. For the vast majority of users the default IQ does not change (it might even be slightly better for 4xxx users).

That's why we headlined this section of our article "Neuerungen beim anisotropen Filter " which I would into "Anisotropic Filtering: What's new". And AMDs better angle-invariance is not exactly new, if I am not mistaken, but rather a thing we've come to enjoy for over a year now.

You are not taking it into account in the settings that you are comparing.

 

[fellix]

I wonder, if the invariant AF pattern was worth the implementation in Evergreen after all, if the MIP under-sampling was the price for it?

 

[AnarchX]

There are voices about a disappeared mip-map-quality slider (LOD setting) and a positive LOD in Barts default quality setting.
So there is more shimmering than on Cypress, even with a positive LOD?

I am waiting for Techreports RightMark INT8 fill-rates @ 16xAF.

 

[Jawed]

You mean 5800, not Evergreen. For the vast majority of users the default IQ does not change (it might even be slight better for 4xxx users).

Are you saying that other Evergreen series cards already have the worse IQ which HD5800 gains courtesy of 10.10?

And you're sticking to your guns: unification of the user interface justifies making HD5800 image quality worse at default settings?

 

[AlexV]

was the price for it?

It wasn't, and the bug is a bit more nuanced.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Ye, I really like The Tech Report's reviews and am still waiting for that.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Are you saying that other Evergreen series cards already have the worse IQ which HD5800 gains courtesy of 10.10?

And you're sticking to your guns: unification of the user interface justifies making HD5800 image quality worse at default settings?

With the benefit of it being everyone gets better granulatity over the performance and quality trade-offs without screwing up other settings as well. With these new settings the behaviour has to change somewhere and Cypress users are the smallest pool that have to go into the control panel and change the slider.

 

[Tchock]

Darn... Wide-tent gone is indeed rather saddening. Was one of the reasons I would give Radeons extra points in consideration.

MLAA looks fine and dandy, but I don't think anything would match the near-filmic look of WT still.

 

[liolio]

Darn... Wide-tent gone is indeed rather saddening. Was one of the reasons I would give Radeons extra points in consideration.

MLAA looks fine and dandy, but I don't think anything would match the near-filmic look of WT still.

I would like to see how it fares in IQ and perfs on top x2 MSAA.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Question Dave: Will the crossfire benefits also come to 58xx and older hardware with the new drivers? I know you said everything is set default but I don't see the 5850 scaling as well as the 6850 in crossfire. Is that because reviewers used old drivers for the 5850?

 

[Dave Baumann]

Question Dave: Will the crossfire benefits also come to 58xx and older hardware with the new drivers? I know you said everything is set default but I don't see the 5850 scaling as well as the 6850 in crossfire. Is that because reviewers used old drivers for the 5850?

Personally I'm not aware of any Crossfire changes in the driver, other than having the latest profiles, which are generic across all Crossfire capable boards.