AMD: R8xx Speculation

I certainly agree with that.
The thing is, right now we have only data for AMD vs NV, so if someone wants to speculate, has to take those data.
Is the speculation going to be accurate?
Probably not.
But we do this for fun, it doesn't matter at this stage if we are 100% correct.
Figuring out if the 5870 is going to be bandwidth limited or not, is good enough.

About DX11 and DX10.1, i knew that depending the DX11/DX10.1 use, it can yield a performance gain.

I don't know if the future Dx11/DX10.1 use will somehow alleviate some of the need for more bandwidth (i mean in a appreciable ammount like -20%)
If it does then it is a good thing for ATI.

I just thought that since we don't know in what percentage this will help, it will lead to confusing us more.

For example:

Take a HD4850, which is already bandwidth limited a little and downclock the memory to 700MHz.

So for this part,
if a developer makes a future DX11/DX10.1 codepath, the game will perform a little better in relation with the DX10 codepath (lets say for example +20%), does this mean that the 4850 with 700MHz mem, stopped being bandwidth limited?

Try overclock the mem at 1,2Ghz and see the new results.

Also, the potential +20% (for example) in perf. that DX10.1/DX11 may bring in the future could be irrelevant to the memory bandwidth.

I don't have a technical background, so it is very hard for me to predict at what percent the Dx11/DX10.1 use, will help regarding memory bandwidth need.

If you are a programmer in the games industry, or an engineer of Graphics cards or if you happen to know about this staff and you can predict, i respect your opinion.

 

Wouldn't the deferred shading, lighting features of dx10.1/11 help here? At any rate, we have seen that shaders have become alu oriented over the years in view of the memory wall. May be the game devs will realize this too and implement deferred techniques.

In games that use dx10.1, they already see ~10-20% increase in fps, from the same bandwidth of a supposedly limited 48xx.

In the leaked slides from the 10 sept event, we also saw a deferred lighting demo using dxcs. So there is a good chance that games will start using deferred techniques to save bandwidth.

The situation might be a precursor to a giant bandwidth fubar, but there is some hope yet.

 

Woah, they don't ? didn't someone post benchmarks of the new ati card being +40% - +60-% (cant remember the exact figure)

 

I wonder why we haven't seen a single picture of the 5850!

Does anyone has any info about it? Will it be the same as the 5870 just with a different sticker and hardware or what? I mean what kind of cooler will it have?

 

You're right!
HD5850 is above GTX285 according to leaked benches. HD5870 was compared to GTX295 and in most cases won as well, but we all know how some games are scaling on SLI/CF ....

I'm personally looking forward to professional benchmarks like SpecViewPref! Judging by OGL game performance of these cards FireGL based on RV870 should be mighty!

 

Thats what i found on xtremesystems

 

@Def

Wow! My deepest respect! Thanks a billion!

 

IIRC, the 4850 was a single slot part. Clearly, power budgets have shot up with this gen. Not good.

 

Has power use ever gone down from one generation to the other?

 

Depends really. Would you be willing to pay 1.5 times more in power to get 2 times performance? Especially if the idle power draw has been dropped right down as leaks suggest. Although your peak power usage may go up for more performance, your overall power usage would go down as your idle power usage has dropped a lot more, and that's probably what your card spends more of it's time doing.

That would sound like a good deal unless you absolutely cannot afford more power under any circumstances.

 

In that case you should probably not be looking at high-end graphic cards or a high-end computer to begin with.

 

You do realize that the 5870 lead increase isn't so much from the fact that it isn't bandwidth limited, but rather it simply isn't nearly as limited as its competition is. That and the FACT that ATI has some nice 4x and 8x AA algerithims in place right now to so reduce the hit for those settings.

 

I'd like to know where the complainers are about how they all have dual slot coolers? Even the 5770 has one, if they cards have dual slot coolers, you know they are gonna run warm to hot.

 

Or cool and quiet.

 

Dual slot coolers mean single slot ones were not good enough to keep them cool.

And teh 5870X2 looks like it is an inch longer than the 5870. Gonna need bigger cases.

 

The reference card will have all those connections, the two slot design is not because of TDP requirements, but because of connections. expect cards with less than 2 DVI ports.

 

I always prefered dual slot coolers. Especially ATI ones, that blow all the hot air out of the case. It is the most important thing for me.

After selling my 4870X2, i got a GTX 260, just to have a decent card that can play some games, until the new ones arrived. The problem is that my case's temperature rose about 5C degrees, just because there is too much air blown into the case and that comes from a card that is much less of a power hog, than the 4870X2 was.

 

or perhaps they've decided to do away with 90C idling gpus

 

I've always been willing to give up that unused slot if it makes the difference between my card running cool and quiet or noisy and hot. The days when people stood for noisy PCs is long gone.

In fact, I've just sent back a 4890 with a non-standard cooler (Powercolor changed the coolers as some kind of differentiator, but the retailer didn't change the description), because it was just far too noisy under load. It wasn't terrible by the standards of a few years back, but it's awful by today's standards where everyone is using slow and quiet 120mm+ fans in even the most modest builds. Graphics cards can't be so much noisier than everything else, even though they generate so much heat - people just won't give them a pass on it.

 

What card did you go with is what I gotta ask. I've got BFG and eVGA cards and both blow the air of the case totally, none goes into the case.