AMD: R8xx Speculation

Oh dear god, I hope not. I'd rather ATI didn't get back into the business of renaming previous gen hardware as new gen hardware.

Much better if they did it like in the past. IE - 5870 -> 5875. Like 9700 -> 9800. Or X1900 -> X1950, etc.

Regards,
SB

 

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/video/...of_DirectX_11_Graphics_Chips_Shipped_ATI.html

Sure sounds like a lot but I don't know what % of total shipments 800k would amount to.

 

As a reference, two million RV770s were shipped in the first six months of its lifecycle.

I know, I know its not really a reference point, different node, die-size, market conditions, yields so on and so forth.

 

"Shipments" is also a dodgy way of covering up retail sales. There'll be weeks+ of lag on that number.

Jawed

 

In my limited experience time from shipping to local distributors to local and national vendors and finally to customers is a few days for popular and sought after products like graphics cards.

If you mean shipping from a chip from TSMC to an AIB like Sapphire or ATI themselves to make a complete graphics card... I still cannot envisage it being more than a week or two at the max.

 

9700 -> 9800 featured some architectural changes, albeit minor. From Sharkyextreme's 9800 Pro review:

 

oh, no the f-buffer again!
the thing that NEVER worked tho was heavily praised here.

 

Which is exactly my point. Those updates to the chip were more comprehesive than just a straight die shrink, and yet they didn't bump up the generation number for them. Those required a significant change/addition in architecture.

And while granted ATI did some rebranding of lower end chips in the past, I'm really hoping they don't go back to it.

Regards,
SB

 

According to a local programmer it worked, but only with one specific driver version. Anyway, the greatest change were BW related optimizations - performance drop for MSAA was measurably smaller than on R300.

 

It does seem like a lot of wasted effort to simply throw away Juniper and Cypress chips/architecture. In addition to this it does seem like the time when their limited engineering resources will likely be distracted on an effort to try to spin off one, two or three derivatives for console manufacturers. So whats the harm in Juniper becoming a mainstream level part and Cypress becoming a 'gamer' part and dropping down a tier? So long as its clear to people the specifications etc I don't think theres much chance of people rebuying the same card out of confusion.

 

If you remember, Dave said that most of the cards. If partners are to be believed, they're receiving their larget amounts of HD5 cards in stock right now.

 

Didnt the 9800 Pro AA optimisations end up in ALL r300 architectures after a driver update? I seem to remember that.

 

As far as I am concerned supply is very low, shipping dates are in the weeks and the prices are being put up .. so not really ideal.

They lost my order because of this and I am sitting tight again to see what Fermi can do in comparison, even if it is just to put the price down on R8XX.

 

And then there's this.. Why wait for Fermi?

 

And what might this be?

Edit: nevermind, Lightning is just MSI's way of saying "overclocked".

 

indeed, 12 Phases and 2x8Pin and a custom cooling solution, should allow over 1Ghz clocks with ease.

 

Not "just" overclocked.

 

Well, that's a cryptic statement if I've ever heard one! Care to elaborate?

 

Well whether you're waiting for Fermi or that, you're still waiting

I've cancelled my order for a 5850 and replaced it with a much cheaper 4890. I intend to use this to tide me over until I have enough money for a full upgrade, at which point I'll likely be looking at Fermi or something even faster. Its a shame as I was really looking forward to having DX11 capability but I'll live without it in the short term, especially given the savings involved.

 

Yeah, it comes with a pink ribbon wrapped around it, and tied into a bow.

-Charlie