AMD: R8xx Speculation

[Mindfury]

 

[Squilliam]

An HD 5770 Eyefinity edition? Wow! Why is it that I see only 5 display ports on that card?!

 

[cal_guy]

Apparently HD 5770 only has 5 display controllers.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/17747

 

[Squilliam]

Apparently HD 5770 only has 5 display controllers.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/17747

Thats kind of funny but understandable in a way.

 

[aaronspink]

An HD 5770 Eyefinity edition? Wow! Why is it that I see only 5 display ports on that card?!

can you say, bye bye matrox?

 

[Squilliam]

can you say, bye bye matrox?

Ouch. But yes, yes I can.

Maxtrox are eyefinished?

 

[neliz]

Ouch. But yes, yes I can.

Maxtrox are eyefinished?

I think he wanted to say "bye byefinity"

 

[no-X]

Yes, previous boards are measured with a max of 3 simultaneous displays, this is done with 6.

Dave, could you tell us, if board partners will be allowed to manufacture 2GB non-E6 models of HD5870?

 

[Mindfury]

Dave, could you tell us, if board partners will be allowed to manufacture 2GB non-E6 models of HD5870?

Asus ROG Matrix HD5870 2GB:

 

[no-X]

I think classic board with reference clocks, only +1GB.

 

[Kaotik]

I think classic board with reference clocks, only +1GB.

Classic board?

 

[Lukfi]

He means standard PCB, standard clocks, standard everything, just bigger memory. So far we've only seen 2 GB GDDR5 on Eyefinity-6 models and that Asus ROG board.

 

[eastmen]

anyone hear pricing of the 5870 2gigs ?

 

[Kaotik]

He means standard PCB, standard clocks, standard everything, just bigger memory. So far we've only seen 2 GB GDDR5 on Eyefinity-6 models and that Asus ROG board.

the PCB isn't anywhere near the reference PCB:

vs

edit:
And the eyefinity6 edition's pcb seems to be same as normal hd5870's excluding the memory-area and of course the display outputs:

 

[Silent_Buddha]

edit:
And the eyefinity6 edition's pcb seems to be same as normal hd5870's excluding the memory-area and of course the display outputs:

I dunno, seems pretty different to me. There's a lot more traces and a lot more components. Which will affect more than just the top layer that we can see. And it's not like the standard 5870 board has premade reserved spaces for those extra components, which means all those traces have to be added rather than just chips place into existing reserved but not used areas.

Regards,
SB

 

[Squilliam]

I dunno, seems pretty different to me. There's a lot more traces and a lot more components. Which will affect more than just the top layer that we can see. And it's not like the standard 5870 board has premade reserved spaces for those extra components, which means all those traces have to be added rather than just chips place into existing reserved but not used areas.

Regards,
SB

So the Eyefinity boards are completely different as far as manufacturing is concerned even if they do share a similar layout and functionality?

 

[no-X]

the PCB isn't anywhere near the reference PCB

Yes. That's why I'm asking if we will see reference PCB non-Eyfinity6 model with 2GB of VRAM :smile:

 

[mczak]

Yes. That's why I'm asking if we will see reference PCB non-Eyfinity6 model with 2GB of VRAM :smile:

Since the reference PCB has only space for 8 ram chips and 2gbit gddr5 chips don't exist yet, this is impossible.

 

[TKK]

That's a good catch - I'm surprised that more review sites did not hone in on the fact that this card essentially performs like a 128-bit card for AA situations.

Just stumbled across this TweakTown review, which again shows that the 5830 seems to be extremely bandwidth-limited when AA is turned on:
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/3170/sapphire_radeon_hd_5830_video_card_in_crossfire/index7.html

All they did was overclock the memory by 15%, and in every gaming-related test except Vantage and Batman:AA (which both had no AA enabled) the OCed card was 10-15% faster than the reference model.

 

[mczak]

Just stumbled across this TweakTown review, which again shows that the 5830 seems to be extremely bandwidth-limited when AA is turned on:
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/3170/sapphire_radeon_hd_5830_video_card_in_crossfire/index7.html

All they did was overclock the memory by 15%, and in every gaming-related test except Vantage and Batman:AA (which both had no AA enabled) the OCed card was 10-15% faster than the reference model.

That's just amazing, near 100% scaling with memory clock. Clearly AMD knew it and toyed with the idea of releasing it with higher memory clock, as shown by some of the reviewers card having 1150Mhz memory clock initially. I must say, that would have looked quite a bit better with that, instead of being very close to HD5770 in performance that would have put it right in-between HD5770 & HD5850, but I guess they just didn't want to require somewhat high-end gddr5 chips for that card in the end.