AMD: R9xx Speculation

[UniversalTruth]

Could you tell us how much should it cost, please?...

6800 is Cayman based and according to me it will be pretty expensive.
But if you ask me for a GTX 460 competitor (although HD 4890 is a perfect example), then a 5770 replacement ala 6770 (Barts) should cost around 150 USD.

 

[racca]

Bart's can't be ~450mm² large.

There are people who don't automatically associate 6800 with Barts, you do know that right?

For argument sake, if I think 6800 should be a ~$400 part with 5970-like performance which, mind you, should be what's to expect after 1800, 3800, 4800 and 5800, can you conclude that I'm rooting for Barts as 6800? If you do, then one of us is crazy, and it sure as hell ain't me.

Again, it is not too much too ask for a 800 series part to perform at least 20% faster than its predecessor. AMD/ATi has been doing that for half a decade now. Sometimes even without big improvements on lithology process. (90->80 and 55->40 weren't really of help to TDP or frequency)

 

[no-X]

Jawed: I think it's likely, but many reviews stated, that RV670's peak DP performance is half-speed:

Depending on complexity of operation, the best case scenario is around half the original SP FP32 performance about 250 GFLOPs; in a worst case, the performance should be about a quarter of its FP32 performance - or about 125 GFLOPs.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-s-rv670-double-precision-half-speed,4774.html
http://techreport.com/articles.x/13603/2

CarstenS: I remember, that opinions of ring-bus changed in accordance to instantaneous weather and mood. According to my opinion (based on my very limited knowledge) is that ring-bus is simplier than crossbar if the number of clients isn't too high. But hardwiring ROPs and L2s to the MC and moving some low-bandwidth clients to separate controller (hub) saves even more die-space. I believe they wouldn't leave ring-bus if it was a more effective solution. Maybe it was a good idea, but particular way of implementation wasn't optimal...

racca: Please tell me your opinion. Is this slide a fake, or will ATi launch Cayman instead of Barts this month? Because according to this presentation there's nothing like HD6700 based on Barts GPU.

 

[Jawed]

Jawed: I think it's likely, but many reviews stated, that RV670's peak DP performance is half-speed:

That's merely confusion over the per-unit throughputs - it took a while on these forums to unravel the confused descriptions that were being used. In terms of DP-ADD, the XYZW units are half rate. But that ignores the T lane entirely. In terms of DP-MUL or DP-MAD, the XYZW units are 1/4 rate. Again, ignoring T, as T can't be involved in DP.

As I said earlier, the operation of the ALUs is essentially unchanged (Cypress has support for DP-subnormals and there's extra rounding modes, I think).

I'm not sure where you can find the SDK 1.4 R600_Instruction_Set_Architecture.pdf without downloading that SDK, but it's in there.

 

[no-X]

Thank you.

 

[UniversalTruth]

...racca: Please tell me your opinion. Is this slide a fake, or will ATi launch Cayman instead of Barts this month? Because according to this presentation there's nothing like HD6700 based on Barts GPU.

If you ask me which I truely and deeply doubt but, nevertheless, I will write it... For me it looks like a well thought leak of misinformation in order to keep the curious eyes away from what is going on in reality.

 

[caveman-jim]

racca: Please tell me your opinion. Is this slide a fake, or will ATi launch Cayman instead of Barts this month? Because according to this presentation there's nothing like HD6700 based on Barts GPU.

Are you referring to information not present in that image?

 

[PSU-failure]

racca: Please tell me your opinion. Is this slide a fake, or will ATi launch Cayman instead of Barts this month? Because according to this presentation there's nothing like HD6700 based on Barts GPU.

Or... 1, 2, 3... 4?

And magically, Barts is HD6800 (3), Cayman HD6700 (2), and Antilles (2*2=4) ends up (barely?) faster than Hemlock.

 

[no-X]

UniversalTruth: What are you implying? Do you believe that AMD is increasing people's expectation by leaking that Barts is HD6800 despite it will be HD6700 and perform accordingly? Why would they do it? To flub the launch and disappoint customers expecting higher performance? That could be hardly considered as good way of marketing... The target of missinformation campaigns is always to lower people's expectation and launch a surprising product after that. Like with RV770... or Juniper (do you remember the rumours about 640SPs?).

caveman-jim: The slide is about HD6800 launch. Barts is going to be launched during October.

PSU-failure: Interesting idea

 

[Kaldskryke]

racca: Please tell me your opinion. Is this slide a fake, or will ATi launch Cayman instead of Barts this month? Because according to this presentation there's nothing like HD6700 based on Barts GPU.

I'm not very experienced here, but I can't see anywhere in that image that says the 6800 series is Barts. We've heard that Barts will be released first - is there an indication that this image is not referring to a later (Cayman based) product? Is there more of this set of slides floating around somewhere?

 

[caveman-jim]

caveman-jim: The slide is about HD6800 launch.

Yes, but it doesn't tie 'Barts' to 6800, or a launch date to 6800, does it?

Barts is going to be launched during October.

That's one of the rumors, for sure.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

What if it's 25% faster, would that be good enough for it to be named 6870 or not?

I can see how this could be an issue for some and maybe not for others. If AMD has landed Barts XT 25% faster than Cypress (which I personally doubt, but you never know), it must be a difficult decision to decide whether it gets 7 or 8. Maybe that's why there has been so much discussion over it.

Perhaps, but if the rumored specs of Barts is true I have a hard time believing it's going to be ~25% faster. And if it is, at that point it'll come down to price. The 200 USD price point someone mentioned earlier I think is a bit ludicrous at this point for 68xx. But if 6850 and 6870 are both ~25% faster than the cards they replace and at 249/299 USD, then maybe not so insane.

I buy my hardware base on performance and power use, not by whatever they decide to name it.

I think some people would be better off buying a game console, if this confuses them that much.

At my age with many of my circle of friends having professional jobs and families, many of them don't have more than 1-2 house (usually closer to 1 hour) a day to game. They don't bother looking at reviews. Having a consistent naming scheme is a great help for them.

AMD are the ones that set those expectations on purpose in order to give consumer confidence in what they are purchasing. A consumer will know that for example a x870 would always be an upgrade over a previous gen x870. Same for say an x770 over a previous gen x770.

If AMD suddenly makes the 6870 a sidegrade (insignificant performance increase or even worse a performance decrease) over the 5870, they are in fact deliberately using their established naming scheme to screw over their customers. They set up performance expectations based on the name of the product. Changing it without changing the naming scheme would be deliberately misleading and an extremely dishonest and slimey proposition.

it only takes about 4 mins to double check a few bench mark reviews and price comparison sites....

if you think thats confusing/waste of time, then you have no place posting on this website. its not suitable for people like you. Stop adding noise to an otherwise interesting thread.

Ah yes, and the enthusiast/elitest snobbery finally shows up. If you can't dedicate hours of your life to carefully researching what you purchase you don't deserve to participate.

Nevermind the fact that from 3xxx -> 4xxx -> 5xxx AMD have carefully cultivated, reinforced, and nurtured their naming scheme such that consumers can purchase cards based purely on the name (as the vast majority of consumers will do) and know roughly what to expect in relation of previous generation parts.

Of course, as I mentioned before, if Barts is 68xx and a signficant performance increase over Cypress, then I'll recant everything I've said, but I find that quite doubtful. If not, and they wanted to reshuffle their naming scheme, they should have come up with a new naming scheme.

Regards,
SB

 

[no-X]

Yes, but it doesn't tie 'Barts' to 6800, or a launch date to 6800, does it?

It does. At least according to the person, who leaked it.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

At my age with many of my circle of friends having professional jobs and families, many of them don't have more than 1-2 house (usually closer to 1 hour) a day to game. They don't bother looking at reviews. Having a consistent naming scheme is a great help for them.

AMD are the ones that set those expectations on purpose in order to give consumer confidence in what they are purchasing. A consumer will know that for example a x870 would always be an upgrade over a previous gen x870. Same for say an x770 over a previous gen x770.

If AMD suddenly makes the 6870 a sidegrade (insignificant performance increase or even worse a performance decrease) over the 5870, they are in fact deliberately using their established naming scheme to screw over their customers. They set up performance expectations based on the name of the product. Changing it without changing the naming scheme would be deliberately misleading and an extremely dishonest and slimey proposition.



Ah yes, and the enthusiast/elitest snobbery finally shows up. If you can't dedicate hours of your life to carefully researching what you purchase you don't deserve to participate.

Nevermind the fact that from 3xxx -> 4xxx -> 5xxx AMD have carefully cultivated, reinforced, and nurtured their naming scheme such that consumers can purchase cards based purely on the name (as the vast majority of consumers will do) and know roughly what to expect in relation of previous generation parts.

Regards,
SB

Upgrading the gpu every gen is something a casual "I only understand the number in the name, but not other numbers like the price or numbers in relation to other models in the lineup and unable to ask advice from anybody (aka retard)" person shouldn't be doing anyway.

What logical reason is there to upgrade from 5870 to 6870 even if it was faster by a margin that would satisfy the "number is everything" crowd? And if someone is upgrading an older card, then Barts XT with supposed performance should be more than adequate, or are these semi casual family guys, who don't bother to check anything out and have only 1 hour to game still so HC that they absolutely have to have the highest possible graphical settings and eyefinities and all that?

You won't upgrade because of a number, when you shouldn't be upgrading for the reason that there aren't any games worth upgrading. I think that AMD and nVidia should establish their own gaming studios to create some demand for these upper tier cards.

 

[GZ007]

Ah yes, and the enthusiast/elitest snobbery finally shows up. If you can't dedicate hours of your life to carefully researching what you purchase you don't deserve to participate.

Regards,
SB

If u cant research what you purchase than u deserve to buy the worst or overpriced product.

 

[UniversalTruth]

If u cant research what you purchase than u deserve to buy the worst or overpriced product.

You can't even imagine what percentage of all customers do not know what they are buying. This can cause even bigger disappiontment after purchase.

 

[caveman-jim]

It does. At least according to the person, who leaked it.

I was only looking at the content of the slide image itself. I don't know who leaked it, or if they said Barts = 6800.

Was that posted here?

 

[neliz]

I was only looking at the content of the slide image itself. I don't know who leaked it, or if they said Barts = 6800.

Was that posted here?

in the first edit of the slide, they didn't blur our 6800

 

[caveman-jim]

I must be slow, cos that slide refers to a 6800 document twice but has its own 6000 series specification redacted, but nothing ties Barts to 6800.



*checks for baboon sneaking up on him*

 

[DieH@rd]

Ok, I didnt visit this thread in a week and all hell has broke loose... WHAT IS HAPPENING? This slide is fake you say? Barts will be 68xx and not 67xx? What cards will be released first?

Im really eager to buy 6770, especially if it has enough power to chalenge 5850 (and price is not insane).