AMD: R9xx Speculation

[ZerazaX]

Hints about what Cayman has coming up next:

HardwareCanucks

November will see the release of the Cayman XT-based HD 6970 and Cayman Pro-based HD 6950 which have all of the features seen in Barts plus enhanced rendering scalability and off-chip buffering for DX11 applications. These will be the spiritual successors to the HD 5870 and HD 5850 and should go head to head with the higher end Fermi cards.

December will see the introduction of Antilles which is meant to be the lynchpin of AMD’s renewed assault on the DX11 market. The HD 6990 will bring untold performance to the table through the use of a pair of Cayman GPU cores and additional features we can’t divulge at this time.

[H]ardOCP:

The 6900 series will have a superset of features compared o the 6800 series. This means that there will be features and architecture differences between 6900 and 6800 series. This allows AMD to take more chances on the high-end enthusiast class GPUs and architecture things different, to really step up performance that enthusiasts demand. So, just to restate, the new 6800 series will offer performance of the 5800 series, at a lower price, with lower power, and a smaller chip.

PC Perspective

Later in the year we will see the release of future architectures that much more unique in the Cayman and Antilles product lines. We'll have to leave you with that tease for now and touch again on both of those items later.

Hexus

These arrive armed with improvements in the two metrics discussed above, soon to be followed by a genuine performance GPU in the form of the Radeon HD 6950 and HD 6970 'Cayman' parts and, a little while later, the dual-GPU Radeon HD 6990, code-named Antilles. Phew!

Looks like AMD might be back to playing the high-end GPU game

 

[Dave Baumann]

3-Default A.I setting (Quality) is actually worse than HD5000 .

"Quality" is now the default setting for all boards, so if you compare the default quality on Cypress on Cat 10.9 to Cat 10.10 you will actually get opts on, where you didn't before. Because the filtering is improved in NI the default setting is most closely matched to NVIDIA's setting.

They dropped the ball with Barts. No real improvement with Tessellation.

Most of the test show a marked improvement in tessellation, to the point where Brts is pretty much the same performance as GTX 460 in Unigine.

And they must decrese the default AF IQ to win over the competition and Cypress (sry, only available in german)

As mentioned the “default” setting most closely matches NVIDIA’s default setting.

 

[DavidGraham]

"Quality" is now the default setting for all boards, so if you compare the default quality on Cypress on Cat 10.9 to Cat 10.10 you will actually get opts on, where you didn't before. Because the filtering is improved in NI the default setting is most closely matched to NVIDIA's setting.

But why the distinction between EG and NI in driver settings ? why not use the same settings scale ?

 

[Sontin]

Most of the test show a marked improvement in tessellation, to the point where Brts is pretty much the same performance as GTX 460 in Unigine.

And? This is the 5870, too. But what it with Stone Giant? Or the DX11 Samples from SDK?

As mentioned the “default” setting most closely matches NVIDIA’s default setting.

Do you have a proof for it? Because the reviewer, who have a clue, don't think so. PCGH.de finds is worse than nVidia's Quality and Computerbase.de comes to the same conclusion.
Maybe, and that's my opinion, AMD should not only talk but they should do something for their customers. Cheating and complaining is the wrong way to win.

 

[Kaotik]

And? This is the 5870, too. But what it with Stone Giant? Or the DX11 Samples from SDK?

Do you have a proof for it? Because the reviewer, who have a clue, don't think so. PCGH.de finds is worse than nVidia's Quality and Computerbase.de comes to the same conclusion.
Maybe, and that's my opinion, AMD should not only talk but they should do something for their customers. Cheating and complaining is the wrong way to win.

Wasn't StoneGiant the one which at High settings throws away 75% of the done tesselation work anyway? (regardless of if you have nV or ATI card)
I don't see that as valid comparison point for anything

 

[Dave Baumann]

But why the distinction between EG and NI in driver settings ? why not use the same settings scale ?

There isn't any distinction in terms of what software optimizations are applied over the hardware capabilities with these settings; we are using the same setting scale. At the same quality level, though, NI will be better than EG.

 

[ECH]

nevermind

 

[mhouston]

I checked the F@H site and they only say the new client is in internal test so far. Will be interesting to compare when it's out already.

Not yet. OpenMM is the development branch were the OpenCL work is being done and OpenMM is running on Northern Islands. You can read Vijay's updates into umpteen threads on the folding forums about status of the OpenMM support for OpenCL going into a Folding@Home client.

 

[Dave Baumann]

And? This is the 5870, too. But what it with Stone Giant? Or the DX11 Samples from SDK?

And its all improved.

Do you have a proof for it? Because the reviewer, who have a clue, don't think so. PCGH.de finds is worse than nVidia's Quality and Computerbase.de comes to the same conclusion.

Quality provides similar optimizations at the software level to NVIDIA, High Quality provides native texturing. PCGH also does not take into account the high precision LOD and pure angle invaraint AF that is offered in all modes but not available in NVIDIA hardware.

 

[ninelven]

Quality provides similar optimizations at the software level to NVIDIA, High Quality provides native texturing. PCGH also doe not take into account the high precision LOD and pue angle invaraint AF that is offered in all modes but not available in NVIDIA hardware.

It is all good and well to say these things, but at the end of the day, what matters is what my eyes see on the screen. Clearly AMD has remedied the transitions issue; however, if AMD cards are still sparkling/shimmering/flickering/whateveryouwanttocallit where Nvidia cards are not, then it is just an epic failure on AMD's part (it has been 6 years FFS). I'm reserving judgement for now, but the comments in the computerbase.de article do not seem very promising...

 

[Sontin]

And its all improved.

Without a real improvement in perfomance.

Quality provides similar optimizations at the software level to NVIDIA, High Quality provides native texturing. PCGH also does not take into account the high precision LOD and pure angle invaraint AF that is offered in all modes but not available in NVIDIA hardware.

So how would you explain that PCGH thinks your new Quality setting is worse than A.I Standard on Cypress and Quality on Geforce? Do you really think that they are lying?

 

[Dave Baumann]

So how would you explain that PCGH thinks your new Quality setting is worse than A.I Standard on Cypress and Quality on Geforce? Do you really think that they are lying?

There is no "Cat AI standard" going forward. The optimization behaviour has been unified across all boards from Cat 10.10 onwards, so the default beviour on Cypress is different, but you can get back to Cat 10.9 quality on Cyress by changing the slider to high quality.

 

[Sontin]

There is no "Cat AI standard" going forward. The optimization behaviour has been unified across all boards from Cat 10.10 onwards, so the default beviour on Cypress is different, but you can get back to Cat 10.9 quality on Cyress by changing the slider to high quality.

You didn't answer my question.
And why would someone go back when the new setting is as good as the old one?!

 

[itsmydamnation]

They dropped the ball with Barts. No real improvement with Tessellation. And they must decrease the default AF IQ to win over the competition and Cypress (sry, only available in german): http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,7...irectX-11-Generation/Grafikkarte/Test/?page=4

only you sontin could think AMD dropped the ball, if you want to be spercific AMD have relased 3 new "sweet spot" cards in the time NV have release 1 ( the 280's were released like 2 weeks before 4870).

the chip is 80mm sq smaller then cypress hits almost the same performace at the same power on the same node and its only been a year since cpyress came out, how isn't that hitting the mark? remeber that according to dave that the sweet spot card was juniper not cypress and thats why there is the naming confusion right now because evergreen family wasn't named like it should have been.

you/NV should thank there lucky stars that 32nm got canned otherwise that 255mm sq die would be tiny, it actually would have been funny (in a sad way) seeing NV having to price the 470 to compete with it.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I did actually. The default behaviour between Cypress on Cat 10.9 and Barts on 10.10 will be different, and you will get different tradeoff's / IQ between them (i.e the AF band on Cypress and some optimizations on Barts), however the optimization panel had to be unified across all products and now the optimization behaviour is consistent but NI will always offer higher quality.

 

[neliz]

only you sontin could think AMD dropped the ball,

Don't feed the troll, he already has a hard time coping with the fact that both GF100 and GF104 have just become obsolete and 6870 Crossfire probably looks like a better option than a single GTX580.

 

[ninelven]

I don't know about the GF104 being obsolete; I was pretty damn surprised at how well the EVGA 460 FTW card performed in Anand's review. It's $10 cheaper than the 6870 at the moment as well.

 

[Sontin]

I did actually. The default behaviour between Cypress on Cat 10.9 and Barts on 10.10 will be different, and you will get different tradeoff's / IQ between them (i.e the AF band on Cypress and some optimizations on Barts), however the optimization panel had to be unified across all products and now the optimization behaviour is consistent but NI will always offer higher quality.

And why do you change the default setting? Why do you decrease your default IQ?
What was wrong with A.I Standard for the last 3 1/2 years?

 

[AlphaWolf]

And why do you change the default setting? Why do you decrease your default IQ?
What was wrong with A.I Standard for the last 3 1/2 years?

He already answered that too, why don't you actually read his posts?

 

[Dave Baumann]

And why do you change the default setting? Why do you decrease your default IQ?
What was wrong with A.I Standard for the last 3 1/2 years?

Cat AI was becoming cumbersome and confusing in terms of what it did and what got enabled when. This is a much clearer interface, with more control over the settings for the users, without destroying things like Crossfire performance. This is also very similar (perhaps even less confusing) than NVIDIA's options and sets similar optimizations by default. In all, you should be pleased about the new options as its offering more transparency.