AMD: R9xx Speculation

What's the point in launching 2 boards performing the same at the same time, one using a considerably more expensive GPU?

 

I don't understand what is the clear message of this whole news story either. Of what products is he talking about?

In any case, regarding the bold part, these AMD slides seem to indicate the 6970 to be perfectly well within GTX 580ish performance levels.





Maybe a little faster, maybe a little slower, but certainly in the same ballpark.

 

Yeah, it's 2-3 weeks delay for now, we don't know how much more time they need to prepare the cards. And if R6970 is below GTX580's performance and R6990 is delayed for another 3 months, and, also, a dual-GPU card from nVidia is expected soon too, then things will change dramatically. And I thought Cayman had to be launched in October, that means 2 months delay.

 

WOW only $12 million $CAD but at least it ships for free.

The 4-7 week delivery is kind of a downer though.

 

Your conclusions are exactly what I get from reading the linked article.

The hd6970 will perform below the gtx580 level and will be priced lower.

The hd6990 dual gpu card is the "blow your minds" card.

I think the "blow your mind" part came from those who saw the specs and thought it was for a single GPU.

One note though is that nVidia will also have a dual-gpu card Q1-2011 and it looks like it will be based on two GTX560's. It will be interesting to see the comparisons between the two.

 

According to their previous article Cayman is faster than GTX580, not slower. Anyway, I expect GTX580's level performance ±10%

 

Well with all speculations latly i feel my head hurts, but Fuad have some more on these floating rumors. The way i see it Amd got caught with theire pants down when NV released the Gtx 580, i dont think they expected that right now.

http://www.fudzilla.com/graphics/item/20836-amd-officialy-comments-cayman-delay

 

No, I didn't say that. A BIOS change can be done very quickly. Changing your core clocks is not something that is a quick and easy process.

 

Yes, but it's your fault. You had to think about all possible scenarios. And because of that now you will miss Christmas shopping. I am tired of those delays. That only shows that nVidia can cope better in such situations, what can you offer after one year? One whole year and the chances that the product is not fast enough are really high.

 

It's pretty obvious that (while they still seem a bit confused by the naming) they previously received performance numbers of HD6950 (supposedly a bit slower than GTX580 but priced VERY attractively) - and now they got some numbers for HD6970 - probably ~10% faster than GTX580 just like no-X suggested.

GTX580 will arguably find itself fatally sandwiched between a slightly slower Cayman Pro card (maybe a tad above GTX480 performance) that aims for the $300-$350 price bracket (i.e. ~ $150 cheaper than GTX580) AND a Cayman XT card that directly attacks GTX580's price range while providing ~10% faster performance ...

Let's see if Nvidia is wise enough to tap out

 

Wow ... are you serious? You change your opinion faster than the roadrunner.

 

Wow I'm always wowed by Fudos... Now two/three weeks is a big deal and to add to the stupidity of his news, 2/3 weeks would be enough to tweak the card and manage a last minute beating of da bad ass gt580.

 

Im not really believing that this delay is at all crippling for Cayman on the market. It'll come out one month after the GTX 580 however it is servicing a market which is probably the most ego driven and knowledgeable in the industry. It has already been proved that the Evergreen architecture is very strong and that AMD can release extremely competitive cards. So if you want the fastest card available you'd want to wait to see what the competition has to offer before jumping either way. If you're considering sensible people who consider value for money as an objective as well then AMD already has the 68xx and 58xx series.

There are a bunch of good reasons for the delay.

1. Stock of previous generation cards is still too abundant. nVidia even mentioned how much it cost them to get rid of the 79xx cards once the 8800GTX was released.

2. They may not be able to produce enough cards to satisfy demand anyway. So if the former is also true then they would be doing themselves no favours to release a card in limited numbers which kills demand for cards which are still in stock in large numbers.

3. They may want to make last minute adjustments to the cards, maybe higher clocks or maybe they want to adjust the number of SIMD units disabled in the 50 series Cayman.

 

Exactly, and core clock is changed via change in BIOS, no?

May I ask direct question?
Will we (the people not directly working for AMD) ever know the real reason for delay?

 

Seriously?

Are you aware you're basically stating AMD didn't consider providing more than 20% more performance than Cypress 1 year later? Oh, and Cayman is a "< 300w" part, so do you consider they went back on the perf/watt department on top of that?

And, just my grain of salt, but... should Cayman be "that slow", do you really think they would have gone with 6800 for Barts and 6900 for Cayman? Two disappointing series in a row is a bit too much to my taste.

Sure I could be wrong and AMD's GPU team could have failed (aiming for +50%, ending at +20%), but I think my reasoning is already quite a bit less stupid...

 

Changing the core clock isn't the problem. The problem is you need to validate the new clocks to make sure that they are going to be reliable and that there are sufficient yields of chips to support said clock. You also have to make sure that the current cooler design yields appropriate noise and thermals.

Changing the clocks are easier than working out all the details behind the scenes around the decision as to what clock rate to select.

 

I doubt this is a stock run-down delay.

There don't appear to be large numbers of 5970s in stock and the 6870/6850 are already cannibalizing the market for the upper mainstream market. I'm not sure a delay can possibly work in AMD's favor since the 580 is basically uncontested at the top of the market for now.

 

A clock increase will also probably require a TDP increase which in the worst case may mean that coolers are not beefy enough. In any case dies that have been binned to achieve certain clocks in a certain power envelope would probably need to be rebinned if higher clocks were desired.

 

What price would they have to sell the 5870 for to clear it if they already had Cayman on the market?

The lowest 5870 is $299 or $269 after MIR

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102883

The lowest 6870 is $239 at retail out of stock or $259 in stock.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125347

If Cayman Pro is faster or as fast but in limited quantities then they would have to further reduce the 5870 in price and at the same time they would not make it up with additional sales of a supply constrained Cayman so therefore it would make it a lose / lose proposition by competing with themselves.

 

580 is going for about $550
5970 is falling $500-600 so they're comparable segment.
5870 is $300
6870 is $250

If you slot Cayman at $400 it has no price competitor and shouldn't compete with 5870.
6870, however, does. It's almost the same performance for less.