AMD: R9xx Speculation
- Thread starter Lukfi
- Start date
Well, Cat 10.12 is "huge" supposedly, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the delays were intended so that the card came out after Cat 10.12
They've kept the 6900s back since it's a big new card, and a new series too using the HDx9xx moniker, so why not make it a blockbuster by having the drivers too
I think it's the true number. I guess that the real deck and the fake deck both have the same ALU number.. probably the difference is in the positioning against the GTX580
So we have:
- Red PCB cards
- Black PCB cards
- Slow Speed Card
- Fast Speed Card
- Real deck
- Fake deck
U.S State Department should ask AMD advices about how to keep a secret.. secret.
And why would AMD sent out fake decks to the press/reviewers/whoever?
Uber resolution proof
So, best case (see a few posts above) would be 2560x1600 with 8xAA? No 1Gig card could keep up.
And why would AMD sent out fake decks to the press/reviewers/whoever?
So, best case (see a few posts above) would be 2560x1600 with 8xAA? No 1Gig card could keep up.
Crysis with some mod, or GTA or some other game, with 1920x1080 aa4x load about 1,2GB of video ram.
I play with games ;-) i don't spend my time to do benchmark hehehehhe
DavidGraham
Veteran
And why would AMD send out slow boards to reviewers ?
(Unless of course the slow board is really an HD 6950)
Maybe you should try this and claim to be first off mainstream publishers doing it? :smile:
For me it's nothing wrong showing how could the game be looking and performing if hardware install base was equipped with 1.2GB+ of VRAM as standard.
Of course do it as addition to review same way as overclocking is included.
Modding is a big part of PC gaming, in fact it may even be its main distinguishing feature, so I agree, reviews should address that.
chavvdarrr
Veteran
the problem is:
334mm2 Cypress was fighting with 530mm2 480
385mm2 Cayman will fight with 530mm2 580
See? mm2 advantage is less now.
If AMD was unable to make money from Cypress, how are they going to make some with Cayman, now their expenses are higher not only from bigger chip, but from twice the memory too.
Increasing TMUs? They are already more than in the competitor.
We've actually been doing this a while ago (and taken flak for it also). Half Life 2 with Cinematic Mod or Fallout 3 with Texture Pack for example.
And that's just because we're also gamers and actually play games.
Babel-17
Veteran
Afaik AMD made money from Cypress. If they have better yields with Cayman then they had with Cypress, and that would include both fewer salvage parts as well as the salvage parts being less crippled, and if they can charge more for Cypress than they did for Cayman, then I'd say AMD has executed an excellent follow up to Cypress.
I'm sure companies like Dell and HP are happy that AMD has kept their concerns in mind. Power usage is a very big deal for them.
It's nice to see that AMD has also improved a bit on their already quite good video rendering quality.
I'm sure companies like Dell and HP are happy that AMD has kept their concerns in mind. Power usage is a very big deal for them.
It's nice to see that AMD has also improved a bit on their already quite good video rendering quality.
chavvdarrr: you are ignoring important facts...
I think that ATI have never intended to target Cayman against GTX580. That should be Antilles's job (they wouln't have Antilles in roadmap if they planned to beat GTX580 by single-GPU product). But GTX580 is only bug-fixed/15-20% faster Fermi, so GTX580 performs closer to Cayman than to Antilles. That's in fact a better result than they expected and the postponed launch of Antilles just proves it.
- performance delta of GTX480/HD5870 is different to GTX580/HD6970
- ATI wasn't able to made money on Cypress, because TSMC was unable to deliver enough GPUs
- Cayman addressed all the weak point of Cypress (tessellation, frame-buffer size, AF banding...), so you'll hardly find these cons in reviews - and it still hasn't worse performance/transtistor ratio than Cypress
I think that ATI have never intended to target Cayman against GTX580. That should be Antilles's job (they wouln't have Antilles in roadmap if they planned to beat GTX580 by single-GPU product). But GTX580 is only bug-fixed/15-20% faster Fermi, so GTX580 performs closer to Cayman than to Antilles. That's in fact a better result than they expected and the postponed launch of Antilles just proves it.
My silly season contribution:
The 1536 ALU is true and 6970 is ~20% faster on average than cypress.
But there is a reason why the X2 card is now the 6990: Sideport is back. There is that off-die buffering and scaling is sustained at near linear without the need for profiles. Also, RAM is shared, so frame buffer is not duplicated anymore. Also, this smokes the 580 silly...
SCNR
The 1536 ALU is true and 6970 is ~20% faster on average than cypress.
But there is a reason why the X2 card is now the 6990: Sideport is back. There is that off-die buffering and scaling is sustained at near linear without the need for profiles. Also, RAM is shared, so frame buffer is not duplicated anymore. Also, this smokes the 580 silly...
SCNR
Silent_Buddha
Legend
We've actually been doing this a while ago (and taken flak for it also). Half Life 2 with Cinematic Mod or Fallout 3 with Texture Pack for example.
Simple enough. Do like Anandtech with seperate followup "reviews" like they do with SLI/Crossfire after main reviews and whatnot.
Just do a seperate review featuring games with 3rd party texture/IQ mods. The majority of people that could care less won't be bothered since it isn't in the main review, and the people that do care would be well served by the additional review.
As well there won't be questions about whether testing 3rd party texture/IQ mods affected review scores or impressions for cards in default games.
Personally, though I'm waiting for a site to start including load power consumption game by game.
Just add it in the frame rate graphs. That would be a far more accurate represnetation of perf/watt of various cards. I mean how difficult could it be to measure power useage while benchmarking the games in the normal course of a review?Regards,
SB
You know, I find it simply strange that, now that we're reasonably sure Cayman can't go toe to toe with the 580, people are arguing that AMD never had that as a goal and that nobody would ever expect that from a smaller chip.
All one need do is re-read this thread to know that argument is baloney. Many of us (myself included) were hoping AMD pulled off a new architecture that would be more efficient than Cypress/Evergreen and that we'd see a single chip beat the 5870 by 50%.
If you're in the camp of Cayman XT competing with the $350 570 GTX being AMD's real performance target and believe that's not a disappointment, then you either weren't posting to this thread or you had a sudden, blinding, revelatory experienced that wiped some memory banks.
[Edit for typos]
All one need do is re-read this thread to know that argument is baloney. Many of us (myself included) were hoping AMD pulled off a new architecture that would be more efficient than Cypress/Evergreen and that we'd see a single chip beat the 5870 by 50%.
If you're in the camp of Cayman XT competing with the $350 570 GTX being AMD's real performance target and believe that's not a disappointment, then you either weren't posting to this thread or you had a sudden, blinding, revelatory experienced that wiped some memory banks.
[Edit for typos]
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At the time, most of us expected Cayman to be something like a 1920-SP, ~430mm², ~250W monster… Now it looks more like a 1536-SP, ~390mm², 190~225W product. Naturally, that implies a different performance target.
For what it's worth, I still expect Cayman to deliver more than a 20% improvement over Cypress, because that would only be marginally over what is achievable with a mere overclocked Cypress.
NathansFortune
Regular
I don't think ATi intended it either, but allowing the speculation to run wild about how powerful 6970 will definitely damage the sales of the card since a lot of less informed people now expect it to be 10-15% more powerful than GTX580. If it isn't, and it is looking less likely now, they won't want to wait for the 6990 or a higher clocked 6970.
I think chavdarr is correct in saying that Cayman puts ATi in a relatively worse position. Nvidia have managed to improve performance of Fermi without increasing die size or power by around 10-20% while ATi have only managed a similar improvement by increasing the die size by a similar amount.
If ATi can increase the clocks to compete with GTX580 directly with 6970 then it puts them in a strong position, a smaller die will be cheaper and very popular.
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