AMD: R9xx Speculation

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Interestingly, this screenshot mostly is from a GTX 480 with tessellation at normal instead of extreme (this and the model-field are the only thing changed (and even without the aggressive JPEG-artifacting) - and it delivers almost the same perf as the supposed HD 6800 series card. Coincidence?

 

I'd agree the fastest model will probably come with 2GB standard. I'm not so sure on the slower one, I could imagine there both 1GB and 2GB being standard versions.

I think that'll depend on the availability/pricing of these chips. If a 2gbit chip doesn't cost more than 2 1gbit chips sure that's more cost effective. OTOH I don't think using twice the chips increases costs a lot, clamshell mode makes this easy and shouldn't complicate pcb too much.

 

Legend, and Product Manager.

 

So, is this next release going to be more like to HD 2900 -> HD 3870, than HD 3870 -> 4870? Except without the reduced power part, cos we don't have a magical new process node.

 

I have my fingers crossed for northern islands @ 40nm due the codenames in drivers and some rumors before those appeared.
So bigger change than HD2k > 3k, 3k>4k or 4k>5k

 

Bigger change than 4k to 5k, eh? which delta, 4870 to 5870; or 4890 to 5870? or 4870 x2 to 5970?

 

HD5870 was 50% faster than HD4890. I'd expect similar performance jump for HD5870->6870

 

Was thinking architecture wise, not performance

 

Wow, but we are on the same old 40nm this time. 50% looks too much for me.

 

RV770 was a massive jump over RV670, on the same process node. Granted, RV770 was 33% bigger and I don't expect RV970 to be quite that much bigger than RV870, but it is not impossible.

 

If those details are true (i.e. that Barts will launch first and consume slightly below 200 watts and already need heat-pipe-cooling), wouldn't it be possible that:

Barts = 6770 = high-mid-range NI part "ported" from 32nm to 40nm = October 2010 launch

Cayman = 6870 = high-end NI part "ported" from 32nm to 28nm = H1 2011 launch?

 

Or you could speculate like we did months ago that Barts is where it's at for 2010 and Cayman doesn't show up on 28nm 'till next year.

So let's say Cayman isn't ready for production yet, who would believe Barts is delivering the numbers discussed here?

 

TDP also went up 42% from 3870 to 4870. I don't think it's impossible either though.

 

If they don't fix their AF implementation I'll be disappointed. If it in fact is a hardware bug/issue.

 

I think you can chalk that up to the immature GDDR5 technology in RV770, the HD 4850 had significant improvements over the HD 3870 with only a slight increase in TDP.

 

A mere 42% bump in TDP for a 100% or more bump in performance is well worth the trade off for anyone concerned with performance.

 

384 bit me bus, along with the rumored ~33% higher clocked memory, Cayman must be quite big then.

 

Or they didint clocked the memory higher and just increased the bus width. The 6.4 GHz gddr5 gpu-z shots are fake it seems.
Maybe its cheaper to buy mass production 5GHz chips in the end(also pcb and gpu is less complex if it doesnt need to run on such high frequency, and ati already mastered 5GHz). Thats still 240 GB/s on just 5 GHz if its true.