AMD: Southern Islands (7*** series) Speculation/ Rumour Thread

[ferro]

Eric Demers and GCN, Part II @ Rage3D

Eric: You can get CPU bound, it's also a new architecture for us so there are other bottlenecks we're going to address over the coming months so it'll keep on getting better. The heuristics it's using are fundamentally different from our previous architecture, there are easier parts and there are parts that we're still working on. There's a lot, in fact we've got some games that have gone up 5-fold in performance since we started, from August to now, in drive changes to take advantage of the architecture. Probably another 2-3 months for us will really allow us to showcase the card. In one of the presentations you saw that performance changes, typically 15-40% - in this generation you'll see bigger numbers.

He expects a lot from driver improvements for this new architecture!

 

[sebbbi]

He expects a lot from driver improvements for this new architecture!

It's a completely new architecture so that's likely. All previous ATI/AMD chips were VLIW.

 

[Lux_]

Driver updates are going to improve performance significantly. This is the standard line at every launch.

 

[nutball]

Driver updates are going to improve performance significantly. This is the standard line at every launch.

I'm glad someone else said it!

 

[air_ii]

Driver updates are going to improve performance significantly. This is the standard line at every launch.

But that's generally true though (perhaps without significantly). However, one should not base their purchase decision based on that, imo.

 

[flopper]

Driver updates are going to improve performance significantly. This is the standard line at every launch.

For a new tech yes.
Fermi couldnt even work with windows in sli for what a year?
And people tell us they make so good drivers right?

I see a card beating 580 that offers me pretty much a high overclock and then a potential driver update with significant upgrades are welcome additions
I enjoy seeing people who have no engineeering or design degree or work for amd tell amd how to design a gaming card.

However, the driver team needs to be on edge if they slack we tell them.

 

[neliz]

Yay, paper launch.

According to your own definitions, you can only decide that on January 9th

Paper launch is when you say that you start selling something and no one can buy it. You will be able to buy GTX480 at PAX. Thus it's not "a paper launch of the purest form".

But we all knew about your Paper launch standards before I guess

http://www.tgdaily.com/games-and-en...s-gtx-480-takes-center-stage-at-pax-east-2010

Nvidia kicked off day one of Pax East 2010 by launching its next-generation GTX 470/480 in front of a packed and excited audience. ... expected to arrive in stores within 14 days.

 

[nutball]

According to your own definitions, you can only decide that on January 9th



But we all knew about your Paper launch standards before I guess

http://www.tgdaily.com/games-and-en...s-gtx-480-takes-center-stage-at-pax-east-2010

Can you two stop bickering about hard/soft/flaccid/paper launch bullshit please? We went through all this with the previous generation with both IHVs, it's really boring. It's clear you both have vested interests and you, neliz, are a self-confessed AMD vendor. So hardly neutral, and your PR spam really doesn't help the signal-to-noise ratio here.

 

[Picao84]

For a new tech yes.
Fermi couldnt even work with windows in sli for what a year?
And people tell us they make so good drivers right?

I see a card beating 580 that offers me pretty much a high overclock and then a potential driver update with significant upgrades are welcome additions
I enjoy seeing people who have no engineeering or design degree or work for amd tell amd how to design a gaming card.

However, the driver team needs to be on edge if they slack we tell them.

Beg a pardon? Trolling how much?
Fermi worked on SLI on windows from the start with outstanding performance. HardOCP even gave silver award to Fermi on SLI, and not to the GTX480...

GeForce GTX 480 SLI clearly provides a better gameplay experience than the dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970. In the dual-GPU competition, we felt GeForce GTX 480 SLI provided the best experience, but it will certainly cost you. It will cost you a lot of money, and it will cost you by requiring a high powered hardcore enthusiast system to support it, again costing you more money. If you are a gamer, and you want the best performance you can get right now, GeForce GTX 480 SLI is where it is at.

You might be mistaking it for nVIDIA Surround not working from the start, but thats a feature, not a driver problem. nVIDIA was suprised with Eyefinity, so of course they took more time to implement something similar.

 

[Sinistar]

Can you two stop bickering about hard/soft/flaccid/paper launch bullshit please? We went through all this with the previous generation with both IHVs, it's really boring. It's clear you both have vested interests and you, neliz, are a self-confessed AMD vendor. So hardly neutral, and your PR spam really doesn't help the signal-to-noise ratio here.

Wow, now you get attacked in these forums for quoting someone.

 

[nutball]

Wow, now you get attacked in these forums for quoting someone.

Erm... what? Neliz has a strong track record of AMD VPE(*), and he works for a company shipping AMD-based products. No commercial interest there then. Degustator I have no idea how pays his wages, though he has a massive pro-NVIDIA VPE clearly and could possibly be an NVIDIA shill/PR person. Whatever. Their little battle that has (as evidenced by their mututal cross-quoting) been played out for a few years now. It's really not very interesting.

(*) VPE: Vendor Preference Enthusiasm.

 

[DeF]

Erm... what? Neliz has a strong track record of AMD VPE(*), and he works for a company shipping AMD-based products. No commercial interest there then. Degustator I have no idea how pays his wages, though he has a massive pro-NVIDIA VPE clearly and could possibly be an NVIDIA shill/PR person. Whatever. Their little battle that has (as evidenced by their mututal cross-quoting) been played out for a few years now. It's really not very interesting.

(*) VPE: Vendor Preference Enthusiasm.

Still you can not forget its Degustator who has shown his double standards and Neliz was merely pointing this out. You can not call someone fanboy (even if politely) when he is trying to show the truth.

Now back to topic.
Do you guys think 7800 series will get launched on the 9th? i got really nice xmas bonus this year and i was hoping to splash some cash on new rig . SI arch looks really promising so i have my hopes high for the lower tier models.

 

[UniversalTruth]

Do you guys think 7800 series will get launched on the 9th?

Unfortunately, no, we don't expect those so soon.

OMG. Demers feeds the conspiracy theory of Intel having alien process technology!

Very interesting but not only because of the 'possibility' that all these guys are using alien technology but also the fact that he is mentioning it. I wonder why.
Is there a separate discussion thread on this topic here?

 

[Man from Atlantis]

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/31.html

wth crazy memories

 

[nutball]

Still you can not forget its Degustator who has shown his double standards and Neliz was merely pointing this out. You can not call someone fanboy (even if politely) when he is trying to show the truth.

Sure. It was the other way round a couple of generations ago. This is why it's boring. From both sides. Not that that really counts here but whatever.

 

[neliz]

Erm... what? Neliz has a strong track record of AMD VPE(*), and he works for a company shipping AMD-based products.

(*) VPE: Vendor Preference Enthusiasm.

I have paid for my sins! proud owner of a GTX580
(and I think the idea is we sell the fastest NV & AMD cards as well )

re:availability... if you have connections.. Christmas might come early (even if it's only a day )

 

[UniversalTruth]

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/7000/7970/Pages/radeon-7970.aspx#3

Still listed as DX11-compliant.
There should be a new version of this emoticon but with red colour not green.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/31.html

wth crazy memories

The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Hynix, and carry the model number H5GQ2H24MFR-R0C. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective).

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/5.html

Yeah, specified for 1500 MHz, put to run at 1375 MHz and overclockable to over 1700 MHz. Nice story.

 

[rpg.314]

Seriously? Didn't your CPU division get the memo? Or is it ATI GPU speaking for ATI CPU?

 

[cal_guy]

Uhm, no, not really. nVidia as opposed to AMD does get some nice revenue from their Quadro/Tesla, to the tune of $200million per quarter. However, that would seem to be strongly dominated by the Quadro (graphics) products rather than Tesla (computation). Compared to the overall computer market, or even graphics market, computation revenue is very, very small. There just isn't that much gold in those hills. Pretty safe market, but volumes are pitiful, and there is no way that computation has been even close to paying for its engineering and software costs for the graphics vendors. It's an investment. (Paid by gamers, ironically.)

High Performance Computing and High Performance Technical Computing represents about a third of Intel's server revenue so pursuing it is absolutely vital for AMD, and it's clear that the only way to make serious inroads into HPC is by bringing CPU and GPU onto the same die. That's why nVidia is pursuing it's Project Denver and a major reason behind AMD's push in APU.

 

[Ailuros]

I would assume if computing wasnt needed they could have built a faster card but then also face down the line a lack of features for the professional arena.
a ton of money is made there and if the new gcn series adress that field with good tech and features, the series is a winner no matter what we gamers think

It's hard to overlook the additional logic for HPC, but I don't think its persentage or if you prefer analogy is high enough to make a worthwhile difference. GCN looks like a well rounded architecture; my only other objection is the steep MSRP. If it's temporary though, then no problem at all.