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

To be compliant the official compliance tests are needed. Because of timing RV670 also had to ship with only DX10 on the boxes.

 

Is there any DX11.1 benchmarks in the near future something like Heaven? Also, will there be any DCL support in the near future?

 

Only for few generations, Rage to Radeon X1k weren't VLIW

 

Well, you should define VLIW in this case.

 

At the end of the day, it makes the 580 obsolete. I can't see why anyone willing to spend $500 on a GPU would prefer to get the 580 over spending 10% more for the 7970. Afterall, if it's not the fastest GPU you want then you may as well get a 560Ti or 6970.

ATI now own the high end of PC gaming, good on them. I expect NV will take ahealthy lead again when their next architecture comes out but from the sound of it that's a good way a way.

In the mean time, my dream PC would contain a couple of these. No question.

 

You might not see but others do for reasons other than price alone speaking of which of course nvidia will discount their top single GPU in this new paradigm to occupy a certain niche. Youre still getting a directly proportional bang for your buck at this stratosphere and 580's still have advantages of a mature product cycle and all those wonderful custom solutions that come with that.

Yes I agree the middle tier cards are much better value. The tessellation performance is grand but consoles are a stick in the mud for software adoption on a grand scale.

I rather like how INtel is creeping back into the game here esp with ivy bridge. I don't know how relevant discrete graphics is going to be in ten years time. The returns on the screen have diminished to a poInt of no point at all.

 

This is the best desktop graphics architecture and physical implementation ever. Some rough edges, but that's the long and short of it.

 

Let's hope the software side eventually catches up; while I love my 6950, I hate that opening multiple accelerated flash video streams simultaneously will intermittently BSOD my system. It's not just this hardware, I get this on my Zacate netbook too and so do many others with AMD graphics. This is a big reason I would strongly consider an nVidia board for my next upgrade.

 

I see this, I just don't see anyone caring about "bang for your buck" in this price bracket. People willing to spend this much (580 cost) already went way beyond the reasonable bang for your buck bracket and into the "I want all the raw performance I can get bracket".

I'm not sure what that means? If the 580 is mature then the 7980 has more headroom for improvement surely? In fact given that its a brand new architecture, that much is almost a given.

What I will give the 580 is generally better drivers. More "out of the box" compatibility (I'm sorry to mention Rage but there it is) but also profiles and a few other things I've found a bit tougher with AMD, and most importantly, PhysX. I know many dismiss it, but at the end of the day, there are almost as many games out there that support physx as those that support custom DX11 effects. And generally the physx additions add just as much as DX11 does. So for me that's a pretty big advantage. Nevertheless, PhysX is proprietry feature which I would prefer not to support so the 7980's performance and power advantage are more than enough to take the top stop for me right now.

 

Didn't the godly Radeon 9700 PRO(Not sarcasm. I know I bash AMD a lot on the forums, but damn that was a good card. I'd put it in the top three ever made with regards to its time frame) launch with DX 8.1 drivers as well?

 

I haven't experienced that yet with both a 5870 and a 5450. I've had multiple (5-10) flash video's going at a time without any hints of a BSOD.

Regards,
SB

 

i've had/got 4850 and 6970 and I have never seen this either.

 

I've had the same problem in my Dell notebook. Turned out it was NIC (Intel) drivers . I'm not saying it's not AMD hardware causing it in your case, just saying you never really certain what's the cause of it. In my case, there was an nVidia chip inside.

 

Could we expect greater gains from newer drivers?
In some cases Tahiti only scales with the clock-rate or below 10% over Cayman:
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,8...xpress-30-und-28-nm/Grafikkarte/Test/?page=16
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,8...xpress-30-und-28-nm/Grafikkarte/Test/?page=11

 

I was wondering the same
now that the architecture doesn't need maniacal optimization for every game, we will still see improvements for every driver release?

 

The evidence thus far is optimisation is badly needed.

 

But not for compute workloads, which was the major point for the transition.
At least that's what most reports and AMD statements are claiming.

 

AMD claimed that the optimizations will be simpler. They still need them.

Besides, they will have to "undo" the optimizations that have already crept into existing games, like Dave pointed out.

 

Yes, but the original argument was that "maniacal optimization" isn't needed, not that no optimization is required at all.

 

OT, but I'm pretty sure it has to do with your Flash player build... a pre-release version that uses Stage but inadequately supported in Catalyst, then?

It happened to me periodically- but only when I was on Chrome Dev- and those buggers have their own Flash player builds included with the browser.