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

I expect HD7950 numbers to run between 90% - 110% of GTX580 1.5GB...which puts it above HD6970..but many games still favor Nvidia to disallow HD7950 to run scott free...if AMD can make it for $369 and unlockable...it may cause a rethink in my opinion wrt SI/GCN...else i hope GTX660TI can make AMD wake up their GCN marketing...:oops: sorry Dave, AMD was great for HD4xx through 6xxx...not liking the HD7xxx family...

wrt to fan cooling, AIBs slapped 2x80mm fans with thick heatpipes on for such designs...and a lot more open cover to let the drawn air circulate...granted the 590 stock use such a design...let say i am a bigger fan of blower/exhaust over...single 80mm downflow...
 
But the price is the biggest problem. GTX580 is EOL, so the obvious competition is the next gen from NV.

For me there are 3 possilbe explanations:

1. production at TSMC is still not too good and AMD had to go with those prices, if they wanted to launch early
2. NV is running very late

or 3 - and I hope that is not it

3. AMD will adjust the price quickly when Kepler comes out of hiding, screwing all early adopters.
 
seahawk said:
3. AMD will adjust the price quickly when Kepler comes out of hiding, screwing all early adopters.
Click to expand...
Of course they will. They didn't with 69x0 because they were a bit late compared to GTX 5x0 and had priced it rather aggressively from the start, but this time it is different.

And quite frankly, in my opinion it's not AMD screwing early adopters, if anything it's early adopters screwing themselves by adopting early :rolleyes:.
 
AMD's got a new CEO for a few month and it's starting to act like any public company is expected to: capitalize on any advantage versus the competition it might have at any given point in time. This is what Nvidia's been doing for years and from their quarter earnings reports it seems to have paid off. It's about time AMD started to act this way - in the short term obviously in the company's best interest but in the long term also in the consumers. Wait, that sounds like bs, doesn't it? No, it actually makes a lot of sense, because for healthy competition you need healthy contenders which is NOT the case when one of them has no money to invest in further developments while the other has. Now, if you were a private company you could retreat into a niche like Matrox has done after Parhelia, but if you're a public company, investors won't let you do that, they expect growth.

AMD is trying to earn money while and when they can, and IMHO that's exactly what they should do. That may not be what some people expect of them, given the "nice guy route" AMD has been playing the last few years but they are - as a company - not, they are a company.
With Tahiti, AMD has the fastest single-GPU card available, period. That alone has been (and should be, in a company's way of thinking) reason enough to command a price premium. Otherwise it would not make sense at all to develop costly chips and high-end PCBs if you don't count on the halo upping perceived value of your lower end products.
 
Dave Baumann said:
For one, the cooling solutions match the TDP of the part it is being aimed at. Second, most AIBs use axial fans on their own designs, even up to 300W. Third, don't believe everything in the post where this originates.
Click to expand...

AIB's using axial fans, does not really make it right for me, for a series of reasons.

First of all I am always building dual card systems, not out of necessity but mostly out of benchmarking fun. The way I usually put it, is that I buy the first card to play my games and the second card to play with the cards. Still the second card comes handy for real life gaming, quite often.

In these cases, I really don't want 400-500W worth of heat exhaust to be laid inside my case.

Moreover I recently built and tested a GTX 460 SLI system for a friend. The cards were using axial fans. While running a custom Battlefield 3 benchmark in SLI mode, I started hearing quite some noise coming from the case (HAF X). After the benchmark finished, I opened MSI Afterburner to see what it registered.

To my surprise, I saw the first card having hit 84C while the second one was running at a chill 62C. The really disturbing bit, was that the first card was running at a noisy 64% fan speed, while the second one was running at a silent 43%.

Contrary to the above example, I also tested the same game on my own 5850 (blower type) crossfire system. After the benchmark finished, the top card was showing 79C while the second a similar 76C. Their fan speeds (auto fans) where about the same as well. The system was very silent as always. The same holds true for my GTX 570 SLI System, in the same game. Similar temps, similar fan speeds and in this specific example, the cards should be around 250W each while still not really affecting each other. The 460s I mentioned above, were much less than that.

There are some diffenences on the above examples, but I will not go further. The point is, that with blower type HSFs, both cards present similar behavior. With axial HSFs, the cards are in two different worlds. I'd like to avoid it that, when shoving out 600+ euros, for my next dual gpu system.
 
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There's no way I ever buy GPUs which exhaust into the case, and definitely not if I'm spending ~$450 on a single GPU! I've had 2 5770's so far and both have been blowers.
 
Quite frankly, I find it very disturbing that large shops do not honor their NDAs. AMD should do something about this.
 
CarstenS said:
Quite frankly, I find it very disturbing that large shops do not honor their NDAs. AMD should do something about this.
Click to expand...
I love it! ;) (But I understand how it's no fun for under-NDA publications.)
 
Regarding the cooling options, I would say that there are different crowds.

Sure some people like the blower style fans, but if one enjoys a quiet PC all the current blower style graphics cards are way to loud, unless a 3rd party cooler is used.

Sure it wont work for X-fire, but for single cards I would love having a dual 12cm fan solution without having to fix it myself.
 
humbertklyka said:
Regarding the cooling options, I would say that there are different crowds.

Sure some people like the blower style fans, but if one enjoys a quiet PC all the current blower style graphics cards are way to loud, unless a 3rd party cooler is used.

Sure it wont work for X-fire, but for single cards I would love having a dual 12cm fan solution without having to fix it myself.
Click to expand...

Of course, and AIB manufacturers always make different solutions to cooling. But that is a reference design. (if it is indeed true)
 
Malo said:
Of course, and AIB manufacturers always make different solutions to cooling. But that is a reference design. (if it is indeed true)
Click to expand...
A few weeks ago one could read that there is no reference design for the 7950. I don't know if that's true, maybe the kits delivered to the AIBs include just the board without a cooling solution? I guess neliz or Dave could tell us. :smile:
 
humbertklyka said:
Regarding the cooling options, I would say that there are different crowds.

Sure some people like the blower style fans, but if one enjoys a quiet PC all the current blower style graphics cards are way to loud, unless a 3rd party cooler is used.

Sure it wont work for X-fire, but for single cards I would love having a dual 12cm fan solution without having to fix it myself.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure enthusiast level cards that exhaust all or most of the heat into the case is doing quiet PC gaming any favors. Sure you have a quieter GPU fan, but now your case fans have to work harder or you have to have more of them...or larger vents in order to keep your entire system at the same temps. All of which increase the noise your system makes.

Where I live I can hear a "silent" case fan spinning at 700 RPM. Multiples just increase noise across the board. When gaming it's always a choice for me between whether I want my GPU to be louder when gaming or my PC to be louder all the time or constantly muck about with case fan controls.

I've opted for the noise only when gaming solution. Hence I have airflow through the case at the minimum necessary to keep things at reasonable temps when at load. Passive and fanless PSU's FTW. Passively cooled overclocked 2500k CPU. And only 1 case fan and 1 HDD rack fan.

I've gotten the noise down low enough that I can hear the CCFLs that are used to light my room.

Someday maybe I'll get back into watercooling with the radiator located outside of the house. But that would be less about the noise than it would be removing heat from being dumped inside the room. Although it would certainly remove the noise the video card makes at load.

Regards,
SB
 
It's not that hard to keep the case reasonably cool with larger slower moving fans which make much less noise. The only real issue is for people who intend to OC, those people should have adequate options available from AIB's anyway.
 
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