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

Looks like a worthwhile upgrade from my 5870.

 

I actually like it. They are giving information to consumers based on actual retail cards before some silly hardware website does it using potentially cherry picked review samples.

 

Yep, very nice - they are the ones selling cards actually, even their name implies, they're targetting OC audience. I wonder how that'd make them react if - in a hypothetical case, not in this one with 7950 - they had to sell a model that's basically non-overclockable?

I understand though, that consumers like to get numbers finally on HD 7950.

 

Yeah, I guess they'd just withhold the info if that were the case. I wouldn't put it past them to do so, after all, they are a retailer looking to make money off of these things.

 

The main obstacle imo is that the default chassis fan control on most motherboards is severly lacking, to keep the noise down to a minimum both when not gaming and when gaming. Having to manually fiddle with the fan control isnt something that I would like either.

I currently use one 500rpm chassis fan as exhaust (for 6950 + i5-2500), so as AlphaWolf said it would mostly be an issue with the very top of the line / OC or multiple cards. Unless of course they continue to increase the max TDP for GPUs.

 

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1839/1/
New upcoming ASUS HD7970 DirectCU II Graphics Card - makes EVGA GeForce GTX 580 (Fermi) Classified ULTRA simply obsolete/inferior when we compare against upcoming custom HD7970.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130751

 

I don't see how that's much better. Another 10mhz? Hardly breaking the mould. The HSF looks nice though.

 

375W PCB.
Asus' slides said 1000MHz. Did they pay AMD for the highest clocking 7970?

 

It takes up 3 slots but is still only clocked at 1010Mhz?

 

No, Sapphire is planning far higher clocked ones

last gen 3-slot DCII's weren't clocked much higher than stock versions either

 

I for one would happily give up one slot for better/quieter cooling.

 

This 6GiB and >1300MHz SKU overview was probably fake.

At the moment it looks AMD limited 7970 to 1GHz and 7950 to 0.9GHz partner OC. The final DirectCU II could have only 1GHz, like Asus' slides said.

 

Indeed, I changed my cooler on the Radeon HD 4870 (on a Mac Pro here) and have the passive heat sink cooled by a single, low RPM 120mm fan. Of course, the case is well-ventilated due to its design.

But 3 slots?!

 

Why are you making such a big fuss about it now? There was 3 slot DCII HD6950, HD6970, GTX570 and GTX580 last gen but I don't recall seeing such fuss about those - in fact they were largely popular due efficient and silent cooling

 

Thats about the limit on stock voltage. If you're buying a card with triple slot cooler and overspecced power I think you might adjust a few parameters outside of CCC/VECC.

 

It would be problematic on a reference design, but on a custom card it's fine. I don't have any add-in cards apart from my graphics card, and I'm sure lots of people are in the same situation. So even 4 or 5 slots would be fine.

 

Yap, I see no problem in that.

What does bother me is the fact that it's wider than the graphics card. That limits the case options a lot more than the number of slots.

 

I was talking about good over-cloking potential with ASUS 3-triple slot and custom PCB.
Maybe, possibly reaching 1.3GHz core and still consume less power then GTX580 @ 900MHz core.



Edit: If upcoming Asus triple slot 7970 could run the core @ 1.3GHz with no issues and beat Nvidia GTX590 in most game titles, I would say it would be awesome!!

 

Are there any rumors (or hard info) as to the design wins for GCN-based mobile chips?

 

Alienware with HD 7970M: http://dell-lab.posterous.com/alienwares-2012-lineup-m17x-r4-m14x-r2-m18x-r