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

3dilettante said:
There are some new instructions, expanded queuing, and a new addressing mode. Several instructions got dumped, as well.
What's not so new is the Northern Islands graphic outlining the read-only texture memory pipeline. (fig 2.1)

A few of the reserved bits from the Southern Islands document are being used to indicate resources for the flat addressing mode.
This access is new, but it doesn't play as well with the existing LDS and memory operations, and because of its split personality, it doesn't complete in order. There's an indicated race condition that requires a wait count of 0, which sounds like this is not to be used too freely.
Click to expand...

I have to admit that I don't understand what that all means for 3D or GPGPU use scenarios.
My point is that Anandtech says: Southern Islands is feature-wise indistinguishable from Sea Islands
The official AMD document says: Sea Islands have new features/instructions

So, who is right?
Maybe they are both right, but use the Southern Islands and Sea Islands code names for different GPUs?
 
Tofu said:
I have to admit that I don't understand what that all means for 3D or GPGPU use scenarios.
My point is that Anandtech says: Southern Islands is feature-wise indistinguishable from Sea Islands
The official AMD document says: Sea Islands have new features/instructions

So, who is right?
Maybe they are both right, but use the Southern Islands and Sea Islands code names for different GPUs?
Click to expand...
It's AMD who is calling them the same; we're just writing down what they said. I forget who exactly said it (Devon, maybe?) but when asked about whether Sea Islands was a different architecture than Southern Islands, the response from AMD was that they were new configurations of the same architecture (GCN1). For the moment AMD is downplaying any differences, and CI is almost certain to be shuffled into the retail desktop 7000 series.
 
Ryan Smith said:
It's AMD who is calling them the same; we're just writing down what they said. I forget who exactly said it (Devon, maybe?) but when asked about whether Sea Islands was a different architecture than Southern Islands, the response from AMD was that they were new configurations of the same architecture (GCN1). For the moment AMD is downplaying any differences, and CI is almost certain to be shuffled into the retail desktop 7000 series.
Click to expand...

Thank you.(Now it makes sense to me)
 
That was specifically in response to Oland. Roadmap names have never actually indicated a particular IP level, though a correlation has been often been there it is not the case 100% (i.e. Northern Islands, Rx2xx, etc.). The way things are organized now the correlation will become less distinct - we have an IP organization function and an SOC execution group that directly report through the BU; the IP sets that are used will be leveraged according to whatever particular IP is available for the time-to-market requirements of the particular SOC being dealt with. The Roadmap names are little more than descriptions for the level of work required by the SOC team.

Unfortunately the document above is not described correctly because the only "Sea Islands" part that is available right now is Oland which uses the same IP set as Tahiti/Pitcairn/Verde. I've contacted the publisher of the doc and suggested that it would be more accurate to describe the document by Graphics IP level.
 
Cheers, I thought it might be something like that. So my guesswork expection now is that we'll see high end 8xxx series gpus based on the 'majorly enhanced' new architecture at the end of this year but they'll still fall under the sea islands family.
 
Which suggests we should follow the advice Dave intends to give to the publisher of this document, and talk about graphics IP levels too instead of those non-descriptive codenames.

I propose that on these forums and for the sake of clarity, everything from Oland to Tahiti be referred to as GCN 1.0 (or GCN for short), and the upcoming changes described in the paper above be considered part of GCN 1.1.

When the big refresh comes at the end of the year, we might call that GCN 2.0. I know that no one died and made me king of the codenames, but since AMD is not communicating much about the micro-architecture, and just about any codename so far has been mostly confusing, I think this would be for the best. At least we might start understanding what the hell we're even talking about. :)
 
Nice catch, Lanek. My guess is we're dealing with a DirectCompute implementation, here. Which is the proper way of doing GPU physics.
 
Alexko said:
Nice catch, Lanek. My guess is we're dealing with a DirectCompute implementation, here. Which is the proper way of doing GPU physics.
Click to expand...


Surely, as it was called as a DX11 new features.. Anyway the new Tomb Raider look good so far.. http://www.cvgworld.com/2013/02/23/tomb-raider-gets-first-review/

Sitting back exhausted we were left with just one question dribbling forth from our gaping jaws. How on earth are they going to top this in the sequel? Because of one thing there can be no doubt. Lara is back” “Lara doesn’t disappoint, while Yamati proves one of the most memorable playgrounds in gaming.”
Click to expand...
 
I just received my two Gigabyte 7950s. They are great but voltage locked.

Seems they come with a third generation BIOS that is voltage locked and I'm very afraid that this could go as low as the PCB level. Previous BIOS versions do not work at all for me. The system does not even post.

Regardless, does anyone know how I can volt mod them, or try to unlock the BIOS voltage or increase the voltage values myself?

I used to do that on my older ATI cards with Radeon BIOS editor but afaik it does not support 7000 series right?

PS Why are Gigabyte becoming such dicks and hardlocking their cards now? Will it be my fault if I return them now? All reviews mention that the 7900 series supports overvolting and I am being cut off from it? Isn't that denying me what I purchased?
 
psolord said:
I just received my two Gigabyte 7950s. They are great but voltage locked.

Seems they come with a third generation BIOS that is voltage locked and I'm very afraid that this could go as low as the PCB level. Previous BIOS versions do not work at all for me. The system does not even post.

Regardless, does anyone know how I can volt mod them, or try to unlock the BIOS voltage or increase the voltage values myself?

I used to do that on my older ATI cards with Radeon BIOS editor but afaik it does not support 7000 series right?

PS Why are Gigabyte becoming such dicks and hardlocking their cards now? Will it be my fault if I return them now? All reviews mention that the 7900 series supports overvolting and I am being cut off from it? Isn't that denying me what I purchased?
Click to expand...

Have you try Sapphire Trixxx ? MSI AB have give me some headache lately, specially with "Boost" edition cards. ( it dont recognize the right "voltage " for clock the right clock speed or something like that. )

Note i use a modded version of Trixx for 7970Ghz .

Little question, what is the bios of the card ? the last one you can find on gigabyte site ( F43 ? ) http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4121#bios
 
Last edited by a moderator:
lanek said:
Have you try Sapphire Trixxx ? MSI AB have give me some headache lately, specially with "Boost" edition cards. ( it dont recognize the right "voltage " for clock the right clock speed or something like that. )

Note i use a modded version of Trixx for 7970Ghz .

Little question, what is the bios of the card ? the last one you can find on gigabyte site ( F43 ? ) http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4121#bios
Click to expand...

I haven't tried Trixx but it doesn't hurt to give it a go.

I've been lurking various forums and from what I gathered, I got a third revision of the WF3.

9zb.png


See that 015.030.xxx on the BIOS version? That indicates the third revision.

Atiflash reported my BIOS to be the FW1. I flashed the F2,F42,F43 and they all brick the card. Thanks to the dual BIOS it's easy as one two three to flash the original back, but still I'm stuck.

Ok the cards as they are provide an immense performance and still they can do 1100/1700 which isn't half bad. It's that for such a high end card, I'd expect some voltage management damn it!


UniversalTruth said:
That has always been the case. Good cooling but awful support otherwise.
By the way... why Gigabyte? There are many other options and you stopped yourself on the most wrong.
Click to expand...

To be frank, I never had a Gigabyte card before and thought to give them a try. Heard good things about the cooler and the dual bios is a plus.

I don't know much about aib support. I am mostly my own support and I try to find etailers with instant rma policy if something goes wrong.

This thing however goes past support. It's more of a corporate policy I think, than anything else. And yes I don't like it one bit.

Amidst my bad luck though, I had some good luck as well. The etailer send me codes for two never settle and two reloaded bundles totalling 10 games (4 of which are double but still), lol. It's like I paid 400 for the cards now. Actually I feel like asking AMD for an IBAN and send them some money.

So yeah, I will quit bitching, but keep on researching.
 
psolord said:
Atiflash reported my BIOS to be the FW1. I flashed the F2,F42,F43 and they all brick the card. Thanks to the dual BIOS it's easy as one two three to flash the original back, but still I'm stuck.
Click to expand...
On Gigabyte cards, the BIOSes go like if you originally have F1, you can flash F1-9, F2x you can flash F21-29, F3x you can flash F31-39 and so on.
There's actual component differences between the cards with different BIOS family
 
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