The 6870 has a lot more bandwidth due to the 256-bit but. It would be pretty much impossible to fit that on a chip as small as Bonnaire, regardless of transistor count (which is not particularly meaningful anyway), so this comparison is meaningless.
In the long term, Bonnaire has a far lower cost floor than Pitcairn. It looks overpriced only because it's new.
Or in a couple of years they may stop optimizing for the chip. We don't know if they optimize drivers for VLIW chips anymore. I get the vibe that they don't do much other than make sure they work. Still my 6950 has visual issues with Crysis 3.
We've had compute stuff in games for awhile. Just Cause 2 has quite a bit. But if TressFX is any indication of the future, everyone would be best off waiting for new GPU architectures because the current cards can't take the heat.
We've had compute stuff in games for awhile. Just Cause 2 has quite a bit. But if TressFX is any indication of the future, everyone would be best off waiting for new GPU architectures because the current cards can't take the heat.
Not that it's unprecedented. Crysis didn't run well until I got the 6950.
The very fact that there are SKUs with MCs disabled is enough to conclude that they don't use monolithic 256bit wide controllers, but an integer number of 64bit controllers. 104 has 4 of them. 106 has 3.
I kind of figured that... but if they are going to be priced above $149, there is only $159 and $169 before you start to hit 7850s at $179. I just think it would have made more sense for the 2GB version to be the default SKU.Kaotik said:
Well, that was kinda my whole point.... AMD is competing more with itself than with Nvidia. Just seems like an awful lot of trouble for a single SKU. If they were/are going to EOL the 7770 and 7750, it makes sense, but that doesn't appear to be the case (given the 7790 name).Kaotik said:
Of course. VLIW had to go but I think mainly because it was poorly suited for getting into markets besides games.
I don't think there is any doubt at this point that GCN is worth it. Sure transistor count per flop may be slightly up, but so is real world performance. When GCN first launched, the issue was less clear but as the drivers have matured I'd say it has pretty well established its dominance over their prior architectures.swaaye said:
The HD 7870 Boost is a Tahiti disabled to 256-bit, and before that, the only one I can think of is the HD 2900 GT or so that was a R600 disabled to 256-bit.
I also don't think there's much of a gap between Pitcairn and Tahiti, and with the 7870 Boost there's essentially no gap. That being said, I think Hainan, which is rumored to be a double Bonaire (except for the same 2 primitives/clock), could easily replace a number of 7000 series parts. 1792 SPs at ≥1 GHz and a 256-bit bus at 6 Gbps plus a cut-down part would essentially replace both 7870s and the 7950. The 7850 still has a space but they may push 2 GB 7790 OCs to slightly close on it from below. They could even keep both Pitcairn parts and release just the full Hainan as a "7790," which would slot in in place of the 7950. So I think Hainan makes sense only when they want to replace a number of existing parts, or if they want a dual-GPU part within 300 W.
Does that include the 1 GB 7850s?
As well as 2GBs.... could you really not look that up on your own?iMacmatician said:
