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

[UniversalTruth]

AMD Radeon HD 7970 CrossFire benchmarked at 7860x1440

Final Thoughts:

We are testing one of the best HD 7970 GPUs on the market, the MSI HD 7970 Lightning BE model, but we did downclock it for this testing. When cranking it back up to the stock settings, there is an improvement, and it does overclock like a champion which is something we're excited to see.

Comparing the HD 7970 CF setup, we see near identical results against the GTX 780 SLI setup, except for a few tests where it kills the GTX 780 SLI rig - namely DiRT: Showdown. One thing you might have noticed that on average, the minimum FPS on our HD 7970 CF rig is actually much better, and while average FPS numbers are great, you don't want your frame rate dropping so low constantly, which is great to see on the Radeon setup.

If you're after some GPUs for a triple 1440p setup, the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GPUs are a great option, especially with them being so cheap now!

Definitely a very exciting season

Who is going to grab that?

http://www.hardwareversand.de/709/AMD.search?rp=2

 

[Albuquerque]

As the current owner of a Sapphire 7970 Dual-X OC card, and a prior owner of a 5850, a pair of 4850's, and a pair of 3850's -- I would not use crossfire in a multi-monitor configuration today. Single monitor? Sure. But given all the challenges that have come to head with AMD GPU's in crossfire, I'd go straight for the NV option.

Since I"m a single monitor 2560x1440 guy, a pair of 7970's may still be exactly what I need

 

[Pressure]

I'm a bit puzzled, the new Mac Pro features a small PSU that provides a maximum continuous power of 450W but still offers up to a 12-core Xeon E5 v2 (up to 130W) and 2 x FirePro D700 (based on Tahiti) with 6GB RAM each.

How do you imagine they pulled this off while still offering 7GFlops/sec from the graphic cards?

What's more, the FirePro D500 has 1526 Stream Processors but retains the 384-bit memory bandwidth.

This must surely be custom parts just for Apple based on Tahiti.

 

[lanek]

I'm a bit puzzled, the new Mac Pro features a small PSU that provides a maximum continuous power of 450W but still offers up to a 12-core Xeon E5 v2 (up to 130W) and 2 x FirePro D700 (based on Tahiti) with 6GB RAM each.

How do you imagine they pulled this off while still offering 7GFlops/sec from the graphic cards?

What's more, the FirePro D500 has 1526 Stream Processors but retains the 384-bit memory bandwidth.

This must surely be custom parts just for Apple based on Tahiti.

the 1525SP is under a 7950 but over a Pitcain W7000( 1792SP for the 7950 and 1280SP for the Pitcain )... if you look the apple lineup, most cpu and gpu are underclocked. then the Firepro is not based on full Thaiti XT.. (2048SP), its a middle range Firepro. when in fact they completey screw it up.. They even lie on the Tfops... The D500 is only able to provide 2.2Tflops max ( 2x GPU = 4.4Tflops and i dont think the Xeon is able to match the 2.6Tflops lost in the equation ) http://architosh.com/2013/10/the-mac-pro-so-whats-a-d300-d500-and-d700-anyway-we-have-answers/

D500
The D500 is a bit harder. What we know for certain is it too is Tahiti-based. Although it has a 384 bit bus and more memory bandwidth than AMD’s W8000–the next best ranked FirePro available–it has 2.2 teraflops of performance compared to the W8000′s 3.2 teraflops.
Because this is also a Tahiti-based unit it could be based on the W8000 or the W9000, though its memory bus is matched to the W9000. We just don’t know? Here are the key specs:

• 1525 Stream Processors (texture mapping units/unified shaders)
• 384-bit memory bus width
• 240 GB/s memory bandwidth
• 3 GB Vram GDDR5

The D500 on a teraflop rank basis is just slightly more powerful than the Pitcairn-based W7000, the third best ranked FirePro card. But as we said above it is a Tahiti-based GPU. And in terms of streaming processors it ranks closer to the W8000 than the W7000.
The D500′s memory bus is not 256-bit like the W8000 but it ships with 1 GB less VRAM. Apple seems to have cleverly balanced various performance metrics to create an upper-mid level workstation class option while decreasing streaming processors (1792 down to 1525), decreasing VRAM (4 GB down to 3 GB) and possibly frequency on the core clock to result in a slightly less teraflop-performing mid-level option. The result is a reasonable price increase over the D300 for this Tahiti-based D500.
Amazon has the W8000 retailing at 1,308.USD. Apple is providing roughly two of these or just about 2,500.USD of GPU value. But because of the strategic decreases as noted above the real value Apple is providing may be much closer to just under 2 grand. (see below or next page)

The article i quote is made by an Apple fans.. personally i wil be really less nice about what Apple is doing here. ( i say that, because after have speak with some friends who own previous MacPro, and are real Apple fans, i can tell you the message they have receive is really far of the reality ( starting by: you cant find a workstations with specs like that on pc market ( huum i got 16Tlfops of GPU power at work with 2x Xeon 12cores for my standard work + a cpu farm for final render and even my own system for games / home work is way over this in term of power. ( 9Tflops of GPU power + a 4930K overclocked to 5Ghz could up a dual Xeon system for my 3D render ,but i do my final render at work anyway Autocad and Inventor ( i dont use 3Dmaxs, not really well suited for architecture and design. )

 

[Pressure]

Well, that's what they state exactly, that the FirePro D500 can supply 2.2TFlops.

It's the FirePro D700 that is 3.5TFlops.

So you don't find the pricing interesting at least? Going from dual D300 to dual D500 is only a $400 upgrade. Or dual D700 for $1000. If these parts were compatible with HP workstations, people would be all over them at these prices!

Apple says the D500 has 1526 Stream Processors ... typo or not I don't know.

 

[lanek]

The price is cheap, but its not in the category of system i will use for my work..

For my use, and this is personal.... on side of this, if you have allready use Autodesk product Apple version,.... the softwares are completely unusable... ( ofc not all use Autocad, maya 3Dmaxs etc ).. When someone tell us they use OSX and they want buy Autocad, we just tell them to throw their system through the windows. Its not usable for Autocad.

The softwares are not even comparable ( the Apple version have only 30% of the total product of Autocad, its buggy and even the standard features are missing, even the UIX ( and defacto CUIX, ) is completely screwed because Apple OS dont let the files system be used correctly by the software, everything is slow, buggy, or essential features are missing ).

I have nothing against Apple, but if it is for install a dualboot of windows server on this system, i go out and buy me a dual xeon + 4gpu system..

 

[Ryan Smith]

So you don't find the pricing interesting at least? Going from dual D300 to dual D500 is only a $400 upgrade. Or dual D700 for $1000. If these parts were compatible with HP workstations, people would be all over them at these prices!

The FirePro D series is an odd beast. Anand's not done with his article yet so I'm not going to spoil anything, but there are more differences between the W and D series than just the form factor, which in turn will help make sense of the price.

Apple says the D500 has 1526 Stream Processors ... typo or not I don't know.

It's a typo. The SP count has to be a multiple of 64 (the size of a single CU). They meant 1536.

 

[Wynix]

Concerning the mac, do we know how much power the D700's are pulling? i believe they are running ~850Mhz.

Also is there any news concerning software improvements for AMD cards?

 

[Ryan Smith]

Concerning the mac, do we know how much power the D700's are pulling? i believe they are running ~850Mhz.

We do not. I suspect they're rated for 150W each, based off of the rated consumption for the CPU versus the rated consumption for the total system, but that's just a guess on my part.

 

[Pressure]

The FirePro D series is an odd beast. Anand's not done with his article yet so I'm not going to spoil anything, but there are more differences between the W and D series than just the form factor, which in turn will help make sense of the price.

It's a typo. The SP count has to be a multiple of 64 (the size of a single CU). They meant 1536.

Interesting, will look forward to reading it.

I do know that OS X doesn't distinguish between workstation and desktop parts when it comes to drivers.

 

[kalelovil]

We do not. I suspect they're rated for 150W each, based off of the rated consumption for the CPU versus the rated consumption for the total system, but that's just a guess on my part.

Does Apple list the power consumption of the higher-end configurations somewhere?

All I can see on their specifications page is that the 3.7Ghz Quad-Core/12GB DDR3/Dual D300 and the 3.5Ghz 6-Core/16GB DDR3/Dual D500 base configurations use up to to 450W continuous power, but the power consumption of custom configurations is not listed.

 

[LordEC911]

AMD AMD +1.90% announced dual AMD FirePro(TM) professional graphics solutions (GPUs) deliver unprecedented levels of performance for the new Mac Pro. The AMD FirePro(TM) D300, D500 and D700 professional GPUs offer exceptional compute power and reliability for creativity and productivity in a wide range of applications. With industry-adopted OpenCL(TM) (Open Computing Language) support, Mac Pro users have the ability to seamlessly edit full-resolution 4K video and simultaneously render effects in the background, and still have enough performance to power up to three high-resolution 4K displays(1).

Link

 

[Pressure]

Does Apple list the power consumption of the higher-end configurations somewhere?

All I can see on their specifications page is that the 3.7Ghz Quad-Core/12GB DDR3/Dual D300 and the 3.5Ghz 6-Core/16GB DDR3/Dual D500 base configurations use up to to 450W continuous power, but the power consumption of custom configurations is not listed.

They clearly state maximum continuous power usage to be 450 Watt, which goes for all configurations of the new Mac Pro.

 

[two00lbwaster]

They clearly state maximum continuous power usage to be 450 Watt, which goes for all configurations of the new Mac Pro.

Out of the window goes 150W for the GPUs then, no? 130W TDP for the E5-2697 v2 doesn't leave enough for motherboard (inc 60W TB), RAM and SSD in 150W (if 2x150W GFX.)

 

[Pressure]

Out of the window goes 150W for the GPUs then, no? 130W TDP for the E5-2697 v2 doesn't leave enough for motherboard (inc 60W TB), RAM and SSD in 150W (if 2x150W GFX.)

I suppose Anand will tell us as soon as he is finished with his review but it could be the PSU is simply rated higher (like 650W with 80%+ efficiency) actually.

Update:

FirePro D300:
800 Mhz @ 1125 mV (Boost 850 MHz @ 1175 mV), memory 1270 MHz (5080 effective), TDP 116W

FirePro D500:
650 Mhz @ 1025 mV (Boost 725 MHz @ 1075 mV), memory 1270 MHz (5080 effective), TDP 108W

FirePro D700:
650 Mhz @ 918 mV (Boost 850 MHz @ 1100 mV), memory 1370 MHz (5480 effective), TDP 108W

All values taken from the new Mac Pro EFI update.

So, Xeon E5 v2 @ 130W TDP, 2 x FirePro @ 216-232W TDP. It seems to add up nicely and fit within the 450 Watt of continuous power.

 

[Accord1999]

There's no way the D700 will be able to maintain that TDP if those Boost values are correct.

 

[Alexko]

There's no way the D700 will be able to maintain that TDP if those Boost values are correct.

Well, if it draws too much, it will fall back to the base clock, that's the whole point of "boost" clocks.

 

[kalelovil]

Well, if it draws too much, it will fall back to the base clock, that's the whole point of "boost" clocks.

Although if they seldom achieve their boost frequency, the D500 could lose any advantage over the D300 in single precision workloads and the teraflops ratings Apple lists at their maximum boost frequency would be rather misleading.

 

[Pressure]

Or the cooling system is really effective. It is very quiet though...

 

[Alexko]

Well it's certainly possible that the TDP is not enforced until thermal limits are reached, unless it exceeds some other power value that is determined by the maximum capacity of the card's power delivery (and perhaps total system power); which is pretty much what 290(X) cards do.

But I'm not sure how the GPUs might know how much the CPU is drawing at any time.