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

[Alexko]

But what about power in 2D mode, then? Does that go down at all?

 

[silent_guy]

Do we have any word about yields yet ?

Does it matter? It's not as if they're likely to be anywhere close to reality. The ones that know will never tell, unless it's disastrously bad.

 

[suryad]

Man I think this is the first time in a very long time that I have been excited about an ATI card. I just can't stand their drivers. Very exciting times ahead. I can literally taste my upgrades. The performance seems spectacular to me!

 

[fellix]

Any R300 vibe?

 

[Kaotik]

HD 7970 fan noise sample and comparison:

http://www.mediafire.com/?fffo903y6fgwyam

I'd take that with grain of salt, 1GB 6950 should be reference since it's not specificly mentioned not to be, and it definately isn't any quieter than 2GB reference model in reality, while it is in the samples provided

 

[Deleted member 13524]

So I guess the notable absence of info regarding the HD7700 and HD7800 families means those are still a couple of months away, right?

 

[neliz]

So I guess the notable absence of info regarding the HD7700 and HD7800 families means those are still a couple of months away, right?

Well, closer than Kepler anyway

 

[Rootax]

Does it matter? It's not as if they're likely to be anywhere close to reality. The ones that know will never tell, unless it's disastrously bad.

Well, curiosity, like a loooot of things on this forum... Plus if yields are "disastrously bad", it will have an impact on price and disponibility...

 

[3dilettante]

I'm hoping, as I've hoped for every GPU release since RV770, that there's a micrograph.
The addition of power gating, which I think was mentioned in one of the slides, would add some additional visual variety on top of other changes.

 

[mczak]

Yep. Damn good job by AMD, considering the wider bus and high-speed GDDR5 controller. Some kudos to TSMC, too.

That's still a big chip by AMD's standards, though. Even Cypress was considered big, and that was 10% smaller. Only Cayman was larger (and it would have been a lot smaller on 32nm). Still, 365mm² is a more reasonable number than 400mm² and fits my earlier quotes when I said I'd be very surprised if it would be larger than 400mm² .

 

[Rangers]

Luckily I do own a GTX 570 SLI setup and I also have the bad habit to make video recorded gameplay/benchmarks for my Youtube channel and I do pay attention to cpu usage, gpu usage, framebuffer usage and all technical info of the hardware, after the benchmark.

I do have seen framebuffer usage reaching its max in various cases on my 570s, but I have never witnessed frame drops or anything of the sort, related to high framebuffer load.

Actually being the PC fanboy I am, I also own some lower end cards (5850s,460 and a 4850) which I also include in my benchmarks. I have found out that even in games that I use the exact same settings as on the 570 system, the 460 for example may hit max framebuffer load, while the 570 will go even higher.

One such example is Battlefield 3 as you mentioned. My GTX 460 hit 1015MB framebuffer load, while my single 570 hit 1200MB framebuffer load, for the exact same part of the game with the same settings.

Both systems were showing 100% gpu load for the whole benchmark, so there shouldn't be any framebuffer shortages there. My best bet is that some games will load as much video information on the graphics board as possible, so they can have faster access. Although this is always preferable, it does not make games unplayable or the performance lackluster, at least not in the cases I have studied.

In any case, since the 1280MB of my 570s is enough for me and since I don't use the cards of my primary system for more than a year, I bet a 1.5GB card would be more than fine until the end of 2012. We need some new consoles in order for developers to start using higher textured/higher spec'ed games anyway. Unfortunately most of them are console ports, that even a mere 460 can play at 60fps.

http://www.twylah.com/repi/topics/vram

But sure I agree, if you keep your cards only a year or so I wouldn't worry about it too much. And yes, new consoles will require the next major surge in PC spec!

For me for example I bought a 4890 in I believe 2009, I remember the message boardies saying back then 512MB was plenty, but I'm very glad I have 1GB version today...anytime we are "on the fence" regarding VRAM I would only go for higher amount, and I think we're on that fence now.

 

[fellix]

I'm hoping, as I've hoped for every GPU release since RV770, that there's a micrograph.

I doubt, but if you have spare $200 you can call these guys for a snap:

https://chipworks.secure.force.com/catalog/ProductDetails?sku=NVI-GF100-275-A3

 

[ECH]

yea i think so, although at least in win 7 you can unclick the maximum memory checkbox in msconfig and it dynamically reserves ram as necessary.

but im pretty sure whatevers on the graphics memory has to be duplicated in ram. it would be interesting to see what happens anyway, i guess everything would end up in the page file?

Yeah, it would be interesting to see what the outcome would be. At the very least to inform others of what to expect if they are still using 32bit OS and are looking at these cards.

 

[tomashoch]

The recommended price of the Radeon HD 7970 in euros is 499. As i said, the price in dollars is 549. I'm the source, 'cause i'm also the original source of the MegaUpload links with the PDFs.

See also: http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_message/37361053#37361053.

 

[Alexko]

Well that's expensive, but given that the cheapest GTX 580 on Newegg sells for $499, it's not outrageous.

 

[Rangers]

The recommended price of the Radeon HD 7970 in euros is 499. As i said, the price in dollars is 549. I'm the source, 'cause i'm also the original source of the MegaUpload links with the PDFs.

See also: http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_message/37361053#37361053.

Well, not as outrageous as these $700 FUD rumors.

I'm guessing 300 for 7950? Heck maybe more I suppose, will probably perform better than 570 which costs what 350?

 

[RobertR1]

Just one more day. It's like the build upto a race start. All sorts of what if's but when the green flag drops, the bullshit stops.

I'm really just looking at 2560x1600 reviews for Skyrim and BF3. Everything else is of minimal relevance.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

It is the first change AMD got to significantly rise their prices and they took it with open arms, almost managed to do it with the Cayman already, but surprise 500-series launch spoiled their plans. Not this time as they managed to capitalize on their "sweet spot" window. I quess we have to wait quite some time for the next big chip from nVidia to see this 360mm2 chip come down in price.

I'm not too happy with 549$.

 

[Rangers]

It is the first change AMD got to significantly rise their prices and they took it with open arms, almost managed to do it with the Cayman already, but surprise 500-series launch spoiled their plans. Not this time as they managed to capitalize on their "sweet spot" window. I quess we have to wait quite some time for the next big chip from nVidia to see this 360mm2 chip come down in price.

I'm not too happy with 549$.

Well if you think about it's less than 3GB 580 for 3GB 7970 with higher performance.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

It's also 200$ more than their previous single chip flagship, which seems to have had slightly bigger die size also, albeit less memory. Yeah it doesn't look bad against the old Fermi, but not a cheap upgrade to current AMD users either...