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

[RobertR1]

Waiting for [H] review. Come on.

 

[OpenGL guy]

This is Charlies bad joke or he just tries to tarnung somethings in misinterpretation of the words .. i'm familiar with his "one pebble could start an avalanche" credo

so we have to believe SB (as SandyBridge) "some prototype" has fully supported pcie3.0 with *AMD prototype boards* .... isnt SB pcie2.0 ONLY?

There's plenty of info about SandyBridge-E out there that makes speculation pointless.

btw. pcie3.0 DOESN'T DOUBLING BW it's only 8.0GT/s from 5.0GT/s we had on pcie 2.0

Except that you missed the point that there's much less overhead with PCIe 3.0 so that you get closer to the theoretical bandwidth.
From Wikipedia

PCIe 2.0 delivers 5 GT/s, but uses an 8b/10b encoding scheme that results in a 20 percent ((10-8)/10) overhead on the raw bit rate. PCIe 3.0 removes the requirement for 8b/10b encoding, and instead uses a technique called "scrambling" that applies a known binary polynomial to a data stream in a feedback topology. Because the scrambling polynomial is known, the data can be recovered by running it through a feedback topology using the inverse polynomial.[20] and also uses a 128b/130b encoding scheme, reducing the overhead to approximately 1.5% ((130-128)/130), as opposed to the 20% overhead of 8b/10b encoding used by PCIe 2.0. PCIe 3.0's 8 GT/s bit rate effectively delivers double PCIe 2.0 bandwidth.

Emphasis mine.

 

[Kaotik]

Slightly offtopic, but wtf is going on at TPU?
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/28.html

Sure, some different games can push 570 over 6970 and even 590 over 6990, but 5850 over 6870?

 

[RobertR1]

[H] Review:

http://hardocp.com/article/2011/12/21/amd_radeon_hd_7970_video_card_review/1

I like their review style and their setup is very close to mine. My CPU is 4.6 but my GPU is OC'd higher.

All said and done, there's nothing I see with BF3 and Skyrim that's making me want to upgrade. I'll wait for 8000 or Kepler. Oh well.

As a whole, the card seems very good and I'm sure it will sell quite well. However, for my needs, there no reason to get one at this time.

 

[Shtal]

http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-rad...ocking-benchmarks-and-conclusion/14308-1.html

 

[DarthShader]

Idle power consumption number are impressive. But drawing more power than a 6970 loaded, is not good. :/

Some compute benchies:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/22
Whoa!

And same number of Rops is not a problem at all:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5261/amd-radeon-hd-7970-review/23

 

[RobertR1]

Regarding BF3. From anandtech:

The big question of course is why are we only seeing such a limited lead from the 7970 here? BF3 implements a wide array of technologies so it’s hard to say for sure, but there is one thing we know they implement in the engine that only NVIDIA can use: Driver Command Lists, the same “secret sauce” that boosted NVIDIA’s Civilization V performance by so much last year. So it may be that NVIDIA’s DCL support is helping their performance here in BF3, much like it was in Civ V.

But in any case, this is probably the only benchmark that’s really under delivered for the 7970. 5% is still a performance improvement (and we’ll take it any day of the week), but this silences any reasonable hope of being able to use 1920 at Ultra settings with MSAA on a single-GPU card for the time being.

Dave, any comment on this?

 

[Dave Baumann]

My understanding is that BF3 isn't using display lists. Generally speaking, though, we still have a lot to learn from GCN (even though the driver / 3D software teams have pulled an incredible feat off here - thanks guys!). I don't know what rev of the review driver Anand used, but we found about another 5% half way through the review cycle. Additionally we are finding things out right now such as the VLIW opimised FXAA code that DICE graciously implemented under an AMD path is now not as optimal as the NVIDIA FXAA path with GCN!

Lots to learn.

 

[Kaotik]

My understanding is that BF3 isn't using display lists. Generally speaking, though, we still have a lot to learn from GCN (even though the driver / 3D software teams have pulled an incredible feat off here - thanks guys!). I don't know what rev of the review driver Anand used, but we found about another 5% half way through the review cycle. Additionally we are finding things out right now such as the VLIW opimised FXAA code that DICE graciously implemented under an AMD path is now not as optimal as the NVIDIA FXAA path with GCN!

Lots to learn.

Now that you're here - any word on what's going on with the new drivers & performance?
I understand that different games can yield different performance and whatnot, but 5850 surpassing 6870 now?
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/28.html

It seems that whole of 6000-lineup is weaker than it should. (They're using 11.12 drivers)

 

[Dave Baumann]

I've no clue.

 

[RobertR1]

My understanding is that BF3 isn't using display lists. Generally speaking, though, we still have a lot to learn from GCN (even though the driver / 3D software teams have pulled an incredible feat off here - thanks guys!). I don't know what rev of the review driver Anand used, but we found about another 5% half way through the review cycle. Additionally we are finding things out right now such as the VLIW opimised FXAA code that DICE graciously implemented under an AMD path is now not as optimal as the NVIDIA FXAA path with GCN!

Lots to learn.

Thanks Dave! I'll keep an eye on performance for BF3 in future driver versions. Hopefully the team "cracks the code" a little. It's the biggest outlier and unfortunately a game that needs all the performance it can get.

 

[DarthShader]

I understand that different games can yield different performance and whatnot, but 5850 surpassing 6870 now?
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/28.html

Something is seriously borked there.

The 6870 barely faster than a 6850?
The GTX590 suddenly finding over 10% boost to comforttably sail past a 6990?

 

[DavidGraham]

I am sorry , how is the card 20% faster than GTX 580 ? this is a major overhaul for god's sake ! (and please dont tell me about drivers) !

 

[Ailuros]

My understanding is that BF3 isn't using display lists. Generally speaking, though, we still have a lot to learn from GCN (even though the driver / 3D software teams have pulled an incredible feat off here - thanks guys!). I don't know what rev of the review driver Anand used, but we found about another 5% half way through the review cycle. Additionally we are finding things out right now such as the VLIW opimised FXAA code that DICE graciously implemented under an AMD path is now not as optimal as the NVIDIA FXAA path with GCN!

Lots to learn.

With all due respect, in such a case an IHV should grant itself that wee bit additional time to find out those things and not charge $549 for AMD's learning sessions.

 

[AlphaWolf]

I am sorry , how is the card 20% faster than GTX 580 ? this is a major overhaul for god's sake ! (and please dont tell me about drivers) !

how much faster should it be?

 

[Dave Baumann]

With all due respect, in such a case an IHV should grant itself that wee bit additional time to find out those things and not charge $549 for AMD's learning sessions.

You want to delay product that is ready and the fastest thing to be available for the sake of a little performance in a title or two? If that were the case we'd never release any new hardware. It not like performance isn't constantly improving on all hardware, it's just the rate of change will be higher with such a substantial change.

 

[thatdude90210]

how much faster should it be?

About this much. *holds out hands shoulder width*

That's a little too expensive for me for a videocard nowadays. I'll wait to see if maybe a 1.5GB 7950 is more reasonably priced.

 

[Ryan Smith]

My understanding is that BF3 isn't using display lists. Generally speaking, though, we still have a lot to learn from GCN (even though the driver / 3D software teams have pulled an incredible feat off here - thanks guys!). I don't know what rev of the review driver Anand used, but we found about another 5% half way through the review cycle. Additionally we are finding things out right now such as the VLIW opimised FXAA code that DICE graciously implemented under an AMD path is now not as optimal as the NVIDIA FXAA path with GCN!

Lots to learn.

Hi Dave, we used the 2nd release, the one with the BF3 performance improvements.

 

[DavidGraham]

how much faster should it be?

You tell me ! It's advantage over GTX 580 (where is the 60% faster moto?) will not encourage so many people to upgrade at the enthusiastic level especially with that price !

I am telling you right now , people's reaction to the card has been mixed at best , they like it , but they don't feel the urge to purchase it , not while they know that the competitor is preparing for another round .

 

[Rangers]

Now that you're here - any word on what's going on with the new drivers & performance?
I understand that different games can yield different performance and whatnot, but 5850 surpassing 6870 now?
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/28.html

It seems that whole of 6000-lineup is weaker than it should. (They're using 11.12 drivers)

Do they actually even bench all those cards? I always assume when you see a list of like 50 old cards as techpowerup, that they're surely not benching every one of those anew, or the review would be a whole lot of work. More like using old benches for most cards and adding in a few fresh benches for the new/top cards.

I just bought a 6870 2GB though, and in fact returned a $50 cheaper 5850 for it (although mostly the extra GB on the 6870 is the reason I did so), so I am concerned.