AMD: Volcanic Islands R1100/1200 (8***/9*** series) Speculation/ Rumour Thread
Love_In_Rio
Veteran
By definition something made to take advantage of GCN transistors wont work in Kepler ones.
As long as they planned for some forward compatibility (it should run on GCN2 GCN3 and so on), they could use some intermediate language also for the command buffer stuff which opens up a possibility (one would need details to say how slim it is) for others (i.e. intel and nV) to write Mantle drivers for their hardware. I doubt a bit that Mantle ties itself directly to the binary representations of the command buffer and shaders (would leave not much room for forward compatibility). But it really depends how much abstraction they left in. If it is too close to the bare GCN metal, it's probably hard to get it to run on other hardware with high performance.
I'm not convinced you've been here long enough to call someone like Dave a liar. He probably knows more about this architecture than your linked author does. Just sayin'...
Back to Mantle, I'm not sure yet how I feel about this. On one hand, I'm a current ATI owner, so I do like the thought of having the extra performance all to myself. On the other hand, I recognize that this has the obvious ability to start some sort of turf war; I fully expect NV will have their own low-level language to compete, and I worry about the fragmentation that might ensue.
However, with Mantle being a likely candidate for facilitating cross-ports from both of the new consoles, I'm having a hard time faulting AMD for making something that helps there.
SO, I think I've talked myself into giving it a pass right now. We shall see..
D
Deleted member 13524
Guest
Please clarify. What products are not rebrands?
R9 280X and 270X are not rebrands/re-hashes of previous cards with Southern Islands GPUs?
The whole world seems to be convinced that they are. Mostly because of the absence of TrueAudio.
D
Deleted member 2197
Guest
Nice point DSC, they are re-branded products with the exception of R9 290! Why even release those re-branded products?
A1xLLcqAgt0qc2RyMz0y
Veteran
Releasing re-branded products is a good way to maximize profits from a product line. It is done by both Nvidia and AMD.
The costs of introducing a complete new product stack is very very costly so what vendors do is release a single new high-end part and re-brand the previous generation parts at lower price points. AMD did this with the OEM 8000 line.
The issue I have is that Nvidia gets vilified for doing this yet AMD gets a free pass for doing the same.
And now we see AMD's re-brands get Clintoned "I did not have sex with that woman" i.e. an AMD re-brand is not a re-brand even if the GPU is the same as long as the fan/card is different.
Just another point to add, when you see a graph like this it makes the argument of Tahiti LE or Pro being rebadged into a 270X somewhat compelling;
If it's just a 7950 with a 256bit bus i will grab one, since there are no 7950 discounts where i live.
Afterall we only have firestrike scores to work from.
If it's just a 7950 with a 256bit bus i will grab one, since there are no 7950 discounts where i live.
Probably for the same reason NVIDIA launched the GTX 700 series: they bring small performance(/watt) improvements, make OEMs happy, renew interest in the brand, make the naming scheme more consistent, etc.
It's not pretty, but it's part of the game.
thatdude90210
Regular
What the hell are you talking about? Nobody gets vilified for this anymore. You're just be looking through your own filter. Everyone else know it's part of the game.
Rebanding pushes formerly expensive products into a lower price bracket while not devaluing the established naming conventions of the high-end segment (GTX x80 etc.)
There's absolutely nothing wrong with it, whether it's Nvidia or AMD.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with it, whether it's Nvidia or AMD.
...or the clocks are different - I mean, is 7970 GHz Edition a "rebadge" of 7970? No, it's not, and neither is 770 a rebadged 680 etc.
Let's try to get back on topic. If we must discuss the politics of rebranding again, I suggest a new thread.
Mintmaster
Veteran
To me it was pretty clear from the beginning that it wasn't going to be an open or collaborative standard.
I think AMD is sick of being the good guy, because nobody cares. AMD has leverage from its console wins, and if NVidia is to be believed, they're not making much money from that IP. They're going to parlay that into monopoly rents any way they can.
They had multiple cards in the final design up and running. They may have not decided on pricing or just need a few more dies from the fab for the launch and while waiting for it, don't want that nV pulls a Titan Ultra out of their sleeve in the few weeks until then. The cards looked to be pretty ready otherwise.
It would be unwise of AMD not to do so. nv already does this with the ptx intermediate language, right?
sheepdogexpress
Newcomer
It only started to be okay when AMD started doing it. When it was only Nvidia doing it, they were mock and hated.
When the 8xxx series consisted only of rebrands it started some controversy, but the excuse was it was only OEMs.
This rebrand is pretty bad since its made it through 3 generations and it isn't just OEMs.
The 7xxx series, the 8xxx series and now the rx 2xx series. In addition, most of the line up doesn't have direct x 11.2 nor trueaudio and these are the rebranded products.
To clear up some confusion, sometimes top products will have features that lower end products won't have. In this case, the lowest end products I believe have those features and the top ones have it too. Which leads me to the worst thing about this rebrand, confusion.
This has generally been a confusing unveiling of these cards, one of the more confusing ones in history. From the change in naming, the mixed feature set and giving the option for sellers to allow pre-order for a product where the specs and performance isn't known. One of the biggest attractions to this series is entirely an unknown at this point too, that being mantle.
Mantle is honestly confusing as heck how the various sources from AMD are presenting it. With something like eyefinity or even physx, AMD and nvidia showed immediately the result of such a technology. For Mantle, we don't even have performance numbers for games. It's more of a promise that games in the future will have it and it will increase more performance. The big question is by how much and how popular will adoption be. Some sources are also saying it is open, some sources are saying its not really open which should effect the adoption.
AMD needed to be a lot more clear about everything about this launch.