AMD: Volcanic Islands R1100/1200 (8***/9*** series) Speculation/ Rumour Thread

[Esrever]

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.

you must not remember the 8800, 9800, 250, 300s

AMD and nvidia rebranded their low end every year.


Make you just don't see.

 

[Dave Baumann]

...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.

No, no, no - that's an "Overclock"!

In addition, most of the line up doesn't have direct x 11.2...

Really?

AMD needed to be a lot more clear about everything about this launch.

So far this is a preview into what is occurring soon (hence no product press releases etc.); launches to follow (hence the comments regarding NDA sessions from the press at the event.

 

[onQ]

Really?

So are all the new cards DirectX 11.2 enhanced?

 

[Albuquerque]

As i recall, everything GCN is 11.2 hardware level.

 

[Blazkowicz]

ATI renamed the Rage Pro to Rage Pro Turbo, damn that was evil
With a friend we laughed of his Rage Pro Turbo 2, soldered into the motherboard. At least it worked.
Regarding names.. I've never had an idea what the difference was between a Virge/VX and a Virge/DX. I guess you bought either on letter preference.

 

[thatdude90210]

It only started to be okay when AMD started doing it. When it was only Nvidia doing it, they were mock and hated.

What mock and hated? Some video card warriors in messageboards fought over it, BFD. You know what really happened when Nvidia was doing it? They made a lot of money, that's what happened.

Both companies have made it common practice now. Rebranding is a war that was fought and lost long ago, let it go.

 

[lanek]

As i recall, everything GCN is 11.2 hardware level.

Exactly.. there's only one feature who have been changed by MS on driver level, but it only require a driver modification.. ( And like it is not used right now anyway.. not really urgent )

 

[A1xLLcqAgt0qc2RyMz0y]

...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.

I consider both to be re-brands as the GPUs were produced with no differences in functionally.

The 7970 and the 7970GE are both Tahiti and the 680 and 770 are both GK104 based.

 

[no-X]

ATI renamed the Rage Pro to Rage Pro Turbo, damn that was evil

"Turbo" was shipped with Turbo-driver, which added some new D3D features and brought slight performance boost.

I've never had an idea what the difference was between a Virge/VX and a Virge/DX.

DX: Updated 2D core, support for EDO-RAM, SDRAM and SGRAM, trilinear w/o performance drop (compared to bilinear), up-to ~25 % faster performance (exact difference was probably depending on model and memory configuration)

 

[sheepdogexpress]

you must not remember the 8800, 9800, 250, 300s

AMD and nvidia rebranded their low end every year.


Make you just don't see.

Of course that was bad, one of if not the worst rebrands ever. But it wasn't as big of a lineup as this one.

I don't remember the 8800gt making it into the 300 lineup.

 

[jimbo75]

Of course that was bad, one of if not the worst rebrands ever. But it wasn't as big of a lineup as this one.

The only reason it wasn't "as big" a lineup as this one is that Nvidia didn't bother to rebadge below the 660?

 

[LordEC911]

Of course that was bad, one of if not the worst rebrands ever. But it wasn't as big of a lineup as this one.

I don't remember the 8800gt making it into the 300 lineup.

Nope, it wasn't in the 300, made up of GT215 216 and 218.

G92 was in the 8800, 9800, 100 and 200 series though.

 

[Jay]

As i recall, everything GCN is 11.2 hardware level.

All GCN are 11.2 tier 1. (GCN 1.0)
All of them are not 11.2 tier 2. (GCN 1.1 and above I would assume)

 

[Albuquerque]

All GCN are 11.2 tier 1. (GCN 1.0)
All of them are not 11.2 tier 2. (GCN 1.1 and above I would assume)

You may be right, as I think I remembered something like that. Was it possible that the tier 2 stuff was only happening on the HSA devices though? Something about how the memory pointers could flow between main and graphics ram? I don't remember at all, to be honest.

 

[willardjuice]

Yes, GCN 1.1 = tier 2. GCN 1.X = tier 1. Still would love to know the technical reasons on why gcn 1.0 falls short of tier 2, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[Albuquerque]

I went back and looked, Dave Bauman alluded to the fact that you're correct in that GCN 1.0 -> Tiled Resources Tier 1 capable, and GCN 1.2 -> Tiled Resources Tier 2 capable.

The Microsoft definition of the tiering model for tiled resources is here: D3D11_TILED_RESOURCES_TIER enumeration. Really the only material difference appears to be the guarantee that the hardware provides mipmaps for each tile, and an extra shader instruction for clamping LOD on tile lookups.

This "tier" terminology is not a tier of DX11.2, it's linked only to the sub-set of partially resident texturing functionality within the 11.2 spec.

 

[no-X]

Nope, it wasn't in the 300, made up of GT215 216 and 218.

G92 was in the 8800, 9800, 100 and 200 series though.

Not really, there were many versions of GeForce GT 330 and at least one was G92-based.

 

[Jay]

The Microsoft definition of the tiering model for tiled resources is here: D3D11_TILED_RESOURCES_TIER enumeration. Really the only material difference appears to be the guarantee that the hardware provides mipmaps for each tile, and an extra shader instruction for clamping LOD on tile lookups.

Though that material difference may make a big difference in performance.
May actually be other differences, don't know, MS (and AMD) have been very sketchy about the tiers.
Doubt it would have been worth rolling out that GCN1.1 upgrade unless there was either additional differences or reasonable performance boost.

 

[LordEC911]

Not really, there were many versions of GeForce GT 330 and at least one was G92-based.

Hmmm... must have missed that.
Thanks for the correction.

 

[Albuquerque]

Though that material difference may make a big difference in performance.
May actually be other differences, don't know, MS (and AMD) have been very sketchy about the tiers.
Doubt it would have been worth rolling out that GCN1.1 upgrade unless there was either additional differences or reasonable performance boost.

I absolutely agree re: performance difference.