[B3D Analysis] R600 has been unleashed upon an unsuspecting enthusiast community

Discussion in '3D Hardware, Software & Output Devices' started by Farid, May 14, 2007.

  1. Farid

    Farid Artist formely known as Vysez
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    http://www.beyond3d.com/content/reviews/16/

    [​IMG]

    No more baseless and hypothetical speculation, the NDA finally lifted off and the information i out there for all to see and scrutinize!

    Some history (Compiled by Geo)
    The NEXT LAST R600 Rumours & Speculation Thread
    The ATI R600 Rumours & Speculation Centrum
    The (inappropriately named) LAST R600 Rumours & Speculation Thread
    Huddy says R600
    Xbit: This report is the standard for where "64 shaders" comes from.
    B3D on 80nm.
    B3D on 512-bit to external memory
    B3D on Xenos heritage
    Tech Report suggesting Dave Orton said "96 shaders" for R600. However, actual quote was "next generation", which might leave the door open that he was referring to a 65nm refresh rather than R600.
    Roughly 6 pages of talking about reported claimed die shots starting at #674 here
    Site claiming to have an R600 listing specs and "testing" results. Sober and considered opinion of B3D staff concerning the claimed specs: "Pttthhhppptt!"
    DailyTech finding said site credible.
    CJ's leaked specs discussing timeframes, prices and performance estimations on this very thread.
    Henri Richard promises Q1 for R600 launch
    AMD sets Tech Day for R600
    Beyond3D and Xbit report R600 pushed to Q2.
    Some spec and launch date information from the AMD 690G launch on 2/28/2007.
     
  2. Kanyamagufa

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    Brilliant! Reading Rys' take on it now.

    Oh, and will someone be a doll and lock that monster of a rumour thread? :wink:
     
  3. Rys

    Rys Graphics @ AMD
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    If only they'd delayed it another month, I'd have gotten everything in there for once. If I missed something you wanted in there, my apologies. It's not as in-depth in places as the G80 arch piece, but it'll do to get us rolling.

    Thanks to everyone that posted in the biiiiiiig R600 threads, there's a bit of each of them in each article, for those that took part in or followed the biggest consumers of DB space here since WaltC last talked about NV30.
     
    Razor1 likes this.
  4. SugarCoat

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    Havent read it yet but thanks Rys :)
     
  5. Reverend

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    I'm pretty sure, but not quite so, that you meant the lifting of the NDA and not when the thing appeared in reviewers' hands!

    Personally, I would've liked it if there were some quick gaming benchmarks thrown in this PartOne article. There doesn't need to be a lot of gaming benchmark analysis by B3D. Just give us some numbers basically, maybe at a single rez (whichever is the oft-used rez, via surveys, for each game you use, at "halfway-point" AA and AF settings since these are still the only really useful OOTB settings). But you know your target audience :)

    There are a few uncertainties which I'll PM/email you but overall I enjoyed reading this, Rys.

    Oh, and I still can't get over the weird feeling I get when I read "AMD" instead of "ATi".
     
  6. Pete

    Pete Moderate Nuisance
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    I know it's come up before, so a hint: middle-click (or right click and select 'open in new tab') on the diagram and it'll open in a new tab, for easy reference.
     
  7. quest55720

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    Great as usual from beyond3d. I just hope AMD can come up with something better around winter time when I upgrade to vista and direct x10 card.
     
  8. trinibwoy

    trinibwoy Meh
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    :lol:

    Great read, thanks Rys and all who contributed to the article! I was getting tired of STALKER and Oblivion benchmarks and this was a welcome surprise (didn't expect it until 9am).

    So R600 is doing the MSAA resolve on the shaders even for the box filter? Well that would certainly help explain why performance tanks with AA applied. And thanks for the sampling chart - nice one stop shop for comparing different formats and point vs bilinear sampling.
     
  9. epicstruggle

    epicstruggle Passenger on Serenity
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    Finally. :) Good job Rys (and everyone else involved in the process).

    Just a quick question, has ATI mentioned any word on whether they plan on continued use/support of HDMI, or do they plan on switching over to DisplayPort later this year (early next).
     
  10. dnavas

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    Thanks -- it is a good start. I'll need to read (rather than skim) it tomorrow, but the more I learn about the samplers, the more puzzled I become. Why split the texturing units into four, and then map each to one part of each of the "clusters"? Isn't this going to take a routing and caching hit? As well as restricting your texturing unit count to your cluster ALU organization?

    ALU capabilities are very interesting -- NV efficiency spin notwithstanding , the sheer number of them....

    -Dave
     
  11. silent_guy

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    Rys (and others),
    A really brilliant article, completely in line with the quality and thoroughness I've come to expect at B3D.
    Thanks! (Can't wait for the follow up articles!)
     
  12. Dave Baumann

    Dave Baumann Gamerscore Wh...
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    Does it need to be an either/or scenario...?
     
  13. demalion

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    Nice detail, and commentary that's (in Beyond3D tradition) refreshingly absent of cheerleading while not refraining from pointing out shortcomings informatively. Please keep it up in the upcoming additional articles.

    ...

    Perhaps I missed a link, but I think it would be a good policy to provide readily accessible links for downloading custom testing tools (and/or associated web pages if they are associated with a site that offers such), with source if available, whenever they are used in an article.

    NOTE: A "maximum" on Page 7 should probably be "maximize".
     
    #13 demalion, May 14, 2007
    Last edited by a moderator: May 14, 2007
  14. ChrisRay

    ChrisRay <span style="color: rgb(124, 197, 0)">R.I.P. 1983-
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    Thanks Rys. I'd thank/congradulate personally but i never seem to catch you. Some interesting stuff in there. ((Alot met my expectations. And you didnt fail to cover the areas that interested me))

    Chris
     
  15. epicstruggle

    epicstruggle Passenger on Serenity
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    Yes!



    :razz:
    In all seriousness, i posted the question after coming to the HDMI section, and was in a hurry to get back reading. Just wanted to know if ATI still plans on going with DisplayPort later this year.
     
  16. tEd

    tEd Casual Member
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    Good read Rys.

    I assume they haven't implemented EATM in the driver used?
     
  17. JeffK

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    I was wondering the same thing when I read about this. I don't know why they decided to split the texture units overall, but perhaps the reason for the inter-cluster splitting is because SIMD execution within a single cluster will create heavily unbalanced access to the texture unit across time. By sharing a texture unit across all less-synchronized clusters the accesses are more randomly spaced? Just a guess.
     
  18. Dave Baumann

    Dave Baumann Gamerscore Wh...
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    Think of it like this.

    Visualize the SIMD’s as 4 columns, with a 5’th column for textures.

    Each of the SIMD’s are comprised of 80 processors, that work on 16 elements – these elements are still arranged as quads; i.e. each SIMD is 4 quads, stacked high. The texture column is also arranged as 4 quads of textures and each of those quads serve a quad on a single SIMD at the same time. As all the processors in a single SIMD are going to be working on coherent data then this helps keep the texture coherency high.
     
  19. DudeMiester

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    From all I've read, the drivers are going to be the determining factor here. Thus, it means more waiting, until they mature. Although, given the potential and the price point, the 2600XT is probably a better deal than the 8800GTS. We'll see what happens.

    Also, I would bet that the R600 will be better than the G80 for GPGPU.

    Anyways, good article. :grin:
     
  20. memberSince97

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    Can we please see some D3D10 benchmarks to prove once and for all were not nV 30...
     
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