Mainstream GPU speculation 65nm - 55 - 40 - 32

[Squilliam]

Since we spend so much time speculating on the high end chips, how about we all change the pace and talk about the chips like the RV730s which have to hang off the PCI-E bus and can only draw power from the motherboard. This is the area where most mainstream buyers get their cards from.

Thats pretty much the best we can expect at the current process technology at present. So the real question could be, how will this segment evolve over time as AMD/Nvidia transistion to smaller process nodes?

This segment is interesting because there is a very clear and fixed limit in terms of power draw and heat output and it cannot exceed what the PCI-E bus can output. I just thought it would be interesting to speculate how the technology might evolve in a limited power/thermal window. 75W isn't a lot of power when considering the abilities of their thermally loose cousins but its like taking an interest in small cars, even if they aren't sexy it still takes a lot of effort to bring them to market in a form people would actually like to buy.

 

[Davros]

then theres the 4830

 

[Lukfi]

Speaking about power consumption and current technology...
http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3420&p=6
how is it possible that RV710 in idle draws the same power as RV730? Or if we put it another way, how is it possible that RV730 in idle draws as little power as RV620, RV710 and Chrome 430 GT ( http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/...adeon_hd_4550/6/#abschnitt_sonstige_messungen ), the three latter being much slower cards?

 

[ShaidarHaran]

when you idle your power consumption is all about your core clock and voltage

 

[Lukfi]

Then RV770 should be able to achieve similar results, but it is not.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

Then RV770 should be able to achieve similar results, but it is not.

It is clocked higher than its predecessors, and derivatives at idle - also draws more volts. Hence the higher idle power consumption.

 

[3dcgi]

when you idle your power consumption is all about your core clock and voltage

There's more to power consumption than clock and voltage though they obviously play a major role. Some other contributing factors are the clock tree in the chip and if the clock can shut off for parts of the chip or if it is always switching. This is a type of clock gating.

If your core clock is 1GHz yet much of the chip sees no clock during idle this part might have lower power consumption than a chip that broadcasts a 100MHz clock to the entire chip during idle.

 

[Dave Glue]

then theres the 4830

Pfft, nice graphs AMD. I hate it when OEM's/reviewers do that.

Any release date the 4830? Aside from the misleading graph still looks like a winner for its price bracket.