R520: 32 PS pipelines? Any truth to this?

True, the architecture stayed largely the same. But then you can also argue that R200 was on 0.15u and much less complex architecturally than R420, yet it had a core clock of only 275MHz compared to 520MHz.

 

(My bold)
Well, that's the point. You have to design the signal paths so that the longest one (critical path) can be traversed in less than a clock cycle. E.g. if you target 500MHz, you have to make sure that every unit or pipeline stage takes less than 2ns from clock edge to stable output.

Asynchronous circuits don't have that problem, because they're driven by their own switching speed, not an external clock. OTOH, they're more complex, and require more FIFOs and synchronization effort to compensate for the varying speed.

 

True, but then we're talking about a much older chip also. I don't doubt that we''ll see 300+ million transistor GPU's at 700+ MHz, the question is just when..

 

Why not?

not that i think the chip is clocked higher than 700mhz. Looking at ATi's track record it could be more along the lines of 625, or 680 or 715 heh...

when you look at how far they pushed the clocks on the last generation it shows that they have been building a nack at this kind of thing. about 320m transistors in *excess* of 600mhz with max clocks above the 700 range.

At any rate.. at 16 "pipelines" it better clock that high or in certain cases its going to get whomped on. just like the 5800 V.s. R300

 

Remember Orton emphasized how current architectures were not very efficient.

Maybe the R520 will be able to keep up with the G70 at "just" 16 pipes and around a 600-650 MHz clock.

 

If quad = quad between the two GPUs, then obviously yes. Exeption being geometry throughput since 8VS@600MHz = 1200MVertices/sec.

 

No more than nVidia.

 

Well, considering that RSX (which is more or less a 90nm G70) should be available pretty soon, it may become a situation where 16pp 600-700 MHz R520 will compete with 24pp 500-600 MHz G7x.

ATI's late. I think they should cancel R520 and go with R580 already and not by the year's end.

 

Course then you have the dynamic clocks playing head games. I think the jump is 40+ so the G70, especially the out of the box overclock ones, are already operating close to or in excess of 500mhz.

In the end on the R520, i think its going to come down to ALU performance across the board. Not just a raw number like "16" or "24".

 

Yep.

 

I think they are having major problems still getting the clocks to where they want them....


http://theinq.com/?article=24776

why are they releasing this card when the r520 line should be out in a couple of months? Wasn't it stated that the midrange cards were going to be released before the high end?

This could just be more Inq BS or a smoke screen but still. Or ATi could be getting rid of left over stock......

 

Thats a "dead die" SKU - a way of making a little money of a bunch of otherwise dead cores; unlikely that this has any bearing on the next generation (although it may be an indicator that they are coming as they may want to dump these on the market before the next gen availability).

 

That makes sense.

 

Different price brackets?

 

Is that a hint that RV515 is 8 pp too (just like G72) 8)

 

Pipelines? 4, 8, 12 - take your pick, who knows these days...

 

Is it safe to say that Nvidia's yields are good if they can release the GTX first while ATI may be releasing the midrange as "failed" high end parts first? Or am I reading into this wrong?

 

They're supposedly going to sell 8-pipeline R430s. Not next-gen parts.

 

They're also, apparently, operating on different process technologies. Of course, nVidia's yields are sure to be fairly good since the 7800 GTX doesn't seem to be in horribly short supply.

 

Isn't the "V" traditionally for low end at ATI?

I recall the following numbers from internal presentations mentioned here in the past:

R520= 16/1/1/1
RV515= 4/1/1/1
R580= 16/1/3/1
RV530= 4/1/3/2

Now if anything RV513 sounds like a budget single quad sollution to me, followed by RV530 based on R580 later on.

I'd guess that R515 and R530 would be the according codenames for future mainstream parts and yes there 2 or 3 quads make obviously way more sense than only one.