R520 Running

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http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20379

OUR WELL INFORMED Spanish lady nicknamed Informationa Digitala told us that ATI's next generation chip codenamed R520 is taped out. She confirmed that the chip is 90 nanometres. As far as we know it works well, but it's early days yet.

We suggest that we are talking about A01 silicon and that there is always some hardware things and flaws that can be fixed in the next revision. ATI still has time as the company wants to launch in a Spring window. The chip is real, the chip is there and all of the previous news that we brought is confirmed.
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make sense ... initial tape-out of R520 should have happened by now for ATI to be able to launch it in the late spring / early summer timeframe that is rumored..
 
He obviously means back from the fab, not taped out. I think they're about 3 weeks late with the news too.
 
Seems like they might even be ahead of their late spring schedule, non :?: Though more than one revision might be enough to eat up those months.

Anyone care to speculate as to whether they'll try to deliver more than just a high-end ASIC at launch? I can see the latest X800XL/X850 boards continuing to occupy a broad mid-range segment when R520 starts to ship, but I don't think the OEMs will afford the kind of unchallenged longevity to X300/SE that they did to the GF4MX.
 
So can anyone say what performance the R520 will have? Its on silicon now, right?

A: 2 x X850XT?
B: 2.5 x X850XT?
C: 3 x X850XT?
D: 2 x X800XT?
E: 2.5 x X800XT?
F: 3 x X800pro?
G: 3 x 9800XT?
H: 5 x 9800XT?

Or maybe another combination I missed. ;-)
 
I'd guess only 10-20% higher in older games. There should be more of a difference in shader limited situations, though.

I hope for some IQ quality improvements, e.g. 8x rotated grid AA, or angle independent AF. But I fear those have to wait for R600.

I'm quite curious to see how power consumption (TSMC's 90nm low-k) will be. More like Intel (quite a bit higher than 130nm) or more like AMD (a bit lower than 130nm)? In the latter case I might be tempted to replace my R420 with a R520. In the first case probably not.
 
Really? You think they're going thru all that trouble for a 20-30% improvement? Sounds not too worth it if that's all it is. I'm hoping for at least 100% improvement over the X850XT. Sheesh. :rolleyes:
 
R300King! said:
Really? You think they're going thru all that trouble for a 20-30% improvement? Sounds not too worth it if that's all it is. I'm hoping for at least 100% improvement over the X850XT. Sheesh. :rolleyes:
I said "in older games".

Also, speed is not the only important thing. ATI needs to make sure that developers keep working with ATI cards. Probably lots of developers jumped back to NVidia for their main development card, because they want/need to do SM3.0. Heck, even some XBox2 devs were said to have changed their card to NVidia, cause XBox2 does SM3.0, while R420 does not.
 
R300King! said:
Really? You think they're going thru all that trouble for a 20-30% improvement? Sounds not too worth it if that's all it is. I'm hoping for at least 100% improvement over the X850XT. Sheesh. :rolleyes:

twice the performance would mean not only adding the trannys for sm3.0 support as well as 32bit color, while also adding the trannys for the new dynamic branching enhancement rumors that are circulating, AND either doubling the the number of pipelines or doubling the clockspeed of the r420 (or some ratio of the two). thats quite a bit of transistors even for the 90nm process, considering its the first one they've ever done.
 
Mulciber said:
R300King! said:
Really? You think they're going thru all that trouble for a 20-30% improvement? Sounds not too worth it if that's all it is. I'm hoping for at least 100% improvement over the X850XT. Sheesh. :rolleyes:

twice the performance would mean not only adding the trannys for sm3.0 support as well as 32bit color, while also adding the trannys for the new dynamic branching enhancement rumors that are circulating, AND either doubling the the number of pipelines or doubling the clockspeed of the r420 (or some ratio of the two). thats quite a bit of transistors even for the 90nm process, considering its the first one they've ever done.
They made it with R300... so why not?
 
It's more than likely going to be developed at TSMC and they don't offer a non Low-K option at 90nm Domell. Also on the subject being discussed a few posts up, I'm pretty sure ATI is aiming for a substantial improvement this time around also with respect to shader performance.

I wouldn't expect double the performance, but quite possibly a 50% or more in many high resolution situations on the more advanced titles out. They have to factor in enough performance to counter what they think could come out from nVidia and also to draw high end customers from the previous generation. I'm also doubting the R520 might be as conservative as some think as the introduction of the X800XL & x800 makes it seem like they want those products to exist for a while to come.
 
they can barely produce high end r420/r480 as it is. you think in 4 or 5 months from now they are going to launch a chip substantially faster than what they cant even produce now?

why wouldnt they release a marginally faster chip? they just released a chip that was released MONTHS ago basically unchanged and raised the price 50 bucks.

if they could so easily double the performance of the r420 4 to 5 months from now they wouldnt have even rereleased the r420 some 7 months after it originally came out.

and finally its not at all likely that they can substantially increase performance over a product they can barely get to market in a timeframe of 1 year.
 
Nebuchadnezzar said:
Mulciber said:
R300King! said:
Really? You think they're going thru all that trouble for a 20-30% improvement? Sounds not too worth it if that's all it is. I'm hoping for at least 100% improvement over the X850XT. Sheesh. :rolleyes:

twice the performance would mean not only adding the trannys for sm3.0 support as well as 32bit color, while also adding the trannys for the new dynamic branching enhancement rumors that are circulating, AND either doubling the the number of pipelines or doubling the clockspeed of the r420 (or some ratio of the two). thats quite a bit of transistors even for the 90nm process, considering its the first one they've ever done.
They made it with R300... so why not?

there was a much bigger gap between r300 and the previous tech than there is between r420 and r520.
 
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