So, do we know anything about RV670 yet?

I don't know if they even be able to fit the pads if it were a straight shrink.
The pins seem awfully crowded as-is.

They would be changing something pretty significant to either chop the pin-out or make use of the otherwise wasted die space.

 

Well, keeping in mind that 55nm is 65nm optical shrink, then it's quite obvious that this is either an entirely new gpu based off of the earlier 65nm Rx6xx-series gpu's, or jsut a copy of said gpu's. Given the perforamcne gap between HD2600XT and HD2900XT, you can feel pretty confident in betting that this gpu's performance is going to be somewhere in between those two gpus.

Given that gpu pinout would be more dense, a cut-down R600 could be possible, but I really question the feasibility of such a product, both to meet market needs(no need, IMHO), and in financial/labour costs. But some extra silicon to deal with leakage and provide more landings seems ok to me...

Ill-fated "UFO" PCB gets a new gpu? Nah, 12-inch OEM cards are using this pcb.

That means either this gpu is intended to use HD2600XT extended pcb...or there really is some poor, poor planning going on.

 

on 55G (or even 65G, really), reduced static current comes for free, relative to 80HS.

 

R600 is a 420mm2 chip. Let us be pessimistic and presume that scaling is only 60%, that 10mm2 is analogue, and that UVD(/AVP?) adds an extra 10mm2 on 55nm.

From this, we calculate: ((420-10)*0.6)+10+10 = 266mm2. This is a relatively typical and realistic die size for a 256-bit GPU, and note that this is IMO a worst-case scenario. If you presume that the scaling is better and that you might save some space from having a smaller memory controller, you'd easily get to 210-240mm2.

All I'm saying is that I think R600 on 55nm would be a perfectly viable mid-end GPU. The die size is perfectly reasonable, and comparable to RV570's. Regarding the toolset, it would obviously be more based on the RV610/RV630 work than the R600's. So there is no real waste there considering what they already had to do.

N.B.: I'm not saying RV670 is basically R600 on 55nm. The ratios could be different. It might be slower or faster per clock. It could also be on 65nm. A lot of possibilities exist. But this one is far from impossible, and should not be neglected.

 

The name should tell you all you need to know about what RV670 is, I'd think.

 

NO kidding. I get it...but obviously some don't. Guessing is more fun, anyway.



"RV"

 

When its 55nm than won't coming out this year.
My quess is mid Q4 at 65nm.

 

What is the history with half-nodes when it comes to power draw (besides R600's rather leaky half-node)?

Every statement I've seen about half nodes is that transistor performance is pretty much the same, and that the only real difference was the density.

I am unaware of any design directly ported to a half-node, so I don't know of any comparison.

 

65nm rv670 ready and not releasing in Q4 because they want to shrink its the stupid thing i ever heard.
If AMD coming out Q4 with the 65nm version, still can shrink the GPU later, and can earn some money in the holiday season, i think Fuad walking in the dark with this rv670 story

Hopefully rv670 based cards not following the rv630 line with the motto: "not enough fast to compete, but cheaper than nv cards".

 

The time is not on AMD side now to jump forward, they have no card between 150$<->400$ so releasing a whole quarter later make no sense if everything ok with rv670.

 

UVD is actually 4.7mm2 on 65nm. (according to AMD at the analyst day), that would make it about 3.5mm2 at 55nm.

 

From my understanding, the half nodes have typically improved upon speed and power consumption, but not in any huge or generational way. The reason I hear is that the optical shrink does nothing, but the underlying process tech that was based on the older process incorporates all of the advances and fixes of that older process. So in the end there do appear to be improvements, but it is far shy of the full node changes.

 

RV670 VS G92


ATI should rule out this chip quickly .otherwise, ATI will face another problem

G92GX2

 

That's the thing. Some say G92 is a perfomance part, then other people say it's Nvidia's new flagship. So honestly I don't even know if we could compare RV670 to G92.

Anyways, some tiny little tid bits were released about R700 by AMD. From the wording of the PR slide, seems that they have performance per watt in mind for the chip. Seems AMD might have a major influence on R700.

 

Hi B3D forum users!
Some add-on letter to latest 2008 "Leo" AMD platform:

 

I'm confused now. Sigh...

If R680 is going to launch with the Leo platform in 2008, then we won't see R700 untill at best summer 2008.

Its scary to think that G92 is comming in november as well as new nforce socket AM2+ chipsets and AMD wont relase R680/R670 and RD790/SB700 untill 2008. It's also scary to think that 2008 is such a general term.

 

HD 2900Pro based on R600?

http://www.chilehardware.com/foro/amd-hd-2900-t106198.html