The ATI R600 Rumours & Speculation Centrum

Ati CAN'T make the same mistake twice...

 

They've already made Xenos, so it's not that new architecture.

Btw, since when has any product been released withouth so called delays? Never?

 

what about G80

 

NVIDIA have publicly stated that it should have been released before November. As a matter of fact, NVIDIA have publicly stated that they tried to get it out last year, never mind this. So yes, very late depending on how drunk you think Jen-Hsun was

 

G80 which was first told to be released.. humm.. was it summer "at the latest"?

 

Ya really like that symbol don't ya lol, kinda grows on ya

But anyways, no the r600 will not be another gffx, unless ATi's engineers purposefully sabotage thier own product!

 

Part of what has been missed a touch in the boggling over the 1350 MHz shaders is that base clocks took a step backwards in G80 to 575 MHz. This is covered by increasing ROPs to 24, for instance. A hypothetical R600 in the ~850 MHz range could be roughly equivalent with the same number of ROPs as R580.

ATI has not shown, that I can recall, much ankle towards going towards the clock domains concept and making significant differences in chip clocking for different parts of the chip. NV at least had tried that out a bit with the G7x line before throwing down with the major clock differences with G80. So, at least today, I'd be surprised if that shows up in R600. . .and thus I'd lean towards a higher base clock that applies to everything, with somewhat fewer units. That seems to be ATI's MO the last few years.

 

If they keep a die same size they could to it, but takes a lot more effort and transistors.

Sorry Cant' talk right now I gotta go to work

 

They'd better have more units, or they'll get stomped.

 

Heh, depends on which part of the chip we're talking about. Shaders, yes. I was thinking more of ROPs there. But yeah, they're going to need more than 128 shaders, however arranged, if I'm right about "one clock speed" for the entire chip.

 

Depends on what those units are capable of, unless we think R600 is going the scalar route as well....

96 < 128, but, 96 Vec4 > 128 scalar, even when running at 800Mhz vs. 1350Mhz....

ed. Geo beat me But, even with ROPs, you'll likely need to factor in differences in capability.

 

I don't think it will exceed 750 mhz if its all one clock speed, unless ATi goes with some exotic silicon, at least for GPU's, and so far only one GPU has ever used strained silicon which was thier latest .80 nm notebook gpu. But in anycase yeah 96 vec 4 ALU's should, even at 600, be able to do a number against 128 scalar at 1300 mhz

 

Would not 128 Xenos style shaders at 650MHz be about 750GFLOPs? And 96 shaders would be about 560GFLOPs I believe. Obviously utilization would be a valid point, but I am not sure ATI would need more than 128 shaders as 128-Xenos-like-Shaders (Vec4 + SF) @ 650MHz is nearly 50% bump over G80 in raw flops (not that flops mean everything). I have not been able to follow all the threads as of late so I could be missing something.

 

There's been a remarkable lack of band-wagon jumping on the "96 ALUs" theory since Tech Report reported Orton's remark, and some uncomfortable body language and facial ticks. Dunno if this is expectations management or what, but at this point I've personally moved 64/80/96 ALUs back into the ??? catagory.

 

Yeah I'm leaning towards 96 ALU's, you don't have the CEO of a company "hinting" at something like this, without some truth behind it. It was a fairly strong hint too lol, something to the effect of "it might even have 96....". It could be more but definitly 96 or higher I think. But the more ALU's this things got, I wouldn't be suprised if the clock speed drops aswell. The rumors of the high power usage of the r600 has been there for the beginning and I've heard about it from numerous sources, so most likely that is true too.

 

96 might be a bit much. I personally think 64 vec-4 ALU's is a bit more likely, as it'd be somewhat challenging to both double the theoretical shader power of the chip while also increasing its capabilities. Possible, I suppose, but I personally think it's unlikely.

 

actaully just reread that article, sounds like it could be something like what they for the x800's, 12 pipes, 4 pipes for safty, but for a refresh they could have enough chips with all 16 pipes.......

 

Isn't that exactly what NV did though? And using Xenos as a baseline, Xenos is fairly power effecient and small and has a bit of functionality at the baseline already. Obviuosly your opinion. I think in the biggest picture is when did ATI get serious about R600 (continuation of R400?) and how much did Xenos development hurt/help R600 in term of resources?

 

The theoretical shader power is less than twice that of the G70. It does so much better mostly due to added efficiency.

 

128? That would be one insanely monster huge chip. I think they would have trouble enough getting a 96 (Vec4 + SF) with full DX10 features into smooth mass production. But then again, there have to be a reason to the delay.