The LAST R600 Rumours & Speculation Thread

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No need to get so defensive. Most of us could think of many situations where a GPU would NEED more than a 512bit wide bus to local mem, as I'm sure could you. You can't think of a way to saturate ~179 GB/s (@ 2.8ghz GDDR4)? I think its kind of a pointless exercise though.

If you'd have hypothetically a 1024bit wide bus with 1.4GHz (2.8 DDR), the resulting bandwidth would be at 358,4 GB/s. As for whether I could find ways to saturate say 180GBs of bandwidth...sure 16x (real) MSAA in high resolutions. But before GPUs would go this far they'd need the analogue amount of pixel/zixel fillrate first, or even probably ROPs that are capable of more than single cycle 4xMSAA. Theoretically 4 loops through the ROPs doesn't sound that "efficient" to me. Besides a 1GB framebuffer would suffer for such stunts most likely too.
 
Actaully its quite hard to saturate that much bandwidth before you hit a shader or fillrate bottleneck ;). Shaders get more complex less bandwidth thats necessary, post render effects take up bandwidth though, how many types of post render effects are we using in today's games, I really can only think of 2 or 3 that will become main stream, HDR, motion blur, (I wouldn't put deffered shading into this but since Unreal 3 engine has it.....) Deffered shading. Then we have AA and AF that take up bandwidth. Opps forgot depth of field, so thats 3-4 :)

AF takes up bandwidth?
 
So eh.....hmmm....:smile:

All this talk about R600 having HDMI sounds sweet, but when I heard HD audio, the first think that clicked in my mind was this old old slide leaked long ago and dismissed as fake(because some stated it was sloppy looking...). When this slide was released, I got really excited about the HD audio part and the possibilty of R600 having a sound chip. I mean come on!! LOOOK AT MY NAME!!

Then we hear (imo) solid info on R600 using HDMI in this tid bit...
INQ reported that R600 architecture will utilize PCI Express x16 connection to the fullest by delivering both video and audio content using HDMI. R600 board will be shipped with at least one DVI-to-HDMI dongle, with DVI serving as the bandwidth provider for video and audio. R600 chip has the bandwidth to drive not one, but two HDMI ports at the same time with resolution at 1920x1080 (1080p or 2560x1440 (1440p).

notice the part I highlighted in red that stikes me the most. This part completly reminds me of that old slide that stated the samething.

here is the slide...

zplaa92921teqi4kd2.jpg



It actully makes perfect sense IMHO. Look at GPU boards. They are actully mother boards on a mother board. It has a processor, it has ram, and a seperate PCB. The difference is that a GPU board is a entertainment/multi media board. It makes sense to add a sound chip to this entertainment/multi media board. Might as well intergrate it in a all in one package.
 
So eh.....hmmm....:smile:

All this talk about R600 having HDMI sounds sweet, but when I heard HD audio, the first think that clicked in my mind was this old old slide leaked long ago and dismissed as fake(because some stated it was sloppy looking...). When this slide was released, I got really excited about the HD audio part and the possibilty of R600 having a sound chip. I mean come on!! LOOOK AT MY NAME!!

Then we hear (imo) solid info on R600 using HDMI in this tid bit...


notice the part I highlighted in red that stikes me the most. This part completly reminds me of that old slide that stated the samething.

here is the slide...

zplaa92921teqi4kd2.jpg



It actully makes perfect sense IMHO. Look at GPU boards. They are actully mother boards on a mother board. It has a processor, it has ram, and a seperate PCB. The difference is that a GPU board is a entertainment/multi media board. It makes sense to add a sound chip to this entertainment/multi media board. Might as well intergrate it in a all in one package.

Look at the scheduled release date and memory BW... ;)
It still is fake, as i doubt there were any leaks of nearly half a year delay coming from ATI or any of its partners lately.

Passing audio data through the HDMI port in a graphics card is not that difficult.
If you recall, even some 7600 GS/7600GS and X1300/X1600 cards were equipped with S/PDIF Audio In pins connecting them to the sound card.
Then the audio data is sincronized with video data and sent through the HDMI cable to the HDTV/PC Display/Decoder, always on a secure digital domain.
 
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So eh.....hmmm....:smile:

All this talk about R600 having HDMI sounds sweet, but when I heard HD audio, the first think that clicked in my mind was this old old slide leaked long ago and dismissed as fake(because some stated it was sloppy looking...). When this slide was released, I got really excited about the HD audio part and the possibilty of R600 having a sound chip. I mean come on!! LOOOK AT MY NAME!!

Then we hear (imo) solid info on R600 using HDMI in this tid bit...


notice the part I highlighted in red that stikes me the most. This part completly reminds me of that old slide that stated the samething.

here is the slide...

[EDIT::IMG]http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b299/Genocide737/zplaa92921teqi4kd2.jpg[/IMG]


It actully makes perfect sense IMHO. Look at GPU boards. They are actully mother boards on a mother board. It has a processor, it has ram, and a seperate PCB. The difference is that a GPU board is a entertainment/multi media board. It makes sense to add a sound chip to this entertainment/multi media board. Might as well intergrate it in a all in one package.
Id love to see this. Im tired of onboard sound and if i have to pay 600+ dollars for this card, I want to get audio too. :)
 
Approximately one month later, the company will launch the GDDR3 version of the card. This card, dubbed the Radeon X2900 XT, features 512MB of GDDR3 and lower clock frequencies than the X2900 XTX. The X2900 XT is also one of the first Radeons to feature heatpipes on the reference design.

:rolleyes: :cry:
 
Heh, I forgot it was 128 scalar in G80. For some reason I was thinking 64.

Then figure that they're doubled, and assume a good deal more efficient, and then add ATI might once again be somewhar texture choked, and we get more reasonable competition (which could still allow ATI to be a good deal faster).

You're thinking that because there was some performance correlation made between 128 2x pumped scalar ALU's and 64 Vec4 1x frequency ALU's. Though according to the experts around here an array of scalar ALU's will in many cases achieve greater utilization efficiency than a similar array (in this case 64 1x freq. ALU's) of Vec4 ALU's.

Yeah, and I also hope that the r600 isn't as relatively texture op. choked as the r580 was. That would suck :(
 
If you'd have hypothetically a 1024bit wide bus with 1.4GHz (2.8 DDR), the resulting bandwidth would be at 358,4 GB/s. As for whether I could find ways to saturate say 180GBs of bandwidth...sure 16x (real) MSAA in high resolutions. But before GPUs would go this far they'd need the analogue amount of pixel/zixel fillrate first, or even probably ROPs that are capable of more than single cycle 4xMSAA. Theoretically 4 loops through the ROPs doesn't sound that "efficient" to me. Besides a 1GB framebuffer would suffer for such stunts most likely too.

No, yeah I agree with that. The point is the cases will exist down the road. Oh yeah, I agree that going that route for 16x MSAA and doing some nonsensical res/aa case isn't much good for todays GPU's. There's def. a reason why we won't have the 358.4GB/s bandwidth that you mentioned, and it isn't completely due to the size of the die or the complexity of the PCB required. If the company thought they needed it for a balanced part to make the most of their architecture they would (and will, eventually).
 
S
It actully makes perfect sense IMHO. Look at GPU boards. They are actully mother boards on a mother board. It has a processor, it has ram, and a seperate PCB. The difference is that a GPU board is a entertainment/multi media board. It makes sense to add a sound chip to this entertainment/multi media board. Might as well intergrate it in a all in one package.

It's more likely just a passthrough for HDMI audio rather than a sound chip or sound functionality based off GPGPU capabilities. You still need the bandwidth for sending audio down the HDMI cable along with the video (something that a lot of the earlier implementations of HDMI are lacking). I suppose this is so that when you install a HD or BluRay player, you get full HDMI and HDCP all the way to your display device.
 
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AMD Releases Final "R600" Specs

Interesting title but the article is actually a bit light on the specs, nothing that wasn't already known...

ATI guidance claims the X2900 XTX retail card comes as a two-slot, 9.5" design with a vapor chamber cooler. Vapor chambers are already found on high-end CPU coolers, so it would be no surprise to see such cooling on a high-end GPU either. The OEM version of the card is a 12" layout and features a quiet fan cooler.
No quiet fan for retail versions?

If these are the final specs, where are the non-final specs with numbers of TMUs, ALUs, ROPs...?
 
No quiet fan for retail versions?

The retail version has a vapochill cooler which is quiet. The OEM version, only has a fan without the vapochill, which is also quiet.

This might explain why the OEM version is larger. It needs a bigger cooling system because it's a standard heatsink fan. To make it effective and quiet, it has to be big. The retail version has a smaller, more effective vapochill system that is still quiet, but I bet is more expensive.
 
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