ATi 4870X2(R700) PCB Debut

[ANP !!!]

DAAMIT look at the transistors on the back of the PCB


Black PCB FTW !!

[[XC] 2long4u]

Well this makes it it sound like it won't be CF on a card:

CNET Article





So basically the card will not be CF on a board but will be a new interconnect between the GPU's. Also, it seems to suggest that the CrossFire connection was redone in the RV770 or at least for R700 since Peddie suggests that the CF connection is no longer at the very very end of the pipeline. Maybe that's why recent CF results of the 4800's show incredible scaling when it works? Or if as anandtech suggested and it was disabled on the RV770 cards, then it might be turned on for this and is different from the current 4800's.

Anyways, with the plethora of information of R700 that was just released it seems like ATI is pushing hard to get these cards out fast.

And quit thread crapping Sr7. This isn't the place for agendas.

If any of that is true Nvidia is in for a sever ass kicking.

[SimBy]

WTF! Why is it black? Does that mean something? Maybe it means Nvidia is about to get slaughtered

So I guess this is the new smaller and better PLX?

[zerazax]

Its not HT - the CNET article says its a new proprietary interconnect so I doubt its based on anything before. Likely what the port does is allow for information to be shared earlier in the pipeline instead of at the end like SLI and CF currently are.

[hecktic]

so the 4870X2 will feature a CF Version 2 ??

frankly I dont care what they decide to call it.... I just want to see how 2 of these 4870X2 cards stack up against 3 x GTX 280 and then against 2 x 9800GX2s

[ExodusC]

Its not HT - the CNET article says its a new proprietary interconnect so I doubt its based on anything before. Likely what the port does is allow for information to be shared earlier in the pipeline instead of at the end like SLI and CF currently are.

Which would give better performance hopefully?

I'm just a little disappointed in some of the crossfire scaling I've seen (from what I've seen it of course helps a lot at high resolutions, but at lower resolutions it's not too impressive). If this could give better performance at lower resolutions, this would be an awesome high-end card for anyone.

[zerazax]

Multi-GPU at lower resolution will always tend to scale lower because its more likely to be CPU limited at those resolutions early on. That and games have to be designed to support multi-GPU's. For instance, FEAR seems to scale exceptionally well while other games took a bit longer to get appreciable advantages with multi-GPU (like World in Conflict, it took a few driver releases from both sides before multi-GPU scaling improved).

[Xoulz]

I don't understand.. how does the size of hte PLX chip imply hypertransport?

Dude, are you so incredibly dense, that all you do is spout off and spew banter without any recollection or reference...?

AMD had mentioned (and it was rumored) months ago that ATI was going to leverage alot of AMD's chip-to-chip communication on their newer cards. Looking at this newer PLX chip and taking the tine to study the actual picture.... one can see there is indeed something going on.

Then add in all the technical reviews of the actual R7XX architecture, you would notice there is a new bus interconnect. Then there is the press release about this new "more powerful" interconnect.

I learned to connect-the-dots when I was 5...



Your pessimism is alarming, it's one thing to question or be weary, it's another to troll and thread-crap.

[Sr7]

Which would give better performance hopefully?

I'm just a little disappointed in some of the crossfire scaling I've seen (from what I've seen it of course helps a lot at high resolutions, but at lower resolutions it's not too impressive). If this could give better performance at lower resolutions, this would be an awesome high-end card for anyone.

The lack of scaling at lower resolutions is not usually due to any shortcomings of CF or SLI. Games are usually not GPU-bound enough to perform much faster when you essentially double the GPU power. The bottleneck at the lower resolutions is mostly CPU.

[LowRun]

I didn't say incorrect information isn't allowed, I said misinformation.. people spreading bogus crap and passing it off as news/fact. People who don't know, pretending they do, and misinforming others who come for advice.

By the way, aren't you the one so eager to let people have their opinions? Then why are you bothering me? Hypocrisy sucks.

You mean like when you told us rv770 has 480 shaders

It's wrong. 770 is 480 shaders.

[Cooper]

OK guys - he's gone for now. Please continue topic discussion

[Logos]

Guys, I'm not a mod and that's not my job, but please, stop being that aggressive with Sr7 just because you disagree with him, even if he's really wrong. Don't call him "stupid" or "thread-crapper" or whatever just because he's got a different point of view, that's not interesting, he didn't insult anyone ! We're talking about graphic cards, that's all

[zerazax]

Guys, I'm not a mod and that's not my job, but please, stop being that aggressive with Sr7 just because you disagree with him. Don't call him "stupid" or "thread-crapper" or whatever just because he's got a different point of view, that's not interesting, he didn't insult anyone ! We're talking about graphic cards, that's all

I agree we don't need it, but it's been carried on from thread to thread and you can look at his history yourself if you want. Good riddance for now. Now, back on topic:

Xoulz:

Chip to chip communication doesn't necessarily mean HT but the interconnect can certainly share information for processing to sale.

Eric Demers posted this on B3d a few days ago on why scaling can be super linear:

As for super-linear performance, it's possible -- The actual amount of cache is increased as well as the number of functional units. That means that it's very possible for data to stay in cache longer in xfire, than in regular rendering on a single card. That will lead to performance higher than 2x.

One possible use of the interconnect is to access the cache of the other chip in order to improve scaling.

Either way though, it seems like ATI is being very hush hush about R700 still, especially the interconnect since at the press briefing they didn't elaborate on the interconnect or CrossFireX Sideport seen on the architecture diagrams.

The only reason I don't think AMD had a ton to do with this was because R700 was supposedly laid out two years ago, before AMD even acquired ATI. Unless they were waiting at that point already for AMD's technology, which seems unlikely, they probably had other designs already in the works.

[Xoulz]

Wow, U dOUnT LERN 2 GUD.

It was a simple question, and now you're insulting me? Lame kid, lame.

If you'd done more "dot connecting" at the age of 5, maybe you'd know that a more powerful interconnect doesn't mean you're going to have 2 gpus acting as one and therefore scaling in all situation. Go read up on what an inter-frame dependancy is. Go read up on how Crossfire and SLI work. Look up what AFR is. Look up the shortcomings of AFR and why you have things like microstutter, corruption, and poor scaling in some games. THEN and only then should you come back here and pretend like you have a clue about what ATI is going to be selling. Until then, you might want to start looking at hardforums.

please

It's a single card.... it doesn't use Crossfire or SLI. *dee dee dee*

AMD isn't pushing Crossfire, because they had mentioned about 5~6 months ago that their "enthusiast" cards would most likely be dual-core type cards.

Knowing the early problems Intel had with their first gen "dual-core" CPU's and knowing what AMD did... can also be done with GPUs as they advance and mature into sophisticated multi-GPU solutions. That is the direction the GPU market is heading btw... or do you think motherboards with two video cards, lots of noise and sucking watts is the future..?

Just looking at the PCB, indicated that this might be AMD (ATI) second gen multi-GPU. You know nothing and indicate you've read even less. Indicating that everything you've just tried to spew may be moot.



But, since you know so much, I will yield the floor to you, while you explain to the community exactly how this newer PLX chip works and the technology behind it, since your somewhat an authority on this.

[Scubar]

Looks very nice indeed. Think ill be picking up one of these babies when its released.

[Xoulz]

OK guys - he's gone for now. Please continue topic discussion

man... your quick!

[Movieman]

man... your quick!

my Hammer..
Please don't call people "stupid" in the threads even if they are.
Make your points without attacking the person please.
If we don't have courtesy between us we have caos and that can't be allowed. I know, at times it is tough when you see someone say something that you know is dead wrond but calling them names doesn't help.
Thanks for reading and now this old fart needs sleep.
Night guys.

[awdrifter]

Looks ok. ATI really need to work on the CF drivers if they want to continue using dual gpu cards as their very top end cards in the future.

[Decami]

please please please lack latency and micro stutter issues, if that is killed, my Nvidia days might be over. Hard to pull away from CUDA though, being that i actually play some of the games on the list.

I have another wish, ATI talk with Nvidia and release CUDA/physx drivers and im sold. One can wish...

[LordEC911]

Just thought I would point out the one CF bridge...
Bye bye +5TFlops of GPU power.

[zerazax]

It's supposedly 2 x 2TFlops anyways for the two in CFX. I doubt they'd add the double CF connectors and allow 6 or 8 GPU configs anyways... the driver coding for that would lead to suicide

[clonez]

ah, 5 tflop (4x 1.2) unOCed is good enough for the time being

guess rv870 is gonna come out in 6-8 months, doubling (i guess even more..) flops again

[azza21]

You mean like when you told us rv770 has 480 shaders

LOL!

OWNED!

The pcb looks rather nice indeed, lets just hope they get a move and, july would be nice.

[DilTech]

Looks like this thread is officially swarming with mods...

Either way, the card looks promising. If there's no microstutter, and it scales like it should, I may end up getting one myself. We'll have to see how this all pans out!

[zanzabar]

please please please lack latency and micro stutter issues, if that is killed, my Nvidia days might be over. Hard to pull away from CUDA though, being that i actually play some of the games on the list.

I have another wish, ATI talk with Nvidia and release CUDA/physx drivers and im sold. One can wish...

why would u want CUDA when u have openCL, we need a free SDK more than CUDA, and NV will have to share agea or it will fail since havoc is openCL and owned by intel so its coming


dose any1 else like the digital PWMs with controller chips instead of choke, if it works like my dfi board this will be a great improvement and drop the TDP by about 10%, its just to bad that it has qibmonda and not samsung, qib isnt the only gddr5 maker now so it should be retired since its unstable and the samples arnt at the 4.5-4.6ghz that we were promised