New rumor about ATI Southern Islands

[saaya]

From what it sounds like and if the changes are true, a 1280SP Barts sound be performing around a 5850-5870. A 1280SP 4d design should perform very similar to a 1600SP 5d design, since they supposedly aren't often utilizing the 5th SP in gaming situations and that they are touting "efficiency" as their main goal.

so their chips are more efficient than nvidias, but 20% of their sps are actually idle all the time? idk... sounds too good to be true if you ask me
but i hope its true...

Neliz was saying something quite awhile ago about the 5850 replacement performing around a 5870. Cayman will be taking on the 512SP GF100 with the cutdown/salvage part being slightly ahead of the current 480SP GF100. Think about it, you need around a 20-25% performance increase over 5870 to match/beat GTX480 in most situations. Cayman needs a 10-20% increase over that to match/beat a 512SP GF100, if it stays around 700-750mhz.

So all that math above comes out to a fully specced Cayman needing to be roughly 35-40% faster to fall within those guidelines, which is what I was originally speculating awhile ago.

yeah but for a 40% boost you need more than a 40% spec boost... im a bit sceptical about them getting there... i think they will fall short of beating a 512sp gf100, thats why theyre refreshing the 5970 so soon
as for bart... sounds interesting for sure... i wouldnt mind a 5870 for 200$... 460? whats a 460?

On a side note, the info from the roadmap is a good 4 years old but the codenames are correct. Also, the dates are there for mass availability, do not base launch/release dates off the roadmap. Most early roadmaps like these usually give a quarter or so for leeway.

well i dont think anybody is in a hurry to upgrade... actually im curious if there will ever been a real push for upgrades again like weve seen it in the past, since there is no game on the horizon thats going to bring the current hw to its knees... and you need at LEAST 1 really good game that does that to create demand...

I dunno Saaya, i think every mm^2 counts especially if the chip is gonna be used in sub-200 US$ segment, and considering supply problem that has been plaguing ATi for since the launch of Evergreen family, this will help alleviating that problem somehow.

Regarding performance, i think ~HD 5850 can be counted as being conservative, with 320*4 config, if this rearrangement is successfull, we can expect ~HD 5870 like performance in many occasions, and good performance is not only determined by max & avg FPS, i expect some decent improvements in min FPS & a competitive tesselation performance in these upcoming chips from ATi.

Well, i guess these speculations are rather leaning on an optimist side, but considering what ATi has achieved since HD 2900 debacle, the optimism is quite warranted. In this scenario, nVidia's only competitive in the mainstream segment (GF 104 is pretty good chip, especially if the full spec one can be produced in good quantity), but would have much less profit & incentive to play the price war game in maintaining market share.

i think your right... thx a lot for sharing your thoughts
and yes, every mm2 counts but i dont think anybody would launch a new part if all it does is safe them around 10% die space...
thats not feasible i think...

[-Boris-]

Neliz was saying something quite awhile ago about the 5850 replacement performing around a 5870. Cayman will be taking on the 512SP GF100 with the cutdown/salvage part being slightly ahead of the current 480SP GF100. Think about it, you need around a 20-25% performance increase over 5870 to match/beat GTX480 in most situations. Cayman needs a 10-20% increase over that to match/beat a 512SP GF100, if it stays around 700-750mhz.

How would 6% increase in shaders get nVidia 10-20% performance with a full GF100?

I'd say 30% over 5870 is enough to match a full GTX480.

[mAJORD]

At the very most..

On average, A 480 is not 20-25% faster than a 5870.

[Gilgamesh]

ATI Southern Islands codenames spotted in Catalyst 10.8

http://vr-zone.com/articles/ati-sout...10.8/9684.html

[saaya]

At the very most..

On average, A 480 is not 20-25% faster than a 5870.

lets see...
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid..._17.html#sect0
let me do the math...

1920x1080 4aa/16af
17.57%

at 2560x1600 the lead is bigger, but many games arent really playable at that res, even with a 480...

ATI Southern Islands codenames spotted in Catalyst 10.8

http://vr-zone.com/articles/ati-sout...10.8/9684.html

somebody posted about that in this thread before it was on vrzone :P
and if its southern island then why is it all called NI?

[Manicdan]

so their chips are more efficient than nvidias, but 20% of their sps are actually idle all the time? idk... sounds too good to be true if you ask me
but i hope its true...

it is true, when people ran furmark with the 4800s and flipped out when they got really high temperature and power draw, my response was compare the framerate, it was SO much higher than the competitions. Watts per Frame was really good.

those 5 shader pairs are rarely used in games, some know how to push them (mass effect is one of those games, found out my card sucked playing that game cause it pushed it harder than other games i played)

also those smaller SPs are just that, smaller, the die space cost to add that 5th is not taking up 20% of the chips space, some of us did some fun math of comparing the performance gains by going from 5 to 4 and the size increase that would come with it based on different ratios.

i wonder what would have happened if 4870 was only 4 deep instead, maybe it wouldnt have overheated in furmark, maybe it would have stomped all other chips.

[Iconyu]

Which means that it's NI that's coming first, not SI. We were never sure which one is going to come first.

Another point of view is that if SI really is just NI but on 40nm the drivers would be exactly the same, or ATI might just have decided it was easier to keep the name NI so they wouldn't have to pull out a atlas for a few months.

[LordEC911]

How would 6% increase in shaders get nVidia 10-20% performance with a full GF100?

I'd say 30% over 5870 is enough to match a full GTX480.

If they up the clocks at all, notice how I mentioned 750mhz...

At the very most..

On average, A 480 is not 20-25% faster than a 5870.

No, but that's what it might take to handily beat the GTX480 in "most situations."

[saaya]

Another point of view is that if SI really is just NI but on 40nm the drivers would be exactly the same, or ATI might just have decided it was easier to keep the name NI so they wouldn't have to pull out a atlas for a few months.

its just a name tag, a quick ref... its very possible they just didnt change it or dont care about it...

and if its not, it could just mean that the drivers treats them as NI, even though they share more blocks with the current chips than the actual NI chips... but to the driver it doesnt matter, so the driver treats them as NI...

in the end... does it really matter?
if they rock, they rock, and nobody will care if its because a certain building block is new or the same as in the current chips...

No, but that's what it might take to handily beat the GTX480 in "most situations."

true, if its 20-25% faster then even all the TWIMTBP titles running at hundreds of fps wont make a difference and itll come out on top

[mindfury]

Real or fake?

http://we.pcinlife.com/thread-1498296-1-1.html

[netkas]

Real or fake?

http://we.pcinlife.com/thread-1498296-1-1.html

haha, they erased deviceid while same info is in GPU field.

so its - 233,CAYMAN XT (6718),NI CAYMAN

why they always erase dev-id, there is nothing secret there....

[Manicdan]

im sure were gonna hear that the gpuz dosnt have the details in their database and it wouldnt show up right anyway

[spursindonesia]

@Mindfury, hmmm, Cayman XT aka HD 6870 scores ~12.000 at Vantage Xtreme setting, nice. It has 850 MHz core & 1.6 GHz mem using 256 bit buswidth, so no 384 bit as earlier speculated, but the mem clock is pretty high isn't it ? If the card is using a 6 Gbps GDDR5 chips, that means already OCed clock on its default setting, CMIIW.

WOW, if that score is true, nVidia will be in the world of hurts then. Around 20% faster than GTX 480 & 35% faster than its predecessor, and not that far away from the current king of the hill dual GPU card, pretty darn impressive !

[cegras]

Somehow ... I don't think so.

[informal]

Hmm that score somehow looks fishy..

[Jowy Atreides]

Cheat engine to edit the gpu-z details and a screenshot.

2 minutes to fake

[Chumbucket843]

isnt it w1zzard who puts the gpu info into gpu-z?

[spursindonesia]

Well, ATi did pull a nice core performance improvement using the same process node in the past, RV 670 to RV 770 comes to mind, so while the score seems very optimistic & some call unrealistic, IMHO it's not outside the realm of possibility.

[LordEC911]

What does a GTX480 score? Around ~x10,000?

[spursindonesia]

What does a GTX480 score? Around ~x10,000?

This is from XBitLabs latest article regarding GTX 460 SLI vs HD 5970:



GeForce GTX 460 SLI vs. Radeon HD 5970: Two Against One (page 11)

[Chickenfeed]

Honestly that score isn't so out there to be unbelieveable or anything. Really anything less would be a let down for a new generation of gpus. Entirely possible. If anything we should hope it is even higher.

[kadozer]

That score should be where its at considering how much time they had to work on this. Anything less than 20% lead over a GTX 480 is failure imo. In other words if you have a 5 series now just skip it and wait for 28nm.

[Johnny87au]

definately a 460 Killer!!

[Florinmocanu]

definately a 460 Killer!!

That would be Bart/Burt, not Cayman.

[mindfury]

nothing i can see in the gpuz part of the screenshot that suggests it's fake.

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=129668