AMD Cayman info (or rumor)

[Dimitriman]

Fact 16 - Two Antilles is all the graphical power a human being is ever going to need.

Fact 17 - You do not buy Antilles, Antilles selects you from a pile of lesser graphics card owners.

[Mad Pistol]

Fact 18 - You don't tell Antilles what resolution you want to play games at. Intead, Antilles tells you what resolution you are going to play that game at. If you attempt to change the resolution, Antilles will say no, and your head will explode.

Fact 19 - Antilles does not accelerate HD video. All HD videos are made for the sole purpose of making Antilles more awesome.

Fact 20 - If you try and take Antilles out of your computer, it will weld your case shut, and then your head will explode. After that, Antilles will steal your girlfriend and make her much happier than she was with you.





btw, after I finished writing all 3 of those facts, my nose started bleeding. It must be a sign...

[zerazax]

is there a release date for these yet?

"Late November" is what most are saying

[Zonker]

Fact 21 - The Antilles is an aggressive feeder, and will eat anything from crickets, grasshoppers, roaches, beetles, moths, and other flying insects, to anole lizards.

Fact 22 - Additionally to normal food, meat(for example chicken hearts) can be given on rare occasion; but because Antilles reacts to movement, it has to be moved with a tweezer or a thread.

[LordEC911]

"Late November" is what most are saying

19th or the 26th most likely but hey, what do I know, I got Barts launch wrong... I was told the 18th so maybe it is Cayman that is launching on the 18th.

[Your_Boss]

Fact 22: On Antilles launch day there will be a human sacrafice for it.

[blindbox]

That ~10-15% number was also my estimate. It's of course dependent on the actual code running. It will be possible to construct cases were Cayman will be slower than Cypress (if Cayman doesn't have significantly more than 1920 SPs). But generally, it will gain the most in situations where the VLIW5 architecture fared worst in comparison to nvidia.

Actually it is already known how the VLIW4 units will be organized. The codepath for that arch in the driver is functional since Catalyst 10.4, I've posted some stuff about that over at B3D 10 days ago.

The transcendental functions are done by the xyz units working together (just like it is done for double precision already now, only that it takes 3 slots), so 3 of the 4 slots of the VLIW unit are used to calculate a transcendental. The fourth slot (w) does not take part in that and is still free to use in the same cycle. That means a good part of the t unit got split up in three parts and is distributed to the x, y and z units.
Another function of the t unit was doing format conversions and roundings. This functionality got replicated to all subunits. That means for this kind of stuff Cayman will fly.
24bit integer arithmetics are now fully supported by Cayman and can be done in all 4 slots (Evergreen had only partial support which was not really used).
A 32Bit integer multiplication will unfortunately block all 4 slots (could be done by the t unit with the xyzw slots free for use by other instructions in Evergreen), but this is probably the price to pay to get some transistor savings from the change.
All other integer instructions can again be done in all 4 slots (as before).

Double precision instructions behave the same way as in Cypress. Everything involving a multiplication (MUL, FMA) takes 4 slots while the other stuff (like ADD and conversions) takes 2 slots. That means the DP:SP ratio is 1:4.

I just realized that's your first post ! Yet a good one!

[Dimitriman]

Fact 23 - Many sources now confirm that the Stig is in fact Antilles.

[LexDiamonds]

Fact 23 - Many sources now confirm that the Stig is in fact Antilles.

lol!

[haschioz]

i knew it, the man behind the helmet. he's going to get you.

[Mad Pistol]

Fact 23 - Many sources now confirm that the Stig is in fact Antilles.

Wow... I knew that the Stig was a beast, but the fact that he can do amazing HD Graphical computations @ 60 FPS with insane amounts of AA is just mind blowing!!!

[spursindonesia]

AMD have shot themselves in the foot before due to low ROP's counts, i sure hope they don't do it again. with the shadder improvements and the shadder increase they will have more than enough shadding power, but if they sacrifice TMU and rop power to do that it would turn out very badly, sure the shadding performance is stupid high but games still need good TMU and ROP performance otherwise those shadders don't do jack.

Do you have some benches to back up your statement that AMD HAVE ACTUALLY shot themselves in the foot yet again with low ROP number for Cayman ? They very well MIGHT have, but we have no concrete evidence yet the judgement & sentence are already given.

If the past can teach us well, i remember quite fondly that my 16 ROP'ed HD 4870 were more than good enough to give 28 ROP'ed GTX 260 core 192 a very good run for its money.

[GoldenTiger]

Wow... I knew that the Stig was a beast, but the fact that he can do amazing HD Graphical computations @ 60 FPS with insane amounts of AA is just mind blowing!!!

Amazing! The mental prowess required to do that would make my head explode, probably, from the mere act of trying!

[HelixPC]

6870/50 sales are weak, Im not sure how the new video cards are going to do, especially with this steady declining economy

[bro20000]

In the end high end video cards allways sell most people want the best and the fastest card around! I think cayman will be a real winner if its on time!

[demonkevy666]

6870/50 sales are weak, Im not sure how the new video cards are going to do, especially with this steady declining economy

it's not Black Friday yet ?
lol

[Calmatory]

6870/50 sales are weak

According to who? Are they less than what AMD expected?

[highoctane]

In the end high end video cards allways sell most people want the best and the fastest card around!

You're being sarcastic right?

[-=DVS=-]

You can't look at numbers of those below 200$ you can barely play anything on that. Not any new modern games anyways.

[Mechromancer]

6870/50 sales are weak, Im not sure how the new video cards are going to do, especially with this steady declining economy

A 6870 may be my last big tech purchase for a year or so, but I'm sure as heck going to get one.

[Aten-Ra]

highoctane do you have the whole Q3 market share tables ??
if yes, please post a link

[highoctane]

You can't look at numbers of those below 200$ you can barely play anything on that. Not any new modern games anyways.

You mean you can barely game on a 5770 or a gtx 460, come on,,,, barely???

As for playing modern games, most games have user adjustable detail and resolution, they don't only increase detail.

highoctane do you have the whole Q3 market share tables ??
if yes, please post a link

http://investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?...sg&mid=9688438

[HelixPC]

A 6870 may be my last big tech purchase for a year or so, but I'm sure as heck going to get one.

Yes, but most people already have upgraded to a GTX 400 series or a 5870/50, and if you have any of those cards, you are probably good for another 2 years, since most games coming out dont demand much horsepower.

[HelixPC]

According to who? Are they less than what AMD expected?

This is coming from the Wholesalers and resellers i do business with.

[Xoulz]

Yes, but most people already have upgraded to a GTX 400 series or a 5870/50, and if you have any of those cards, you are probably good for another 2 years, since most games coming out dont demand much horsepower.

I disagree.

Most people are still on X1900 and 8800GT's.. most didn't jump on the dx11 bandwagon (5000 series), because their gaming cards still work fine. But now that most are switching to Win7 as bonofide dx11 games are out.

So, expect a good majority of gamers to go GPU hunting this holiday season.