Radeon HD 7000 Revealed: AMD to Mix GCN with VLIW4 & VLIW5 Architectures

[ajaidev]

"
Starting next week, AMD is going to organize Tech Days in several destinations around the globe, such as London or Paris - during which the company is going to present 28nm Radeon HD 7000 series.

There is a lot of rumors flying around the web, some of which are spun by AMD themselves to raise confusion, as the Radeon HD 7000 series is going to mix the existing VLIW4 and VLIW5 architectures with the "Graphics Core Next" (GCN), introduced during June's Fusion Development Summit held in Bellevue, WA.
"

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news...itectures.aspx

yay

[EniGmA1987]

VLIW4 is better than VLIW5 isnt it? Something about the extra overhead or whatever.

[Dimitriman]

Sounds like a truly revolutionary step from AMD. Don't care if mid range is VLIW 4 because Cayman offers enough performance to cover that.
But GCN sounds like a very big chip from his description and with a lot of potential. Let's hope the thermals don't spoil it.

[Sentential]

Also for the TL: DR Crowd:

Radeon HD7970XT:
2048 processing cores 1ghz
128 Texture Memory Units
3GB GDDR5 (384bit) @ 5.5ghz
MSRP $450

Radeon HD7970PRO:
1920 processing cores @ ???
120 Texture Memory Units
1.5GB GDDR5 (384/256bit) @ 5ghz
MSRP $350

For Comparison:

HD6970
1536 Stream Processors @ 880mhz
96 Texture Units
1GB GDDR5 (256bit) @ 5ghz


Advantages:
25% More Shaders
25% More Texture Units
12% Higher Clock Speed
33% Higher Memory Bandwidth

Honestly I had expected more, unless the efficiency is greatly improved it wont be the usual 50% faster than the previou gen, more like 35%

[iddqd]

^ Tahiti Pro @ 900 Mhz, and they want to launch them at the 2012 CES.

Any word on when the 7800 are coming out? A straight-up Cayman shrink shouldn't be too hard...

[AffenJack]

25% More Shaders
25% More Texture Units
12% Higher Clock Speed
33% Higher Memory Bandwidth

Honestly I had expected more, unless the efficiency is greatly improved it wont be the usual 50% faster than the previou gen, more like 35%

What are you calculating there? 7970XT against 6970 would be:
33% More Shaders
33% More Texture Units
13,6% Higher Clock Speed
65% Higher Memory Bandwidth
51% more Gflops

Add a bit higher Efficiency of GCN to it and we are at a normal 70% jump like from 4870 to 5870.

[tajoh111]

According to neliz at beyond3d, its rumored that we won't see an increase in transistor to performance from NV or AMD.

If those are the correct prices, this is what I had expected earlier with the 69xx series, but couldn't because of competition. AMD has wanted to raise the price for a while now, hence the name change and they are finally going to get to do it with the lack of NV.

[Klarko]

What happened to my XDR2?

[Russian]

What happened to my XDR2?

You do realize how pointless XDR2 really is, right? Plus, there isn't that much volume production of it and the prices of it are much higher than GDDR5... MUCH higher.

[kuroikenshi]

I'd like to see a day that memory becomes something shared between CPU and GPU, need more bandwidth though.... maybe that hybrid memory cube from Samsung and Micron could be it.

I'd have the speed and bandwidth required, making video cards less expensive and cooler. (Utopian dreams here)

[hersounds]

i think that AMD can be put in market an special edition /overclocking edition with XDR2 memory why not?...many here can be purchase that.

[PatRaceTin]

35% faster sound good

[tbone8ty]

wow the 7870 looks insane @ $249 basically a 6970 shrunk to 28nm and at half the power consumption

so this article was kinda sorta correct minus the XDR2 memory

http://www.nordichardware.com/news/7...us-memory.html


(if some body can post the pics in this article it would be greatly appreciated)

[SKYMTL]

Here we go with the wild, over inflated hopes and dreams of some.....again.

[Chrono Detector]

So it has been confirmed the 7970 has a 384 bit memory bus? Alright, about time too ATI, its been a while since you moved away from 256 bit. I thought they were going to use XDR2? Whatever happened to that?

[xBanzai89]

According to neliz at beyond3d, its rumored that we won't see an increase in transistor to performance from NV or AMD.

If those are the correct prices, this is what I had expected earlier with the 69xx series, but couldn't because of competition. AMD has wanted to raise the price for a while now, hence the name change and they are finally going to get to do it with the lack of NV.

Neliz? That guy promised a bunch of stuff in regards to the Cayman GPUs verse the GTX 580 when it launched. I'm not really going to bother paying attention to his input after that.

So it has been confirmed the 7970 has a 384 bit memory bus? Alright, about time too ATI, its been a while since you moved away from 256 bit. I thought they were going to use XDR2? Whatever happened to that?

A rumor is never a solid fact.

[tbone8ty]

Here we go with the wild, over inflated hopes and dreams of some.....again.

so yur thinking the HD 7000 will be a flop?

[Lanek]

Here we go with the wild, over inflated hopes and dreams of some.....again.

Its 6hours here, and i have quickly read this before go work (drinking my traditionnaly cofee ) ..... but they say nothing we was know allready it seems, GCN for high end, and VILW4 in 28nm for the rest ? something new i have miss ? ( outside it is now confirmed, all the press will be brief during december )

So it has been confirmed the 7970 has a 384 bit memory bus? Alright, about time too ATI, its been a while since you moved away from 256 bit. I thought they were going to use XDR2? Whatever happened to that?

Me and all, have allways tell you XDR2 have never been confirmed... this is and was a pure rumors..... what happened with this rumor.. what happend with many rumor ?

[OutSider]

Probably he means that when you get your hopes too high the chance to be disappointed when cards are released its also higher and then people are gonna start bashing that performance was not like expected.

[DilTech]

Here we go with the wild, over inflated hopes and dreams of some.....again.

Pretty much... the last few generations everyone has expected the world out of AMD rather than being realistic.

[freeloader]

AMD sure as hell seems to be firing on all cylinders as far as their graphics division is concerned, so I'm going to be an optimist and say the 7xxx series is going to be a 40% improvement over the existing 6xxx series GPUs. No links, no proof, just a hunch. Go ATI.

[EniGmA1987]

i think that AMD can be put in market an special edition /overclocking edition with XDR2 memory why not?...many here can be purchase that.

Wouldnt the memory controller have to be reworked to run XDR2 instead of GDDR5? That would be pricey to do, probably greatly outweigh volume sold.

[stangracin3]

Here we go with the wild, over inflated hopes and dreams of some.....again.

you have too remember amd has owned in the graphics department for hopes and dreams.

[tbone8ty]

i just hope power consumption is superb and when they release their cards u can actually buy one.

[Lanek]

Wouldnt the memory controller have to be reworked to run XDR2 instead of GDDR5? That would be pricey to do, probably greatly outweigh volume sold.

ALL the memory controller and system will be allready remade this time, in GCN ( for GCN, not VLIW4 shrink ) ..x86 memory instruction storage data, and specially memory access directly from the cpu on the gpu memory system ........ GDDR5 or not, the memory controller is modified totally. ( second coffee wait me ).
( GCN is a lot about computing, graphic wise i don't know what it will give, but computing wise, it's an extreme step, i just hope this step will not be a miss for the graphism part )

GDDR5 have still not be used at his full potential ( they use 5ghz GDDR5 when 3 year ago have been launch the 8ghz GDDR5 ( hence the rumor about cayman and 8ghz memory clock speed ).
But the old memory controllers used by AMD ( and Nvidia ) was just not in the case they can use this clock speed.

An absolute change is needed in computing for bring an Open standard for it ( based on OpenCL ), and AMD need absolulely bring a perfect solution for it. ( GCN ).... all computing solution maker wait about it. and the return for have open system is absolutely enormous( CUDA is horrible to use for server computing but a dream for low system computing ( the system is too much distorted for complex system, and it's a sub coding system, this mean you don't control and can't mix system with it ( ).... I hope AMD don't miss this opportunity. But AMD is a little bit alone for developp this computing standard .


pfff, i go for a 3th cofee...