New rumor about ATI Southern Islands

[mindfury]

Something about this looks like a really poor photoshop. The back appears to not be aligned correctly.

The pic was cut by the cropping .

[Tha Last Meal]

Originally Posted by mindfury View Post



I'm not sure if it's real,I can't find the source of this pic.

this card is real
but look to the fan Over PCB!!! It seems that this card is very hot

[Eastcoasthandle]

Hiding the product ID sticker and how many memory IC's there are.

Edit- and about the TDP discussion... I would be very surprised if Cayman XT exceeded 230w, I'm thinking somewhere around 210-215w.

Hmm, no memory on the back.

[The Coolest]

Could simply be very early ES cards.

[Funky]

Whats wrong in having fan over the top of the cards. I do that even when I am not ocing. I have put up a fan which constantly blows over top of the card. So when I push it for benching, it cools back of the GPU and back of VRMs.
And when you have two in CF, the top card tends to run hotter. Makes perfect sense to have airflow over back of the top card.

And maybe that pic deliberately has that antec fan there so that we cannot count number of memory chips :P

[flippin_waffles]

Or maybe the number of GPU's.

[Mechanical Man]

Barts Pro = 6850
Barts XT = 6870

Soooo.

[Calmatory]

And Barts is supposed to be about as fast as HD5870? Great AMD.

[kadozer]

Antilles 6990
Cayman XT 6970
Cayman PRO 6950
Barts XT 6870
Barts PRO 6850

Barts = midrange
Cayman = Flagship
Antilles = dual flagship

And Barts is supposed to be about as fast as HD5870? Great AMD.

The 6770 equivalent for the 6 series will be as fast as the 5870 from last gen. What's not to like? Should wait to see what the pricing is like first at least.

[tarkin77]

if Barts XT is about as fast as Cypress XT (5870), but much smaller (lets say 260mm2) and uses less power... why not? ATi has done that in the past... remember 2900 > 3870?

If priced at GF104 level or slightly above, that would be a real killer!

But there's also Cayman (which could be 50 to 60% faster as Barts XT).

lets see...

Barts PRO - 199,- (460 1GB level)
Barts XT - 279,- (470 level)
Cayman PRO - 349,- (480 level)
Cayman XT - 499,- (+30% above 480)
Antilles - 699,-

[w0mbat]

And Barts is supposed to be about as fast as HD5870? Great AMD.

lol, u give amd the thumbs down ´cause of rumors...

[mAJORD]

if Barts XT is about as fast as Cypress XT (5870), but much smaller (lets say 260mm2) and uses less power... why not? ATi has done that in the past... remember 2900 > 3870?

If priced at GF104 level or slightly above, that would be a real killer!

But there's also Cayman (which could be 50 to 60% faster as Barts XT).

lets see...

Barts PRO - 199,- (460 1GB level)
Barts XT - 279,- (470 level)
Cayman PRO - 349,- (480 level)
Cayman XT - 499,- (+30% above 480)
Antilles - 699,-

They only pulled 3870 off because of

55nm vs 80nm
512bit memory bus was overkill

So I don't think it'll be quite as dramatic as you're predicting in your performance comparison :p

[Calmatory]

Let's see, 6xxx series prices are a bit lower than 5xxxx series prices, and the naming convention is ed up (69xx for single chip cards etc).

Yes, I thumb down AMD and for a reason.

[Florinmocanu]

so if the 6k series prices a bit lower than the 5k series (as you have just said), it's a bad thing?

[Calmatory]

so if the 6k series prices a bit lower than the 5k series (as you have just said), it's a bad thing?

Exactly. When Barts XT is supposed to be 6870 and replace 5850 and be a bit lower in price, it really is a bad thing. It confuses the out from the market.

Why can't they do it something like this (naming relative to the performance, NOT the old chip with a renaming):

HD 5770 -> HD 6650
HD 5830 -> HD 6750
HD 5870 -> HD 6770
HD 5970 -> HD 6870

Now they almost do this, but they buff the naming scheme with x1xx, resulting 6770 -> 6870 @ supposedly 6770 price.

If this all is true, it seems that they instead of bringing in actual performance, they just upp the names by 100 and keep the price giving an impression of bigger leap from old generation than it actually is. Then again, it is understandable that they're working at the limits of 40 nm and there isn't too much to improve until 28 nm.

Then again, there is no reason to obfuscate the naming convention, but according to the rumours they are doing so. Also, there is no need fo sell the parts for lower price because Nvidia can't compete even with 5xxx, let alone 6xxx. ...and AMD already sells everything TSMC can produce for them.

[Florinmocanu]

we don't know exactly if the mid-range will be named 6870 and 6970 will be what 5870 is now. All are rumours, so we should reserve judgement when they actually release the products.

But i don't think they will do it like this, they have no reason to do so and i think it's just confusion among the leakers, because AMD has a record of giving different info to different partners just to see who is leaking info.

[Calmatory]

Thats true though, but I don't see any reason why they would try to big improvement to perf/$ with the new generation, because Nvidia isn't competing them in that segment really. I'd guess they just improve the uarch enough (4+1->4 transition 25 % better perf/mm²), and any performance improvement would come with a price premium. Thus said, I'd expect 28 nm transition to be much more interesting, because thats where Nvidia is aiming for too.

[AMDDeathstar]

Hmm, if true I'm a tad concern that a Antec SpotCool fan is needed for the back of the video card.

this card is real
but look to the fan Over PCB!!! It seems that this card is very hot

When the cards are that close usually you have force air in between, especially if you're running them overclocked.

Otherwise you're pulling heat off the back of the other card.

When I was benching triple 4870's I had to put a fan over the cards.

[SubZero.it]

Antilles 6990
Cayman PRO 6950

I'm pretty sure that we won't see these cards like in the current generation

[ilkkahy]

Maybe they change the naming system because customers are so stupid that when they invest 500$ to graphic card they think it will remain the fastest and best card for rest of times as long as there are many number nines in the name. For example Radeon 9990 must last for ages with high pricetag!?

I prefer the old naming system too but it propably wasnt the best for marketing.

[flopper]

seems, 6870=bart xt=5850
release 25okt.
according to nordichardware.com
cayman is even more powerful.

[Manicdan]

seems, 6870=bart xt=5850
release 25okt.
according to nordichardware.com
cayman is even more powerful.

that wouldnt make sense if 6870 has as much power as a 5850

i agree with whoever said it a few pages back, the x770 of the new, is the x870 of the old, and every other card scales from there. which gives them plenty of numbers to use for newer stuff that has no contender. the only real question is how much more power should there be going from 700s to 800s in the same generation, for the 4000s it wasnt 2x, but in the 5000s it was, in the 6000s it probably wont be 2x either

[Iconyu]

Exactly. When Barts XT is supposed to be 6870 and replace 5850 and be a bit lower in price, it really is a bad thing. It confuses the out from the market.

Why can't they do it something like this (naming relative to the performance, NOT the old chip with a renaming):

HD 5770 -> HD 6650
HD 5830 -> HD 6750
HD 5870 -> HD 6770
HD 5970 -> HD 6870

Now they almost do this, but they buff the naming scheme with x1xx, resulting 6770 -> 6870 @ supposedly 6770 price.

If this all is true, it seems that they instead of bringing in actual performance, they just upp the names by 100 and keep the price giving an impression of bigger leap from old generation than it actually is. Then again, it is understandable that they're working at the limits of 40 nm and there isn't too much to improve until 28 nm.

Then again, there is no reason to obfuscate the naming convention, but according to the rumours they are doing so. Also, there is no need fo sell the parts for lower price because Nvidia can't compete even with 5xxx, let alone 6xxx. ...and AMD already sells everything TSMC can produce for them.

The leaked benchmarks have been very specific, heavy complex shader load and heavy tessellation, the predicted changes directly affect these loads. Which means there will be other benchmarks where these changes do next to nothing and the percentage gain will be single digits.

If AMD have made a HD6770 part with a 256 bit bus it means at the very least it's powerful enough to need that memory bandwidth. Also you need a certain die size before you can actually go with a 256 bus I'm not sure but a 256 bit would need more than the 166mm sq offered by HD5770.

Try to think about it in the same scale as the 4870 > 5770 true the 5770 isn't faster but it is comparable. I imagine AMD are just sticking with their plan like Intel are sticking with their tick/tock. It doesn't matter where nvidia are in comparison, you can't plan 12 months in advance thinking 'good enough', because like AMD are seeing right now on the CPU front you have to release with intent to kill every time.

[Mechanical Man]

And Barts is supposed to be about as fast as HD5870? Great AMD.

And where you took these performance numbers? Afaik thre has been only one leaked performance giving information, and there was nothing that implied how powerful which one is. Just wait before making asumptions.

[bamtan2]

5770 and 4870 were manufactured with different node sizes. so I'm not sure what comparison you're trying to make there.

but 5870 and 6770 will be the same node size.

so we want to see what amd can do with a different but evolved architecture on the same manufacturing process. thus we compare 4770 with 5770, which are also the same node size and one generation apart:
http://static.techspot.com/articles-.../Crysis_01.png
http://media.bestofmicro.com/3/N/226...%204x%20AA.png

4770 is about 800M transistors and 137 mm^2.
5770 is about 1000M transistors and 166mm^2.

So consider the transistor difference and the game performance increase. 25% more transistors and 10-20% more game performance. So AMD managed to squeeze very little if any extra performance out with the new architecture.

Now, consider that 4770 didn't have the logic to do DX11 and eyefinity and a few other discrete features that are independent of performance. Let's be generous and say it took about 200M transistors to add those features. In that case, 5770 would be the same size as 4770, but perform 10-20% better, in which case AMD certainly would have improved performance by optimizing the architecture.

If you consider these two scenarios to be constraints on what 6770 will be, we can predict 6770 is anywhere from 0%-20% faster than 5770. I think 10% average is a good expectation to have. I would NOT trust any rumors that indicate otherwise.