New rumor about ATI Southern Islands

[Tim]

That naming change just doesn't make any sense. It confused me for a minute, and I've seen generation after generation. Must be confusing for the average Joe....

So are they launching a new high end as well? Or just midrange cards?

[Iconyu]

why?
any gamer playing at 1920x1080 or lower which is what 80% or so of gamers, dont need more powerful cards than that.
todays cards are enough for them.
so they buy a great performance card at the price range.

I look forward the 6900 series.
not confused by naming as it shows the low end is soon going away and the 200 level will be the decided cash cow.
Most buy those cards around there.
The 6800 series seems to fit there nicely.

I think most of the changes for the HD6k's are aimed at improving DX11 performance. At everything else there probably won't be much of a difference.

[SKYMTL]

why?
any gamer playing at 1920x1080 or lower which is what 80% or so of gamers, dont need more powerful cards than that.

When you put it that way, gamers don't need the HD 6000 series, nor half the current GTX 400 series at this point in time.

Maybe the extra horsepower will come in handly when the Gen 2 DX11 games start getting released in H1 2011 but until then? Any additional performance is nothing more than window dressing which looks good in charts and not much else.

On the flip side of the coin, depending on the performance of these new cards, ATI could have the ability to put the screws to NVIDIA at the $175 - $250 price point.

[flopper]

When you put it that way, gamers don't need the HD 6000 series, nor half the current GTX 400 series at this point in time.

Maybe the extra horsepower will come in handly when the Gen 2 DX11 games start getting released in H1 2011 but until then? Any additional performance is nothing more than window dressing which looks good in charts and not much else.

On the flip side of the coin, depending on the performance of these new cards, ATI could have the ability to put the screws to NVIDIA at the $175 - $250 price point.

my sisters kid still use a 8800gt.
a 4890 or similar is way good still.
dx11 with w7 and vista wont take off until Bf3 comes out and maybe some other game.
As developers scale the game to old hardware (sucky consols also), people really dont need more powerful hardware.

so if amd really wanted people to buy new cards they made sure some gamedeveloper made a dx11 cutting edge fun game people wanted to play and buy new hardware for.

I can build a budget system, for likely half the price or less with the same fps with old hardware as the new hardware dont bring much new to the table.
I use eyefinity, in any other case I wouldnt be upgrading my card.
I still use a 2 year old computer, 2 year?
sold my i7920 cpu to get a new i7950 but I dont get new performance.
some lower power and heat, but not by much.

The time has come for no return, people having a gtx460 dont need a new card, people having a 5800 series card dont need a new one, people having a 4800 series card likely dont need a new one.
I see a lot of people using old hardware, and have no incitiment buying new.

what does the new 6000 series bring us?
not much new.

[cegras]

For online gaming, it's usually better to overspec your card by one resolution bin.

[SKYMTL]

what does the new 6000 series bring us?
not much new.

IMO, video cards can't tread water like game development has been doing for the last four years. I'm actually quite happy that ATI is moving forward instead of saying "we have NVIDIA beat on perf per watt and could beat them clean on perf per $, so let's have a rest and wait for the Gen 2 DX11 games".

Regardless of the doom and gloom some people like to fling around, I am sure any upcoming series from ATI will be a step FORWARD rather than a step in the wrong direction. If AMD's graphics division has shown us anything it is that they have a great starting point for their refreshes as the HD 5000 series has for the most part been perfectly placed and timed.

[flopper]

For online gaming, it's usually better to overspec your card by one resolution bin.

for you sure,
my sisters kid?
not so much.
lot of people dont do that if the games they play works fine.

I do hope amd has a good addition for the new series, but after eyefinity there is crossfire and maybe a super fast videodecoding.

[demonkevy666]

Twice the triangle setup rate and two tesselation units vs. one. HD 5870 has faster memory access as those 5770s most of the time are accessing the same information at the same time.... at the same speed. And, ummm, even if the 5770 did magically double usable bandwidth you're looking at two 128-bit controllers using slower memory.

So, yeah, guess I'll just ignore that thing you said earlier about tesselation in 6xxx

where did you get twice the triangle setup ?

one 5770 a stock is 13.6 gigapixel one 5870 at stock 27.2 Two 5770 are equal to one 5870.

The tessellation unit is the only advantage their.

A smaller memory bus isn't necessarily slower, because it's usually shorter then a bigger one.

[Booj]

what does the new 6000 series bring us?
not much new.

Better canyon scores in 3dmark hehe

Sorry had to throw that in

[LordEC911]

where did you get twice the triangle setup ?

one 5770 a stock is 13.6 gigapixel one 5870 at stock 27.2 Two 5770 are equal to one 5870.

The tessellation unit is the only advantage their.

A smaller memory bus isn't necessarily slower, because it's usually shorter then a bigger one.

gigapixels |= triangle rate...

Both 5870 and 5770 can, at best, do 1 tri/clock.
Since they are both clocked at 850mhz they are even.
Except you said 5770CF vs 5870, meaning 5770CF has double the tri/clock of 5870.

[kaktus1907]

[Manicdan]

i dont think it blurred enough, it looks like caymen starts with 4 on both the stream processors and the x4 in parenthesis. and 2 for RPEs

[kaktus1907]

so RPE is AMD's GPC's.. it means twice triangle power twice tessellation power than previous 5xxx for barts..

[LordEC911]

so RPE is AMD's GPC's.. it means twice triangle power twice tessellation power than previous 5xxx for barts..

Thats what it sounds like to me.

[Mechanical Man]

I believe there is AMD obscure campaing going on. They release these "official" slides to different channels (that are known to leak) to blur the reality.

[Manicdan]

the 5000 series was really silent until their september showing. but it wasnt to hard to guess much, other than eyefinity

[ohnoitseddy]

If this is true, it confirms my suspicion that Cayman isn't 2x Barts. See RPEs - it's pretty clear it says 1, 2 and 3 respectively. I guess that means Calisto has 160 SP's and Cayman 480 SP's, which kind of looks to be right. The TUs seem to scale like that as well, but ROPs for Cayman I'm not sure.

Then again, this must be leaked slide #755893, and doesn't even match AMD's usual style that well...

[cegras]

for you sure,
my sisters kid?
not so much.
lot of people dont do that if the games they play works fine.

I do hope amd has a good addition for the new series, but after eyefinity there is crossfire and maybe a super fast videodecoding.

Depends on what game you're playing, obviously. Any FPS released in the last few years, yes. Same with RTS .. and MMOs as well. The point is that you want to be 60+ at all times, and it helps by having a card that will usually pump out 70, 80 average with chaotic situations dipping to 40 at the lowest.

[Calmatory]

Depends on what game you're playing, obviously. Any FPS released in the last few years, yes. Same with RTS .. and MMOs as well. The point is that you want to be 60+ at all times, and it helps by having a card that will usually pump out 70, 80 average with chaotic situations dipping to 40 at the lowest.

You know you're pro when you can blame a failure on a bad GPU and low FPS.

This is what is seen in many FPS games. "Lol my fps dropped can't play"

[RaZz!]

i dont think it blurred enough, it looks like caymen starts with 4 on both the stream processors and the x4 in parenthesis. and 2 for RPEs

yep. the sharpening filter in photoshop helps a little bit to guess the shape of the blurred numbers.

SPs look like either 400x4 (1600 total) or 480x4 (1920 total). the latter, 1920 SPs, fits the rumors we already heard. RPEs look more like a 3? can't get anything out of the ROPs and texture units though.

but what's the gpu name on the left?! 32 texture units and 14 ROPs are very well readable, and the name looks like it starts with an "C"? the only thing that'd fit from the codenames we know is Caicos - ...? :F

[fellix_bg]

The texture unit count definitely don't scale with the SPs in those spec's.

[Eastcoasthandle]

The texture unit count definitely don't scale with the SPs in those spec's.

TU appears to read 96 while ROPs appear to read 32 so I'm not sure how accurate this chart is.

[Calmatory]

1 RPE 32 TU 16 ROP 640 SP for Caicos?
2 RPE 64 TU 32 ROP 1280 SP for Barts. PRO or XT? Most likely XT?
3 RPE 96 TU 48 ROP 1920 SP for Cayman?

Does this make sense to people?

[Dimitriman]

1 RPE 32 TU 16 ROP 640 SP for Caicos?
2 RPE 64 TU 32 ROP 1280 SP for Barts. PRO or XT? Most likely XT?
3 RPE 96 TU 48 ROP 1920 SP for Cayman?

Does this make sense to people?

That would be my guess and that would make me happy.

Now gief 2x Cayman XT cores for 6990!

[kuroikenshi]

ha, time to trade up from my heavily OC'ed 5970