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...