AMD's REAL answer to GeForce GTX 480: AIB Custom 5970s

[gOJDO]

Why?


The Clockspeeds are 20% higher.

And memory is 100% bigger. You dont know what the impact of the memory will be.

Maybe its the same as from the Radeon 8500 64MB > Radeon 8500 128MB i saw huge boosts in performance in all 3Dmark 2001 SE tests.

And a more recent example HD4870 512 vs 1024. Average 15% performance boost. Starting at 1280x1024 with a 10% boost.

So it might be possible depending on the resolution and the arcitecture of the RV870. Maybe it can utilize more memory capacity better.

So i think its possible to see 28% performance increase in benshmarks and games.

1) The clocks are not 20% higher. PCI-e, which is the interface connecting the two GPUs and the NB is clocked same. The core clock is clocked 17% higher.

2) You can count on one hand the games that in a very specific case(at certain scene when playing with everthing @max: resoultion, settings, AA and AF) can benefit from frame buffer larger than 1GB. There is no game yet that can utilze 2GB frame buffer at everything maxed out. I bet that in 95% of the games there would be no difference in perofrmance between the 4GB and the 2GB version of the card @same clocks.

3) Never compare single GPU scalling with multi GPU scalling. Just check the difference in performance between Asus MARS and regular GTX 295. MARS has more theoretical computing power compared to the regular GTX 295, but in reallity the difference was marginal.

4) I owned a systems with a 4870X2 on a Q9450@3.9GHz, and 2x4890, a GTX295, a 5870 and 2x5870 on an i7-920 @4.2GHz~4.4GHz. I did a lot of benchmarks and came to the conclusion that a dual-GPU performance never scales linear with frequencies, although the CPU bottleneck was basically avoided.

So, that 28% gain is a cherry picked result form a lot of benchmarks. And if that is the best, I guess the average will be at half of that at best.