Quote Originally Posted by Frontl1ne View Post
Doesn't really make sense, if the performance increase was only about 15% I don't think ATI would be bother releasing it as a next gen product.
What else would you expect? The new generation is still based on 40 nm process, so there isn't much they can do. They have the ~same transistor budget, they have to base their architecture on Evergreen and they only had approx 12 months to come this far. So really, what else can people expect?

They need to do whatever they can to minimize the costs, and if it is working under the limitations of pin compatibility with current gen, then let it be so. The chips will be bigger than current ones for sure.

What I believe is that this news is just to mislead the competition. Now it just gives an impression that it's nothing interesting, just a similar performing updated silicon with possibly lower price. But given the old rumours of focusing on efficiency of the chip, given that the 40 nm process should be pretty much mastered(I know.. ) by TSMC and those of AMD who work with them, they could achieve somewhat better perf/mm˛ for the uarch and somewhat better clockspeeds while keeping same yields.

I have hard time believing in "just" an updated silicon to minimize manufacturing costs. Then again, there isn't much what Nvidia could come up with in 40nm so AMD isn't really in position where it would desperately need more speed.. So the next real round will be fought at 28nm and thats where both companies focus.