New rumor about ATI Southern Islands

[Manicdan]

the 40nm chips were all about per, not price, a 4870x2 is not much different from a 5870, except when the 5870 came out it cost about as much as 4870x2 and consumed less power

the end of 40nm cards better have come down in price

[gurusan]

I would buy any GPU codenamed Bear Beard

[Calmatory]

Are there any games coming out before 28 nm which wouldn't be "EPICLY DESTROYED IN FPS" by the current gen high end cards? Are there many of those in target audience who have FPS issues with current gen cards?

..of course even if there were no new games released since Q3 people would buy new hardware "Heck 2500 FPS is way better than 2300 FPS, makes you jump higher, hit better and finally gets rid of stuttering".

[Manicdan]

multi monitors might do the trick

[Calmatory]

Right. I'd bet tere are way less people using multiple monitors for gaming than there are people using CF. And CF is "UTTERLY OWNED IN MARKET SHARE" by SLI based on Steam hardware survey. Niche markets. Very niche markets, which pretty much mean nothing in the big picture.

[Shadov]

Right. I'd bet tere are way less people using multiple monitors for gaming than there are people using CF. And CF is "UTTERLY OWNED IN MARKET SHARE" by SLI based on Steam hardware survey. Niche markets. Very niche markets, which pretty much mean nothing in the big picture.

I wouldn't base my opinion on Steam, which seems to bundled a lot with the Way its Meant to be Payed games.

Furthermore if my graphic card would have enough power to run the newest games with AA on 3 displays, then I would consider that over multi-GPU setups.

[Manicdan]

where does it show CF/SLI on steam hardware survey?

[madcho]

And eye6 was in very few samples, and very late, i waited a month then bought a 5870 "classic", no i'm gonna buy 6870 eye6 for a tri monitor setup.

I think many of 4870 owners fall in love of eyefinity when it was released, but hardware in VGA and display was not really ready and not easily found on the webshops. Maybe yes in USA, but not in Europe.

In 2 months, eyefinity setup should start better.

[PaganII]

where does it show CF/SLI on steam hardware survey?

It is in STATS --> http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Edit: could not find it???

[Manicdan]

It is in STATS --> http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey

Edit: could not find it???

sorry but i dont see the word STATS jumping out anywhere, and i dont see multi gpu configurations listed anywhere

[Calmatory]

sorry but i dont see the word STATS jumping out anywhere, and i dont see multi gpu configurations listed anywhere

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=pc

ctrl+f "Multi-GPU Systems (PC)"

[Manicdan]

now its clear, you have to be on the Windows version to see it

[PaganII]

Copy & Paste from Steam Survey


Multi-GPU Systems (PC)
NVIDIA SLI (2 GPUs)
91.06%
-1.81%

NVIDIA SLI (2 GPUs)
91.06%
-1.81%

ATI Crossfire (2 GPUs)
5.60%
+1.16%

NVIDIA SLI (4 GPUs)
1.81%
+0.30%

NVIDIA SLI (3 GPUs)
1.54%
+0.36%

[Manicdan]

would be really nice if they had % of people using multi gpu setups, thats what i was hoping to see, and that ratio just looks way too off. how is there 0% using 3 or 4 ati cards, i wonder if it counts X2 cards the same way it counts crossfire

also notice that ATI went up 1.16% in the last month, which means it got 25% more duel gpu setups last month alone (sounds really fishy)

[jaredpace]

durp, i read this article wrong.

[jaredpace]

I would buy any GPU codenamed Bear Beard

hahahahh

[Dimitriman]

that price drop was from process changes, not architecture.

AMD already can drop prices for 5800s by a massive amount, but have decided not too.
if this new arch is going to reduce the chip size but leave the same performance, I WILL NOT BE EXPECTING A PRICE DROP, unless nvidia lowers first, why would AMD care to get more market share when they can just make killer margins.

Either you disagree with the article or you are saying that AMD will release a product with higher TDP but same performance.

That's just incoherent.

[Manicdan]

Either you disagree with the article or you are saying that AMD will release a product with higher TDP but same performance.

That's just incoherent.

read my first post
i believe that AMD will release a product with the same perf, and the same power draw as a 5850ish, but it will be cheaper for them to make, and that i believe we will not see much of that savings passed on to us "just because" i think it will be some high price until nvidia responds

(i didnt mention TDP in that post, where did that assumption come from?)

[Dimitriman]

read my first post
i believe that AMD will release a product with the same perf, and the same power draw as a 5850ish, but it will be cheaper for them to make, and that i believe we will not see much of that savings passed on to us "just because" i think it will be some high price until nvidia responds

(i didnt mention TDP in that post, where did that assumption come from?)

I see

the article mentions a slight bump in TDP for the new parts and meanwhile you said you expected similar performance.

I think if the replacement to the 5970 will touch 300W its going to bring a big punch in performance for those extra 50W-75W.

But I think mostly they will scale down 5870 with some tweaks on Tesselation to the 3rd fastest and release a top bin chip with higher clocks as the new 6870. I can imagine that the new 6970 will probably be a dual 5870 with minor tweaks also.

[Iconyu]

read my first post
i believe that AMD will release a product with the same perf, and the same power draw as a 5850ish, but it will be cheaper for them to make, and that i believe we will not see much of that savings passed on to us "just because" i think it will be some high price until nvidia responds

(i didnt mention TDP in that post, where did that assumption come from?)

I'm pretty sure the new parts will be faster as they intend to use more transistors. The thing is they might not be faster in ways you'd expect, they could improve crossfire, tessellation and tweak little things.
But whatever happens I think AMD will be pushing limits rather than cutting costs as these GPU's have to hold out for until for at least 6 months and they shouldn't leave nvidia that much breathing room.

As price drops on the 5870, I imagine ATI be will switching production soon to their new cards. So 5870's will be dwindling stock, and in my opinion, it wouldn't be safe to make enough to justify a price drop. They can just slowly sell what they have sitting around as they prepare for a hard launch.

[Manicdan]

im only basing theses estimates by the horribly translated article which says between 5770 and 5870, which is a very wide margin

[Tenknics]

I'm pretty sure the new parts will be faster as they intend to use more transistors. The thing is they might not be faster in ways you'd expect, they could improve crossfire, tessellation and tweak little things..

This.


Its been stated since day one Southern Islands was a stop gap between Evergreen and Northern Islands. It's been said that it would take the core from evergreen and match it with the uncore of northern islands. So based on that alone, I think most of the performance improvements will be in other areas other than just raw power. Logically it makes sense.

Maybe this analogy - kinda like the same CPU core getting a better chipset with more features later on its life.

[Calmatory]

...and some recent news claimed that SI is NI done on 40nm.

Why would AMD put lots of effort on yet another 40 nm product line, when their current full line up goes unmatched at some segments and when 28nm process isn't that far away?

So I see this last iteration very boring, with no reason why this would be nothing but a refresh to remain more competitive. Aimed for those who don't have 5xxx series cards yet.

[iMacmatician]

So 150 W < Barts < 225 W and 225 W ≤ Cayman < 300 W. In that case I doubt Antilles would be 2 Caymans.

Also it looks like Cayman will have 256-bit bus instead of the possibility of 384-bit bus as previously rumored.

From some really quick and dirty calculations, 5770 to 5870 is 2.0x the SPUs with 1.74x the TDP. That gives ≈1380 SPUs for 162 W Barts (I know the SPUs will probably be arranged differently, but…) and ≈2440 SPUs for 250 W Cayman. The close "nice" numbers given a 3+1 or 4+0 setup would be 1280 and 2560 SPUs. But then Cayman may be huge, and there would be no point to a dual-Barts Antilles (unless Cayman clocks were horrible). I don't think the above progression would continue as well with big GPUs, so maybe Cayman will have 1920 SPUs.

If so, the gap between 1280 and 1920 is less than the gap between 800 and 1600 so that with the 256-bit bus rumor for Barts could mean AMD is trying to push them closer together than Juniper and Cypress are.

Now none of this takes into account the other architectural changes of Southern Islands.

I would buy any GPU codenamed Bear Beard

[Iconyu]

...and some recent news claimed that SI is NI done on 40nm.

Why would AMD put lots of effort on yet another 40 nm product line, when their current full line up goes unmatched at some segments and when 28nm process isn't that far away?

So I see this last iteration very boring, with no reason why this would be nothing but a refresh to remain more competitive. Aimed for those who don't have 5xxx series cards yet.

Right now it looks like nvidia have a decent plan for the next few months, they are farming what I imagine to be 475 cores and selling the 460 cores cheap to maintain market share.

ATI have to do something, as a full shader dual 460 card would eat the 5970 alive and such a plan easily falls in line with the path nvidia choose with the 295. A tweaked card can defend against it, and deny nvidia revenue. But that means at least changing the uncore.

Also ATI would not bother making a new dual card unless the refresh changes mean they'll gain some of the performance they lost from the shaders in this generation i.e. 5870 has the silicon but not the speed of crossfire 4890's, while the 5970 (stand alone) and 5870 in crossfire seem to be under performing considering the brute force behind them.