New rumor about ATI Southern Islands

[Carfax]

But the current drivers are not introductory drivers. Fermi already received a performance boost with the latest drivers.

Yes, the current drivers are no longer introductory and have Fermi specific optimizations. But it's only been a few months since the release of Fermi, and they've already gotten large performance increases.

It usually takes a year or more to really milk the architecture for all it's worth, so more performance increases are certainly coming.

Also, why are you ignoring the fact the cayman is a new architecture as well, that can be tweaked for more performance with newer drivers too

I wouldn't say I was ignoring it. It's just that even though Cayman is a new architecture, it will still share very many similarities to it's predecessors.

Since they migrated towards a unified shader architecture, ATI's strategy has been to simply double all the resources on new designs. I think the only thing that ATI didn't double with the R800 was the memory interface, which remained at 256 bit.

And since Cayman won't be getting a die shrink, it seems like it will be a more refined version of the R800, rather than a next generation architecture.

Anyway, driver optimization is an ongoing affair with no end in sight. Cayman will undoubtedly receive performance improvements via driver tweaks, but I doubt it will get as much as Fermi, since Fermi was a completely new design.

[LightSpeed]

I wouldn't say I was ignoring it. It's just that even though Cayman is a new architecture, it will still share very many similarities to it's predecessors.

Since they migrated towards a unified shader architecture, ATI's strategy has been to simply double all the resources on new designs. I think the only thing that ATI didn't double with the R800 was the memory interface, which remained at 256 bit.

And since Cayman won't be getting a die shrink, it seems like it will be a more refined version of the R800, rather than a next generation architecture.

Anyway, driver optimization is an ongoing affair with no end in sight. Cayman will undoubtedly receive performance improvements via driver tweaks, but I doubt it will get as much as Fermi, since Fermi was a completely new design.

Yes, Cayman will be a more refined version of the R800. Think RV670 > RV770. Along with increasing the resources, efficiency was increased as well.

Also, since Fermi already got a performance boost with the new driver, and Cayman isnt a completely new architecture, Id say performance boost would be similar between the two with new drivers. Which leaves Cayman with a higher performance and lower power consumption as well (most likely)

The Nvidia exclusive features dont matter enough to the majority of people to warrant a card thats slower and consumes more power IMO, but to those who think the features are that important, thats perfectly fine. To each, their own

[Carfax]

Also, since Fermi already got a performance boost with the new driver, and Cayman isnt a completely new architecture, Id say performance boost would be similar between the two with new drivers. Which leaves Cayman with a higher performance and lower power consumption as well (most likely)

Cayman could very likely outperform the 480, while having lower power consumption I agree. I guess we'll just have to wait and see..

The Nvidia exclusive features dont matter enough to the majority of people to warrant a card thats slower and consumes more power IMO, but to those who think the features are that important, thats perfectly fine. To each, their own

Well there's more to it than that. A lot of people go with Nvidia because of their driver support.

Whether you agree with that or not, you have to admit that there's a perception that ATI's drivers are inferior to Nvidia's.

As long as I've been a computer enthusiast (which is slightly more than a decade now), that stereotype has persisted.

are you one?
If you aint how would you even consider my answer to be appropiate as you wouldnt understand it?

I'm not, but you don't see me making comments as to whether Fermi had a bad design or not.

That kind of question warrants indepth knowledge that I don't possess.

Its called 460 since Nvidia went over the top with their first generation Fermi.
its bad design, simple as that.

Fermi was designed to tap into BOTH the HPC and gaming market. As such, how can you say it's a bad design when Fermi is leading the 5000 series in gaming, and utterly destroying ATI's FirePro series in the professional market.

amd on the other hand, well...their 3 last designs and implementations seems to be flawless. The jury still out for the 6000 series.

So flawless they need to use "brilinear" filtering

[LightSpeed]

Cayman could very likely outperform the 480, while having lower power consumption I agree. I guess we'll just have to wait and see..

Well there's more to it than that. A lot of people go with Nvidia because of their driver support.

I have to agree there. AMD's driver team seriously needs to get their act together, especially the stuff that get broke after being fixed before.