AMD's Radeon HD 6870 benchmarked? (updated more screens)

[tajoh111]

Saaya, if the new chips are not really fast enough over the current line ups, so like you've previously suggested, then why they have to bother R&D & creating this whole new family ? DX 11 strengthening can wait until 28 nm arrives, can't they ? We know in current games, Evergreen is more than good enough on average.

Evergreen while long in the tooth is holding the fort just fine, and since Evergreen fastest chip is actually smaller than nVidia's current best perf/watt/die size area performer, GF 104, should the supply constraint abated, ATi could easily engage a price war for market share expansion, if needed.

These new chips IMHO have to be considerably faster while adding efficiency in the process, i know, that's quite a feat should ATi successfully pull it all the way out, but i think they have the capability & room to be so. Then, a new generation tagline would be well deserved & justified.

Regards.

Profit margins. AMD with the current price makes quite a bit of money but what if they could charge about a hundred dollars more across the line. They would be making a crap load more, probably a hundred million more with the number of cards they already sold.

With the rates that these cards are selling out, AMD might be thinking they released the 5xxx series at too low of a price and they can not outright raise the price themselves too much(the most they could get away with was the 20 dollar raise they did).

What they could do is release a somewhat modified card which has better performance that atleast matches the competition and somewhat beat's it and increase the price of the line 100 dollars(and these cards likely cost the same to produce considering improved yields). Not taking huge design risk allows them to develop the card way faster which is probably the most important thing considering the time between now and 28nm is when NV will have nothing to respond with in the high end market beside the gtx 490.

By keeping this performance in check and not doing something crazy to this generation: it allows them to make a new product for cheap(low R and D), keep current 5xxx customers happy by not feeling that they were duped into buying a slow early 5xxx and it also prevents these owners from flooding the market with used 5xxx cards which might prevent a new sale of a 6xxx series.

According to steam, close to half the 5xxx cards are the 58xx variants. Thats 8 million cards considering 16 million cards have sold. Both the 5850 and 5870 have prices of 259 and 379 MSRP but have sold for atleast at the beginning at $350 and $450. What if AMD simply refreshed the line with about 20% more performance, released at better quantities so that the card sold at MSRP and they reaped the benefits rather than the retailers who gouged us.

This is what AMD should have done in the first place and I think they realized this.

This quarter, the AMD graphic division made 40 million dollars net which is pathetic considering the extreme monopoly they had. NV had quarters where they made hundreds of millions of dollar during their prime. Just imagine how much difference to this net profit if they charged 100 dollars more, if AMD for example charged 100 dollars more and sold 10 million cards not including the lowend, depending on the deal they had with partners, your looking at atleast 200 million more in your net profits even with R and D, money shared with partners.

Fermi has been such a PR disaster for the consumer because of heat and energy concerns that the rate of the 5870 and 5850 don't seem to be slowing down that much and are still selling out.

They could release a card that just as fast as the gtx 480 add 100 dollars to the 58xx current price and it would still sell if they avoided the energy and heat output of the gtx 480.

They have alot of momentum so people might just buy an AMD card just because it is new and they haven't jumped on the directx 11 fence this generation.

Considering SI was originally design for 32nm and considering how quickly they got this line up together I am thinking this card just from a time perspective has to be way way more cypress than NI, which lead me to believe they might improve performance 20-30 percent but nothing crazy like the fake tesselation score in unigine.