New rumor about ATI Southern Islands

[spursindonesia]

i'll tell you why AMD is getting flak.

their shader architecture has not changed much in 3 years. they barely had any innovations in evergreen, and it was only 50% faster than last gen. this is not an exciting upgrade for most even with dx11.

Their shader arch is still yielding added performance with unit expansion, whether that's considered sufficient enough or not that's certainly a relative, debatable thing for sure. I think AMD is just trying to best nVidia's GT200 with their Evergreen gen, DX 11 is basically just a checker mark feature for this generation. Evergreen is relatively cheap to make compared to nVidia's current DX 11 generation, while absolutely faster and more advanced compared to nVidia's past generation.

For all its achievement, AMD Graphic division is certainly still lightweight compared to nVidia sizewise & resourcewise, for them being able to eventually bypassing nVidia after R600 debacle, that's quite an achievement in itself. Exciting or not, Evergreen did and does dominate DX 11 scenery for the past year (Fermi late entrance is certainly helpful), Northern Islands on 40 nm is basically a contingency product out of TSMC canceled 32 nm process, which IMHO affected AMD worse compared to its competitor (fact that AMD is always in front in using new process node and they've been very good in hitting their R&D timeline target lately).

With NI, they should and IMHO will still give added value to the costumers, how much and how far, that's a relative thing to judge, but one thing for sure, G92 and its nth incarnates are making tons & tons of money for nVidia, i don't think AMD's decision to resegmenting its new gen graphic cards, reevaluating & reworking the marketing strategy, can be deemed as a totally bad thing and harmful to the customers. Yes, it will cause some confusion, and some can consider this as a misleading marketing tactic, but i think the bottomline is giving more absolute value to the customer while being profitable in the process, that's all that matter. Anything else is just forum noise from geeks & nerds, green and red rose colored notwithstanding.

Though, if AMD dares to rebrand RV 840 from HD 5770 to HD 6770, they WILL get some flak from me personally, no doubt about that.

TSMC does not have a troubled 40nm process any longer. the blame game is very fun but failures are not always caused by uncontrollable events aka excuses. TSMC does a good job for the most part. most of the people who criticize them dont know what they are talking about. furthermore, there is a lot you can do on an existing process. AMD can improve their architecture and physical design on 40nm by a nice margin.

How much margin can be deemed nice enough so it won't be called a failure ? Perhaps TSMC 40 nm process is much better that what was available in the past, but troubled isn't just related to how well a process node is yielding. i certainly haven't seen the kinda competitive drive like in 55 nm old days, even after GF 104 is introduced that offers a tremendous value and give such a good fit against Cypress, AMD decided to rather enjoy maximal profit rather than getting a bit agressive pricewise to gain more marketshare.

That signals supply constrained situation, and considering Cypress decent yield, basically AMD doesn't get much enough 40 nm wafers from TSMC to optimize their profit while maximizing the marketshare as well like what RV 770 has done for them in the past. That shows a trouble for a process that should be maturing by now and costing much less if its really trouble free.

Northern Islands seems to be a reengineering of AMD graphic mArch, if it really delivers the added efficiency as leaked, while costing less to the customers for the same or even more performance, i think it's a job well done and we should be grateful as customers. Designing graphic chip isn't an easy job, Fermi designers can attest to that statement, hehehe.

faster gpu's are demanded by consumers. someone must supply this good. in this case most are expecting AMD to deliver due to nvidia's hot mess on a pcie slot.

And i think they WILL deliver, whether the amount is good enough or in the way that satisfy people egos, that's really a matter of personal judgement.

per $ is a choice made by a company, per mm2 is what generally drives profit margins. amd already has great perf per mm2, so why would they be making less money than nvidia per card todays pricing? comparing the size of 200$ cards, amd is much smaller and perf differences are close enough. its safe to assume they already are doing great with current $ per mm2 or perf/$.

Cypress is great against GF 100, but aggressively priced GF 104 is really a thorn on AMD's side. Yes Cypress is still (debatable) more profitable even compared to GF 104, but the margin is much thinner if AMD decides to get aggressive against GF 104 marketshare offensive from nVidia, matching the price toe to toe and fighting for added marketshare.

Using a 220-240 mm^2 (if the 960 SP rumor is true) Bart will certainly matches GF 104 better from AMD's bottomline perspective compared to using a 334^2 mm Cypress, while still being supply constrained by TSMC. With its deep pocket, nVidia can be aggressive and accept thinner margin or slight loss for maintaining strategic marketshare position.

A small efficient yet good performing Bart and Northern Islands family overall will certainly give AMD more flexibility in their strategy for optimising both profit and marketshare against current nVidia's offerings.

LOL, what a long post to make.