AMD Cayman info (or rumor)

[TheBreezyBB]

Better than the trollboat. Hows that working out for yah?

Troll boat !! Nothing of that sort.

nothing is confirmed yet...

[Particle]

Pre-release price slips are usually a lot higher than what they actually end up selling for. It's like this is you guys' first GPU launch or something. C'mon, it's the same crap every time.

[WintersSC]

Pre-release price slips are usually a lot higher than what they actually end up selling for. It's like this is you guys' first GPU launch or something. C'mon, it's the same crap every time.

This.

Obviously some shops want to catch up uninformed people with those prices, maybe someone buys at it.

[Kristers Bensin]

I thought this would fit here

Source


This is from the largest swedish computer site and thier "close source to AMD" is saying that 6950 will have 1440 streamprocessors. I still think 1536 SP count is the right one. And i might add that they were wrong about the 6870/6850 specs 1 week before launch and that was from the same "close source".

[kadozer]

So far originally Fudzilla reporting the 1536. Now we have Edison from Chiphell and that site showing a lower SP count than other rumors. The though of Fudzilla actually being right this time kinda threw up in my mouth a little.

[tajoh111]

I honestly do not believe that 1536SP is right, as we know it's going to be larger in size than Cypress and we also know that Cypress has 1600SP. Unless, they quadrupled everything else... and that does not make any sense to me either...

I really hope the price/performance ratio is great. Otherwise we will be stuck with overpriced GTX570 and GTX580 (and 69x0 cards, obviously) for a while.

Hopefully you're correct. 1536 does look very disappointing, indeed. Still less than Radeon 5870 has. Hard to believe that...

So far originally Fudzilla reporting the 1536. Now we have Edison from Chiphell and that site showing a lower SP count than other rumors. The though of Fudzilla actually being right this time kinda threw up in my mouth a little.

As someone said a page ago, Neliz from beyond3d confirmed it.

True or False?

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.p...postcount=5693

If this is true, we should be trusting that forest guy a lot more, because he leaked those specs a month and a half ago. Also I think SKYMTL might be vindicated to some extent telling you guys to real back your expectations a bit and you guys just hammered on him when he was just trying to do you guys a favor.

[kadozer]

As someone said a page ago, Neliz from beyond3d confirmed it.

True or False?

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.p...postcount=5693

If this is true, we should be trusting that forest guy a lot more, because he leaked those specs a month and a half ago.

He would of gotten all the credit too then he goes a step backwards in credibility with that joke badly photoshopped slide he posted as his source.

[marten_larsson]

As someone said a page ago, Neliz from beyond3d confirmed it.

True or False?

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.p...postcount=5693

If this is true, we should be trusting that forest guy a lot more, because he leaked those specs a month and a half ago. Also I think SKYMTL might be vindicated to some extent telling you guys to real back your expectations a bit and you guys just hammered on him when he was just trying to do you guys a favor.

That tree-guy was also one of the first with a Juniper card as well so I believe he could be trusted (he posted a picture of it).

[Kristers Bensin]

U guys know that i was talking about the 6950 right? So lets say 6950 has these 1440 SP and 6970 has 1536, so why does this Faud guy keep saying its a "big hot chip". If 6970 is below 1600 SP count and using 4vliw wich saves 10% chip space, then i can not see why 6970 would be any bigger than 5870. These things just confuses me , were STILL on 40nm here.

[kadozer]

U guys know that i was talking about the 6950 right? So lets say 6950 has these 1440 SP and 6970 has 1536, so why does this Faud guy keep saying its a "big hot chip". If 6970 is below 1600 SP count and using 4-wliw wich saves 10% chip space, then i can not see why 6970 would be any bigger than 5870. These things just confuses me , were STILL on 40nm here.

Yes and there are more rumor places pointing to 6970 being 1536 now. As for Faud, he has lousy grammar and likes to cover his bases is all I can think of.

[DarthShader]

This is from the largest swedish computer site and thier "close source to AMD" is saying that 6950 will have 1440 streamprocessors. I still think 1536 SP count is the right one. And i might add that they were wrong about the 6870/6850 specs 1 week before launch and that was from the same "close source".

1440/64=22.5 SIMDs

So they didn't get the 6950 spec correct either. 1408 would be possible though.

[tajoh111]

U guys know that i was talking about the 6950 right? So lets say 6950 has these 1440 SP and 6970 has 1536, so why does this Faud guy keep saying its a "big hot chip". If 6970 is below 1600 SP count and using 4vliw wich saves 10% chip space, then i can not see why 6970 would be any bigger than 5870. These things just confuses me , were STILL on 40nm here.

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.p...postcount=4519

According to this guy who seems to have the cards way before hand and said the 6970 has 1536 shaders, we can inference the 6950 might have 1408 shaders.

[zerazax]

1408 is it

[sergiojr]

So lets say 6950 has these 1440 SP

It is simply impossible. SP count in Cayman should be divided by 64. 1440 does not.

[tajoh111]

On another note for AMD buyers, doesn't the 5870 possibly sound like the much better buy at $250 now?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...x=0&y=0&Page=1

I think unless cayman xt ends up 60% faster than the 5870, it is currently the way better buy and it would be better to buy them before they went out of stock if your still on 3870 or maybe 4870.

[Manicdan]

On another note for AMD buyers, doesn't the 5870 possibly sound like the much better buy at $250 now?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...x=0&y=0&Page=1

I think unless cayman xt ends up 60% faster than the 5870, it is currently the way better buy and it would be better to buy them before they went out of stock if your still on 3870 or maybe 4870.

most look like 270 after rebates, which makes some sense considering the 6870 is 250

[zerazax]

I always say that if people aren't worried about power/heat, the last gen's high end cards when EOL are a pretty good deal for the budget conscious

Too bad 5850's are still hovering $200 cause they're still a killer card

[tajoh111]

I always say that if people aren't worried about power/heat, the last gen's high end cards when EOL are a pretty good deal for the budget conscious

Too bad 5850's are still hovering $200 cause they're still a killer card

It's amazing what competition can bring to the landscape. Who has missed such price drops for some very relevant hardware.

[zerazax]

It's amazing what competition can bring to the landscape. Who has missed such price drops for some very relevant hardware.

Well people get caught up in the numbers and think that "oh that's old news"

It's less true for new architectures of course, but when the 5800's were released, $100 4850's and $190 4890's were incredible deals

[[XC] hipno650]

I always say that if people aren't worried about power/heat, the last gen's high end cards when EOL are a pretty good deal for the budget conscious

Too bad 5850's are still hovering $200 cause they're still a killer card

normally I would agree but in the case of the 5870 it's a toss up based on the games you play. the 6870 tends to be pretty close when Tesselation is involved so I would say it is a better future choice over the 5870 which has lackluster tess performance.

as for the 1536sp's for 6970... that would be plain disappointing... considering that would put both the 6970 and 6950 with LESS shaders then the 5870 and 5850, yes the performance per shader is vastly better but by how much with lower clocks...

but come to think about it the same thing happened with the 6870, the consensus and rumors for the longest time were that it had 1280 shaders and it was not till a few days before the launch that we found out it only has 1120. kinda the reverse of the 4870 effect.

[Aten-Ra]

U guys know that i was talking about the 6950 right? So lets say 6950 has these 1440 SP and 6970 has 1536, so why does this Faud guy keep saying its a "big hot chip". If 6970 is below 1600 SP count and using 4vliw wich saves 10% chip space, then i can not see why 6970 would be any bigger than 5870. These things just confuses me , were STILL on 40nm here.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...postcount=1480

I was thinking about the new dual core (Graphics engines) and the 4-way VLIW architecture in Cayman,

Starting with the front end, the ILP (Instruction Level Parallelism) must be the same or better than Barts (6800 series) and the new dual core design seems better in TLP (Thread Level Parallelism). Doubling the Graphics engines in order to have a second Tessellator unit will increase the transistor count and that means it will take more space. So the new front end will be bigger than Barts in size.

Because the new 4-way VLIW don’t have a specialized T (Transcendental) unit, its job is done by the 3 out of 4 shaders insight the SP in the new VEC-4. I believe that when they calculate T(sin, cos etc) the new 4-way VLIW will be slower that the previous 5-way VLIW by up to 10-20%. FP performance could be almost the same as VEC-5 (5 VLIW) per SP but at some instances it could be slower by up to 10%. The new VEC-4 saves them 10% space per SP so in theory they could put 10% more SPs and keep the same size.

One more problem with size will be the Texture units. Because Tex Units are part of the SIMD, and we will have more SIMDs than Cypress (20) they will increase the size of the die. I have no idea how big the Tex Units are but if Cayman have 30 SIMDs (120 TMUs) then they will increase the die size a lot.

Another problem will be the need to connect all those SIMDs between them and that’s the job for the Crossbar. If we have 30 SIMDs and 1920 shaders, Cayman has 20% more shaders than Cypress and it will need more connecting lines and bigger crossbar. That will increase the complexity of the chip and will increase the size.
One more side effect of this complexity is that it could effect the yields because more broken lines could happen in manufacturing and more copper could effect the thermal characteristics of the chip.

From my point of view 120 TMUs are too much and if AMD wants to keep the die size close to Cypress then they will need to cut the SIMD count to 24 SIMDs and 96 TMUs. If the new 4-way VLIW have the same performance with the old VEC-5 and they will increase the ILP and TLP in the front end, then with 24 SIMDs and a dual Core architecture for 2x Tessellation performance, they will have a small chip at 360-380mm2 with 20% more performance in DX-9-10 but 2x in DX-11 Tessellation.

A Dual Front End (Double Tessellation Units), 24 SIMDs with 16 more TMUs and beefed up ROPs will add to the die size even if they save 10% from shaders with the new VLIW-4 architecture.

IMO Cayman is designed with DX-11 and Tessellation in mind and by keeping the small die size philosophy.

20% more performance than Cypress in DX-9/10 and 2x performance in DX-11 Tessellation with a small die size and at the same lithography (40nm) is a nice engineering accomplishment

[generics_user]

i think that the 1920SP rumor was born with the 384 SIMDs

people simply took 384SIMD*5D and ended up with 1920SPs and this number just stayed in the rumor mill even though it was 384 SIMD*4D

[zerazax]

hipno650;4659841'.

as for the 1536sp's for 6970... that would be plain disappointing... considering that would put both the 6970 and 6950 with LESS shaders then the 5870 and 5850, yes the performance per shader is vastly better but by how much with lower clocks...

Clocks are higher - 880 and 800 vs. 850 and 725

Plus, it isn't shaders are equivalent - it's actual SIMDs

1536/4 = 384 > 1600/5 = 320

[ichime]

If it takes 1536 shaders to perform better than the GTX 580 then I'm down...

[Calmatory]

Not only is 384 more than 320, but hasn't there been rumors about improved ROPs aswell?