AMD Cayman info (or rumor)

[LordEC911]

size of the chip ????

Somewhere around 380-390mm2.
I heard 385mm2 quite awhile ago, Fudo recently said 389mm2.

Phase shoke (CPL) controlled by Volterra.

Chil?

[tajoh111]

69xx series = 58xx series tuned for dx11 games, well done ATI.

looking at dx11 games it will be right on par with the 580gtx performance give or take a few fps. Smaller size and lower power then nv.

Although it doesn't take the single card crown... which has never been the goal (although many people always look that way, certainly all the nv fanboys).

size of the chip ????

It was certainly meant to take the crown away from the gtx 480. At a price of 450 dollars from rumors and the 6970 moniker, I think it was supposed to be the fastest compared to the gtx 480. And I am certain that the 6970 beat's the gtx 480.

You have to admit, some of the AMD fanboys, thought it was going to be the fastest chip ever. E.G second coming of r300 and ridiculous performance expectations, 80% faster than a 5870 and 30-40% faster than a gtx 580.

I think AMD will have a good product if they can price this card at 400 dollars. However the under 300 crowd really overshadow anything in the upper range for value from either camp. E.g gtx 470, and 5870(this card particularly).

[Gilgamesh]

HD6970 is right on par with GTX580 o perhaps little over GTX 570: just a point of view

[Sn0wm@n]

but the thing is the big tdp gap .... how will non refference card will go against nvidia's non refference 580 and 570 .. is the big question ...

[Jodiuh]

...them being sold at $300/$400 would be killer...

This would be nice. Especially if a 6950 runs neck and neck w/ a 570 when both have been clocked. Lower power too. And world peace. :p

You may be right, the 6870 is $249 so it might not be appropriate for the 6950 to be priced at $299.

It would be appropriate if the 6870 was priced @ $200. OCed 460's pretty close to an OCed 6870, no? And those can be had for $160. Even the 470 goes for about $230 right now.

naked 6970

Black PCB?!?!!

[kuroikenshi]

This would be nice. Especially if a 6950 runs neck and neck w/ a 570 when both have been clocked. Lower power too. And world peace. :p


It would be appropriate if the 6870 was priced @ $200. OCed 460's pretty close to an OCed 6870, no? And those can be had for $160. Even the 470 goes for about $230 right now.


Black PCB?!?!!

adjust ur monitor..... its brown

[hurrdurr]

The card's performance is between 570 and 580. If they can price it at $400, it will be an awesome card; yet I think Nvidia will still remain very competitive if they are able to shave only $50 off GTX 580.

[-Boris-]

adjust ur monitor..... its brown

It's black.
The circuits in it are brown.

[nascasho]

After looking at the pictures of the card for a bit I think it has a way of letting you know if PowerTune is enabled or disabled via LED, or something via LED. If you look at the end of the 6-pin power connector it looks like some type of clear thing, and w/e it is there's a little "something" even on the PCB shot.

Whatcha think?

[Jodiuh]

adjust ur monitor..... its brown

It's black.
The circuits in it are brown.

See? See what Ikea has done to the world?! Now I'm forced to suffer w/ Espresso tables, espresso chairs, espresso laundry bins...and now espresso video cards.

[Kristers Bensin]

It's black.
The circuits in it are brown.

Its very brown, here's a black & brown for you'r comparison:


You can also see the same thing has been done on many ASUS motherboards.

[zerazax]

2 days to go and they finally get a naked picture leaked! must be some kind of record

i hope reviewers test some high rest (2560x1600 + multimonitor situations) to really test the 2GB

[Karam]

naked 6970

Looks like a vapor chamber to me :
hot chip or silent card ... or both

[zerazax]

As I wrote earlier, what will be important is what Cayman is reviewed against. If people review Cayman against the 5870, they probably won't see as positive a review as say, Cayman against the 480. Sound odd? Well, it appears that most of the changes Cayman has done is meant to target the weaknesses of the 5870 that the 480 had advantages in, and hence why the 480 outperformed Cypress tremendously in certain benches.

In games where the 5870 already performs really well relative to the 480/580, I bet we don't see as much of an improvement in Cayman since what the 5870 does really well, Cayman already has but doesn't expand on (functional unit wise)

It was certainly meant to take the crown away from the gtx 480. At a price of 450 dollars from rumors and the 6970 moniker, I think it was supposed to be the fastest compared to the gtx 480. And I am certain that the 6970 beat's the gtx 480.

You have to admit, some of the AMD fanboys, thought it was going to be the fastest chip ever. E.G second coming of r300 and ridiculous performance expectations, 80% faster than a 5870 and 30-40% faster than a gtx 580.

I think AMD will have a good product if they can price this card at 400 dollars. However the under 300 crowd really overshadow anything in the upper range for value from either camp. E.g gtx 470, and 5870(this card particularly).

470 and 5870 are EOL - what's most likely is that the 6950 will end up occupying that spot when Barts prices go down and/or the GTX 560 arrives

As for what the fanboys expect, keep in mind early rumors of R300 were from Fudzilla (why anyone would believe him, esp. on info from AMD is beyond me) and based on 1920 SP's, which would definitely have crushed the 580.

--------------

The more I see it, the more I think that the 69xx's are akin to an expanded version of the 4890. The 4890 came 10 months after the 4870, and was meant to take away the crown from the 280 after the 285 was released.

The 4890 was 280mm^2, up 10% from the 255mm^2 of RV770. Cayman is 389mm^2, up 15% from 334mm^2 and has more hardware changes, but also a longer development cycle (15 months). Both doubled the predecessor's reference RAM.

The parallels are eerily similar

[kaktus1907]

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news...-unveiled.aspx

[eXceeded]

I find it hilarious how we've gone from 15+% faster to now being on par or even between performance of 580 and 570... I remember this kind of hype when I got my HD2900XT 1GB, i'll definitely keep waiting for the 6990 as I've never really been an nvidia guy...

[zalbard]

Come on, try to be objective to some extent and not illogical. Rounding 27.7 up to 30% is pretty significant and not taking into account that Metro 2033 score is bolstering things up(117) big time with only 7 gaming benchmarks(with no min and max) and doesn't represent a realworld practical setting because both cards are rendering the game unplayable at that setting.

Why shouldn't we?
Really, I think AMD is on the right track there...
You do not need 200 FPS in old games. What's more important is focusing on the heaviest loads, to make the card future proof, running the latest and the heaviest games the way they should run.

HD6970 is right on par with GTX580 o perhaps little over GTX 570: just a point of view

It's hard to say for sure right now... But the performance in games appears to be quite decent, I am certain of that.

[flopper]

in dx11, 6900 series likely beats the 580/570gtx
dx9/10 is likely it ends up a little slower.

Price/performance ratio seems to be the same as 5850/5870 when they were out a year ago with similar prices.

[zerazax]

The Awesome CrossfireX Scaling is... awesome :P

But that's two differing 6970 performance slides? WTF?

[Kristers Bensin]

Looks like a vapor chamber to me :
hot chip or silent card ... or both

It is indeed a vapor chamber , and i belive its good that they copied what Nvidia proved to be superior of regular heatpipe coolers.

[zalbard]

It is indeed a vapor chamber , and i belive its good that they copied what Nvidia proved to be superior of regular heatpipe coolers.

AMD has started using these before Nvidia...

[tajoh111]

Why shouldn't we?
Really, I think AMD is on the right track there...
You do not need 200 FPS in old games. What's more important is focusing on the heaviest loads, to make the card future proof, running the latest and the heaviest games the way they should run.

It's hard to say for sure right now... But the performance in games appears to be quite decent, I am certain of that.

As I have shown, DOF turns things into a memory limitation than a GPU power limitation. That benchmark is enabling DOF for metro 2033 and makes cards with more memory seem faster than they are. Look how well a 5870 1gb does vs a 2gb in the chart I posted.

If we wanted to make the gtx 580 look 100% faster than a 5870, all we would need to do is start running games that would test the limits of the 5870 memory. E.g like that graph I just showed.

Having one program run at 2fps while another runs at 17fps shows very little about GPU power and more about memory running out(so with this setting the gtx 580 is 850% faster). DOF is all about the memory and makes cards choke hard if they lack it. Compounded with the fact that neither result is playable, it really makes it a really useless basis for performance.

[zalbard]

VRAM is still a part of graphics card, is it not? This is one of the reasons why I am getting a new card instead of 5870... I simply run out of ram at 1600p sometimes.
So, hell, yes, it is very important.
Besides, ok... 17fps is not playable... Get 3 cards => 45 FPS! Much better than 6 FPS in Nvidia's case.

[cold2010]

GIGABYTE RADEON HD6970 2GB in Sweden
580$

[TheBreezyBB]

That is the same price for 480GTX on the same website.