AMD Cayman info (or rumor)

[zshadow]

i will wait for the 15th so that we can figure out exactly what this whole power tune AM/FM radio switch power saving maybe turbo boost stuff is. because for AMD to have the card set to a TDP and raise or lower clocks to stay within that limit would be nothing short of pure stupidity. considering most people who buy this card have no interest in OCing and know little more then how to plug in a stick of RAM let alone do research to find out that to get the most performance out of their brand new $400+ video card they need to hit some stupid switch. I appreciate AMD trying to make the card as efficient as possible but at the cost of performance like that is way to far over the line...

Most people who buy a $400 card have no interest in OC'ing?

I'd say it's the other way around..

Also, the switch seems to be some sort of BIOS reset mechanism. I don't think it's related.

[[XC] hipno650]

Most people who buy a $400 card have no interest in OC'ing?

I'd say it's the other way around..

Also, the switch seems to be some sort of BIOS reset mechanism. I don't think it's related.

not at XS but you need to think about the majority of the market here. out of most of the people I have ever met who call themselves computer enthusiasts and fully build there own systems and have a decent amount of knowledge about computers and hardware only two of them besides myself overlclock there systems CPU let alone there GPU. most of the time I end up doing all of the overclocking for them anyways because they don't have the knowledge or interest. the same applies to the majority of guys who work in the local hardware shops. most of them buy parts assemble them and call it a day. so lets say overall out of people I have met that would be in the market for a 6970 only 10% of them will overclock it (thats being very generous) and it's not like i don't have a great deal of exposure to this crowd either custom built computers are my hobby and my job so they take up a good amount of my life. theres more to the custom built and gaming seen then what is on XS however i would have a hard time calling anything but XS "enthusiasts"

@Lightman i guess it would have to do with a difference in view points. for example I could care less about using an extra 100 watts to play old games (i own a 480 after all haha) also I have noticed that when monitoring my GPU usage in games old and even some newer ones it is very rare that I am using 100% of my GPU while gaming most older games on use 30% of my GPU thus my temps are much lower then when i am at 100% and same with my power usage anyways. the issue I have is that out of the box when you need all of the possible power you GPU has (playing Crysis for example) your GPU could potentially be down clocking itself for the sake of power consumption, which begs the question why did you buy such a high end GPU in the first place when in demanding games it will slow itself down at stock settings. now granted i doubt it will be that drastic but we will never know till the 15th comes around.

as to why I have not complained about the 580/570 in furmark, i tend to think that any 3dmark test is much closer to real game play then furmark. furmark is made for three reasons, stability testing, heat testing and power consumption testing. 3dmark is at least made to provide some level of game performance representation (even though it fails to do so more often then not) i have yet to see the power throttling on the GTX 580 come into play in games because if I remember correctly it is driver based not hardware based... and for the record I am not a fan of what Nvidia did there which was deliberately to make the gains in power consumption look better then they really are. however power consumption is at the BOTTOM of my concerns when buying a new video card or when recommending a new card to someone

who knows maybe there will be no games that trip the downclocking on the 6970 but if AMD does limit game performance then I will have a problem with it.

[Lightman]

@[XC] hipno650

I see from where you coming

I could make a car analogy but I will refrain
Let's wait for official benches to judge this new power saving tech.

[gamervivek]

i guess it would have to do with a difference in view points. for example I could care less about using an extra 100 watts to play old games (i own a 480 after all haha) also I have noticed that when monitoring my GPU usage in games old and even some newer ones it is very rare that I am using 100% of my GPU while gaming most older games on use 30% of my GPU thus my temps are much lower then when i am at 100% and same with my power usage anyways.

gpu usage is a useless metric to correlate to power consumption. Far Cry 2 used to show 100% constant usage, while crysis jumped around 70-95 percent while temps playing crysis were much higher.

[[XC] hipno650]

@[XC] hipno650

I see from where you coming

I could make a car analogy but I will refrain
Let's wait for official benches to judge this new power saving tech.

I just hope the wait does not kill all of us

gpu usage is a useless metric to correlate to power consumption. Far Cry 2 used to show 100% constant usage, while crysis jumped around 70-95 percent while temps playing crysis were much higher.

in my experience I have seen usage while playing games to be directly related to temps experienced while playing games across a wide range of games. granted there with be differences and yes Crysis does seem to get the cards hotter and make them use power then most but usage it is still shows a certain level of GPU power consumption. a GPU running at 50% uses less power then one at 100% thats pretty common sense for the most part...

just like when I run WCG on my CPU it uses more power then when I surfing the web...

I have also noticed that most modern cards will auto downclock when the GPU gets below a certain level of usage which is fine for the most part because you don't need the extra power anyways... this however up until now has been driver based not hardware based.