Radeon HD 7000 Revealed: AMD to Mix GCN with VLIW4 & VLIW5 Architectures

[DilTech]

The reason the gtx 580 was amazing at the time was there was also such a huge increase in the amount of shaders compared to the old architecture.

From 24 and 8 pixel and vertex shaders respectively to 128 unified at much higher clocks too. These were real shaders too. The r600 was so disappointing because it relied on only 64, 5 way shaders and relied on a new AA scheme which relied on more shaders to do the work.

The 8800GTX was also in the hands of more than a few companies before the 7800GTX 256 hit the market. I still remember the arguments on this very site because I had already had hands on time with the thing when sites like xbitlabs were claiming it'd be a hybrid chip. Granted, the original G80 chip wasn't the 384-bit monster that released to the public (it was 256bit, actually closer to matching the 8800GT than the 8800GTX), but NVidia spent a LOT more time perfecting that card than anyone on here would believe. After all, it was actually in the design phase before we even saw the NV40 (G80 was titled the NV50 at that time, IIRC) and had received mention a few times during that time frame. NVidia spent YEARS on that design, and it paid off big time.

NVidia actually puts a lot more time into the design and testing phase than most people on here would believe could be even remotely profitable (a part of the reason their cards are a bit higher in the price range), just to make sure they never have another FX mistake. Late is one thing, but late AND extremely under-performing isn't going to happen again.

AMD/ATi have had issues when it comes to full scale brand new designs the past few attempts, and they usually fix it the next time around. HD 2900 was fixed with the HD 4800 (the 3870 was a step in the right direction, but it still wasn't without issue). The X1800 was fixed with the X1900, although the X1800 performance wasn't "bad" per-say either.

That said, I'm actually seriously hoping AMD show up with a serious competitor. I'd prefer we don't see stagnation in the gpu market like we have in the CPU market. These 30-40% jumps just don't catch me like we use to see. Remember the jump from the 9800xt to the x800xt? What about the 7900GTX to the 8800GTX? Speed jumps have dwindled, and games taking advantage have dwindled along with it. On a positive note though, you can buy a solid card and actually have it perform admirably for a longer time-frame now, which is definitely a positive note.