Nvidia will answer Hawaii, Super Kepler + Maxwell in q1 2014

[Mungri]

I just found this article regarding frame pacing in crossfire with some SLI comparisons:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7195/a...lorer-cat138/5

It was previously noted in earlier tests how bad AMD Crossfire was with frame pacing in crossfire, but they've fixed it in their latest drivers, though its still took them a long time to address this issue.

Though Nvidia still have half the frame rate delta of the 7990:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7195/a...lorer-cat138/4

I don't know what went wrong with AMD between the 6990 and 7990 there.

[kromosto]

I don't know what went wrong with AMD between the 6990 and 7990 there.

hurrying the 7990 is the best answer i think.

[Olivon]

AMD was quite late with the 7990.

7970 was reviewed in dec 2011 and the 7990 was officialy launched in april 2013.
nVidia did march 2012 (680) and may 2012 (690).

[zalbard]

I don't know what went wrong with AMD between the 6990 and 7990 there.

Before fixed Crossfire drivers 6990 was absolutely terrible, though. I guess 7990's drivers still require a bit of work.

[Lanek]

AMD was quite late with the 7990.

7970 was reviewed in dec 2011 and the 7990 was officialy launched in april 2013.
nVidia did march 2012 (680) and may 2012 (690).

Yes, but, the brand who do the PLX chips at this time, have just delay the delivery of the chips for one year, and as AMD had design it with thoses PLX chips first. I dont know if they have need this time for find a replacement and change it, or just decided to delay the 7990 release. ( Some dual 7970's from powercolor was available anyway ( in low quantity ).

Impossible to know if this was the only reason at this time.

[Olivon]

GTX 690 uses the same PEX8747 chip from PLX than 7990.

[AliG]

Is Crossfire/SLI actually necessary anymore though? For the past 5 years now a lot of the best games are becoming console ports, not to mention even the ones that were designed for the PC often don't employ the best engines because it's expensive on the company's behalf to write better code. Why not just avoid the whole stuttering issue altogether with a combination of patience and being content with framerates that matter?

No one is going to deny that you can get higher benchmarks with tri-sli GTX Titans. But at the same time, a single gtx titan will provide you more than enough horsepower for even 1440p - hell I game at 1440p with a 4850! Albeit I can't run the highest settings, but at that resolution you don't even need much AA; and eitherway I think a 7970 ghz edition should be more than an ample upgrade for what I want. If you don't have the money for a high end upgrade, then just do what I do and upgrade part by part on only major holiday sales. I get this is XS, but sometimes people forget on how to actually focus on the upgrades that will result in a visible difference.

[boxleitnerb]

Yes it can be. A 7970 GHz doesn't provide playable (for everyone) fps in all modern games at 1440p. Heck, even a Titan often doesn't. And then you still have 3DVision, PhysX, Downsampling, SGSSAA and games of the next 1-2 years (if you don't want to upgrade soon, again).

As for AA:
As long as PPI doesn't increase substantially, you will always need AA at higher resolutions as well. Higher resolutions at larger screen sizes do not replace AA.

[BababooeyHTJ]

I couldn't even play Far Cry 3 with 4x MSAA at 1440p. Had to turn down settings a fair bit in crysis as well.

I think that some sort of aa is still mandatory at 1440p. I still see a ton of shimmer without. I still like to use SGSSAA when possible. I also couldn't imagine using a 4850 at that resolution. I mean really, you have to turn down some settings? I would imagine you're running a lot of games at the lowest settings possible.

[STEvil]

I just found this article regarding frame pacing in crossfire with some SLI comparisons:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7195/a...lorer-cat138/5

It was previously noted in earlier tests how bad AMD Crossfire was with frame pacing in crossfire, but they've fixed it in their latest drivers, though its still took them a long time to address this issue.

Though Nvidia still have half the frame rate delta of the 7990:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7195/a...lorer-cat138/4

I don't know what went wrong with AMD between the 6990 and 7990 there.

I notice the article doesnt have the updated info on runt frames..

[AliG]

I couldn't even play Far Cry 3 with 4x MSAA at 1440p. Had to turn down settings a fair bit in crysis as well.

I think that some sort of aa is still mandatory at 1440p. I still see a ton of shimmer without. I still like to use SGSSAA when possible. I also couldn't imagine using a 4850 at that resolution. I mean really, you have to turn down some settings? I would imagine you're running a lot of games at the lowest settings possible.

Nah, it's more along the lines that I just play older games. I really don't care much for gaming at this point; I mainly use my desktop for engineering applications. However I do love the Orange Box, and my system works perfectly fine there (even at top settings).

[Lanek]

Yes it can be. A 7970 GHz doesn't provide playable (for everyone) fps in all modern games at 1440p. Heck, even a Titan often doesn't. And then you still have 3DVision, PhysX, Downsampling, SGSSAA and games of the next 1-2 years (if you don't want to upgrade soon, again).

As for AA:
As long as PPI doesn't increase substantially, you will always need AA at higher resolutions as well. Higher resolutions at larger screen sizes do not replace AA.

Even at 4K +31.5", you will need some AA, specially on fast pacing games ... Its less mandatory of "standard" resolution, but still needed ( its a question of overall quality not really for eliminate aliasing on a 2D images )

[Sparky]

I usually only use the AA settings in-game, not using the GPU control center to force override with 23597625 AA samples lol. Does this mean my images are a little more jaggy? I suppose a little bit, yes. But does it hurt gameplay? Not that much. It still looks pretty good, and frankly I'm trying to play the game to not die constantly (and I do a lot lol), not stare at the edges of a leaf that aren't 100% pristine...

[boxleitnerb]

Specular aliasing can be very very apparent

[Mungri]

Is Crossfire/SLI actually necessary anymore though? For the past 5 years now a lot of the best games are becoming console ports, not to mention even the ones that were designed for the PC often don't employ the best engines because it's expensive on the company's behalf to write better code. Why not just avoid the whole stuttering issue altogether with a combination of patience and being content with framerates that matter?

No one is going to deny that you can get higher benchmarks with tri-sli GTX Titans. But at the same time, a single gtx titan will provide you more than enough horsepower for even 1440p - hell I game at 1440p with a 4850! Albeit I can't run the highest settings, but at that resolution you don't even need much AA; and eitherway I think a 7970 ghz edition should be more than an ample upgrade for what I want. If you don't have the money for a high end upgrade, then just do what I do and upgrade part by part on only major holiday sales. I get this is XS, but sometimes people forget on how to actually focus on the upgrades that will result in a visible difference.

Crossfire / SLI is absolutely necessary if you want to use super sample AA in the latest games. Rome II is out in a few days time which will be a huge system hog, even currently, Guild Wars 2 with any amount of SSAA enabled completely destroys FPS down to <20 in huge WvW battles or popular farm locations full of hundreds of players at a time even on the highest end PCs.

If all you play is console ports or old games, CPU is much more important due to poor optimisation on a lot of them, but most modern PC games especially FPSs carry high requirements if you want to maintain 60 FPS and use a reasonable amount of AA.

As for 1440p and a 4850 ... I just couldnt. One you get used to super sample AA, you cant even play with MSAA or FXAA.

I usually only use the AA settings in-game, not using the GPU control center to force override with 23597625 AA samples lol. Does this mean my images are a little more jaggy?

Samples have very little to do with determining AA quality. If you only stick to the default MSAA, you wont see much difference if any no matter how many samples you use over 4x. However the difference between 4x SSAA and any amount MSAA or FXAA is vast and definitely noticable.

MSAA misses jagged edges on a lot of areas, SSAA works on the entire image.

AA settings in games are rubbish, especially in a few recent games that only allow FXAA to be selected which is rarely any better beyond affecting your player character than having no AA at all. Even more annoying is such games in which driver over rides dont work, but that can be overcome with Nvidia Inspector and a bit of googling.

[Ace123]

I picked up two 6990s to play with frame pacing and stuff. Any tests anyone wants to see?

[Mungri]

It doesnt seem like frame pacing is an issue on older gen AMD cards now, those have been fixed well with the drivers.

The 7990 / 7970 xfire are still twice worse than the 6990 and Nvidia SLI, though still much improved over how bad they have been up until the drivers released last month.

[STEvil]

Even at 4K +31.5", you will need some AA, specially on fast pacing games ... Its less mandatory of "standard" resolution, but still needed ( its a question of overall quality not really for eliminate aliasing on a 2D images )

Fast paced would need less AA. If you're moving slow then you get time to stare.

[boxleitnerb]

It doesnt seem like frame pacing is an issue on older gen AMD cards now, those have been fixed well with the drivers.

The 7990 / 7970 xfire are still twice worse than the 6990 and Nvidia SLI, though still much improved over how bad they have been up until the drivers released last month.

Crossfire was always plagued with the issue of microstuttering (like any AFR solution). Reviews have mentioned this time and again, but only recently has there been the possibility with FCAT to measure the end user experience more or less reliably.

[Bowtie]

I just found this article regarding frame pacing in crossfire with some SLI comparisons:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7195/a...lorer-cat138/5

It was previously noted in earlier tests how bad AMD Crossfire was with frame pacing in crossfire, but they've fixed it in their latest drivers, though its still took them a long time to address this issue.

Though Nvidia still have half the frame rate delta of the 7990:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7195/a...lorer-cat138/4

I don't know what went wrong with AMD between the 6990 and 7990 there.

According to the Anand article, this frame pacing driver seems to work better the slower your Xfire solution is.
They speculate that this is because the slower the solution, the more time the driver has to better pace the frames
PcPer's results seem to back this too:
7990 battlefield

vs 7870 Xfire

Compare the 7870 Xfire above to the 690 in blue below:

[Andrew LB]

I came across this over at Guru3d...

The AMD Radeon 9k series are just around the corner. Few weeks ago we told you that the new series will launch in October. Since then we did not have any proof. That’s until now. Most of you probably know that Hawaii GPU will be shown by AMD in late September. Of course this will only be the official announcement. The new retail models will hit the shelves in mid October according to our latest information.

The picture you are going to see is from the headquarters of one of the main AMD AIB partner. Of course I cannot tell you which one, because this could get them into trouble. The funny thing about this is that if they ask me to remove it, they would confirm it at the same time. The photograph is not very straightforward. In fact it’s quite fuzzy and unclear what is shows. I will give you my best bet, but of course you are welcome to add your thoughts right below this post.



So let’s summarize what it probably shows:

Two GPU variants XT and Pro (this could be either Hawaii or other GPU)
Three memory configurations: 8x DDR5, 4x DDR5 and 8x DDR3
Maximum memory capacity of 4GB
Mid-October launch confirmation
The 13xxxxxx labels could potentially mean internal PCB model markings
Some PCB models could use both XT and PRO GPUs
The XT/PRO+{number1}:{number2} label could mean the overclocking level of the memory and the GPU respectively
Apparently one model (probably not the only one) will have two fans, but they need to order them first

We have two important bits of information. Most of the cards will launch in mid October, this will include both DDR3 and DDR5 models. I find it hard to believe that Hawaii or any high-end card would use DDR3 memory, so apparently they would launch entry-level or mid-range segment along with Hawaii cards. The other interesting information is that the manufacturer is planning 4GB cards. At this point we don’t know if this number is referring to Hawaii or other GPU, that’s because we don’t see the whole board, thus we might be missing some information.

So far I have not seen anything that would confirm the new R9-Dxxx naming scheme. That said, I will will continue to use both names until we confirm it.

That’s all for now, stay tuned for new leaks.

Hmm.. those memory busses are clearly 128 and 256. With a 256bits bus, the chips configuration make sense: 256x16 = 4096, 128x32 = 4096, 128x16= 2048 etc.

That means next month's release is only going to be midrange cards, which corresponds with TSMC saying a couple weeks ago that 20nm was not going into production till Q1 2014 at the VERY earliest but after reading TSMC's Q1 and Q2 conference call for shareholders, its actually starting to look like TSMC 20nm is not going to be available in H1 2014. read TSMC Q1 (page 11 , page 17, page 18) and Q2 2013 ( page 9, 12) earnings call transcript. TSMC seems to backing off from their Q2 2014 commencement of volume production statement.

http://www.tsmc.com/uploadfile/ir/qu...Transcript.pdf

http://www.tsmc.com/uploadfile/ir/qu...Transcript.pdf

[SKYMTL]

Funny, a few months ago no one wanted to listen when some of us were saying that 20nm wasn't anywhere near ready for volume production....

[iMacmatician]

I thought the realistic assumption for the past half year or so was that 20 nm GPUs (4770-like "test" chips excepted) would most likely not show up before mid/late 2014. It seemed to me that 20 nm GPUs in 2013 or even the start of 2014 was more wishful thinking than anything else.