ATI 65nm RV630 is not ready yet

[XS2K]

What we could tell from this prototype card is that it crashes in every test we tried, regardless of hardware combination. If it worked, it would be nice and not so loud - but it does heat up significantly, leading us to believe that GDDR-4 memory still has some problems. Joe Macri's GDDR-3 memory is constantly proving itself as the best memory standard in the history of 3D and further. DAAMIT is actually lucky to have this guy on their payroll. Meanwhile, GDDR-4 has higher latencies and heat dissipation, making it less-than-ideal choice for current batch of graphics cards.

Source..please don't slap me :P The Inq

[Daveb2012]

I like the heat though.

[Jamesrt2004]

Didn't we know this already n that there coming out in a few months

[krille]

As we wrote above, the RV630XT eats up 40-45W, and this leaves around 30W to play with.

w00t!

I definitely won't replace my 88GTX with an 86GTX, but this one... passive cooling and acceptable performance. AMD/ATI may have a winner.

Does anyone know TDP of RV670 btw?

[gOJDO]

Why do you even bother to post BS from the_INQ.
They made their BS about this and then they are saying that their BS was really a BS. 50% of their articles are clueless flip-flops.

[Ubermann]

Gojdo cant you just please swallow your lan cable ?
And maybe the modem also..

[Jamesrt2004]

TBH I actually have to agree with Gojdo on this

[nn_step]

well atleast they are correct that the ATi die size is significantly smaller than nVidia's but they kinda missed the part about better performance too

[XS2K]

Originally Posted by gOJDO

Why do you even bother to post BS from the_INQ.
They made their BS about this and then they are saying that their BS was really a BS. 50% of their articles are clueless flip-flops.

Because it seems that this time they really have the card and know what they are talking about although I have to agree with you they aren't the most realyable source that is there but you just can't ignore them,if you do ignore The Inq Fudzilla and some other sources our XS news thread would be half of what it is now + we are talking about thing's that are under NDA so you should take news with a bit of salt when you read about stuff that are not reviewed or launched....,and you have to admit sometimes they are right and this article seems like one of them....

[Shintai]

Originally Posted by nn_step

well atleast they are correct that the ATi die size is significantly smaller than nVidia's but they kinda missed the part about better performance too

It hopefully would be. As nVidias is 80nm and AMD 65nm.

[XS Janus]

lol about the gddr4 comment. I mean we hear gddr5 is in the works and is comming fast question is for whoom, as no one can still use gddr4 properly.
These tech wars are begining to be more and more virual battles between all sorts of vaporware.

[satein]

Ok, I would think about it again as if the Inq said it was not ready... so what is this?

First sight of Mobility HD2600 preview from LaptopMag...
Laptopmag on HP Pavilion HDX Entertainment Notebook PC preview

Originally Posted by LaptopMag

HP Pavilion HDX Entertainment Notebook PC
Featuring a dual-hinged 20-inch widescreen display, Intel's next-generation Centrino technology, and all the multimedia bells and whistles you can dream up, the HP HDX is one smokin' desktop replacement.

Graphic is Mobility HD2600 with 256MB...

They also give the score on graphic system testing as

Originally Posted by LaptopMag

We expected to see high scores from the HDX, and we weren't disappointed. This preproduction model wouldn't run PCMark05, but its 3DMark03 score of 12,240 and 3DMark06 score of 4,002 mean this system can plow through graphics-intensive applications. Strangely, the HDX notched 31 fps on our F.E.A.R gaming test on autodetect, and 26 fps with the settings maxed out. (We suspect this subpar showing might be a driver issue related to Windows Vista.)

So, I guess there may be no delay on RV610/630 but the early production chips might go to the laptop manufacturer rather than come as a consumer video card...

[gOJDO]

@XS2K
I don't think they know what they are talking about. Most of the_INQ writers know nothing about the things they use to speculate about. They claimed IBM/AMD 65nm SOI-3 to be 20% faster than SOI-2. They claimed AMD 65nm K8 to come Q2 2006, Q3 2006 & Q4 2006. They also claimed RHT in K8. They claimed K10 to come in Q4 2006, Q1 2007, Q2 2007, Q3 2007. They did the same about Penryn.
Now I see the same pattern about 65nm Radeons. They will flip-flop and claim something about it several times and then they will say we told you about that.
They will write everything about anything just to attract masses and make a traffic to their articles. Thats how they are making money.

[Shintai]

Originally Posted by gOJDO

@XS2K
I don't think they know what they are talking about. Most of the_INQ writers know nothing about the things they use to speculate about. They claimed IBM/AMD 65nm SOI-3 to be 20% faster than SOI-2. They claimed AMD 65nm K8 to come Q2 2006, Q3 2006 & Q4 2006. They also claimed RHT in K8. They claimed K10 to come in Q4 2006, Q1 2007, Q2 2007, Q3 2007. They did the same about Penryn.
Now I see the same pattern about 65nm Radeons. They will flip-flop and claim something about it several times and then they will say we told you about that.
They will write everything about anything just to attract masses and make a traffic to their articles. Thats how they are making money.
So, of course they they will be right

Precisely. And Fudzilla is doing the same. Tho even more rapid.
Thats why some will always find things that turned out true on their sites and defend them. Yet the majority of their articles is rubbish.
But whatever blows in the favour of what people wish for I guess. Else both sites would have been dead long ago due to no credibility.

[XS2K]

I said that most of their articles are not true and that I agree with you on that but this time atleast they have the card and they show some interesting thing's like the size of the die,they still post some FUD when they compare the scalar shaders of 8600 series with those of X2600XT since you can't compare them like they are the same thing "Thanks to 65nm process, AMD managed to get RV630 in smaller size than a G84 chip, but offers vastly higher number of scalar shaders - 120 compared to 32" + other stuff too but this is like a trademark for The Inq
Anyway

[mascaras]

YOUR CORRESPONDENT HAD an exciting weekend, taking a plane from Zagreb to *somewhere*, enjoying some haute cuisine and picking up one interesting board, to be known to the market as Radeon HD 2600XT. This board is based on a 65nm RV630 chip and is accompanied with 256MB of ultra-fast GDDR4 memory from Samsung.



RV630 is really a small chip, almost 50% smaller than RV560 (X1650XT)


Since this is very first 65nm graphics chip in the world, we decided to show you the chip first. As far as we know, this chip packs serious number of trannies, little less than 400 million. All of this is packed in 13x11mm, or 143-4-5mm2... manufactured in TSMC's fab in Taiwan, of course.



...in contrast, even G84-400 is larger.



As we all know, Nvidia managed to pack only 32 scalar shaders in its own chip, which measures 169mm2. Thanks to 65nm process, AMD managed to get RV630 in smaller size than a G84 chip, but offers vastly higher number of scalar shaders - 120 compared to 32. Nothing to be sneezed at. Given the fact that OEMs are telling us that the whole board consumes around 40-45W, you can imagine that Graphzilla of Satan Clara fame is worried. Worried a lot...

This is not the final production chip, however. The reason Henri Richard was wrong when he was promised simultaneous and hard launch of the complete Radeon HD2000 series (can you say "10 products" again?) in front of whole analyst corps was the fact that both RV610 and RV630 need another respin. The boards will be ready just after Computex, with availability to follow at the very end of June, or should we say July?



The RV630XT Board - GDDR-4 monster


Board itself is fairly light, but it is surprisingly long



We saw pictures of empty PCBs quite some time ago, and in general, the board looks like X1800XL without 256-bit memory controller. Cooler is a long one, just like the PCB itself... but we are seeing absence of any additional power connectors like 4-pin molex or 6-pin PEG (PCI Express Graphics), which we grew accustomed to. After seeing X1650XT having a 6-pin PEG connector, this successor of the series does not use any, and even spots some room for overclocking.




Backside of the board shows that there is room for yet another 256MB of GDDR-4 memory



As we wrote above, the RV630XT eats up 40-45W, and this leaves around 30W to play with. We're certain that factory overclocked boards will feature this additional power connector, but then, with two-slot or even water-cooling block, it is not hard to imagine what would 100W headroom offer. Our sources are telling us that these chips are happy campers when it comes to overclocking, only real issue at hand is getting them to run stable. As it is right now, chips are either perfectly stable, or not stable at all. It was only the question of luck, and my luck was so good that I was quite happy not to be in Las Vegas...




Compared to GeForce 8600GTS, you can see "dwarf-effect" on the 8600GTS board. But the smaller one wants more juice to keep it running.


Coolers also show the difference between two cards. 8600GTS looks very inadequate when compared to the RV630XT.



Board we had was clocked to 799.84 MHz for the GPU and 1100 MHz DDR for the memory, e.g 2.2 GHz... since GPU communicates with the memory via 128-bit user interface you will end up with 35.2 GB/s of theoretically available bandwidth. Yes, we know that RV670 will bring 256-bit memory interface to mainstream segment, but this is a story about RV630.

The systems we planned to test on are trusty AMD and Intel based INQtest, consisted of following components:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+
ASUS M2R32-MVP (ATi 580X)
2x1GB Corsair Dominator PC2-9136C5D
Seagate Barracuda ES 250GB
Sony BWU-100A
beQuiet! 850W PSU

and

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800
EVGA 680i
2x1GB GeIL PC2-8500/9600 MultiSpec Kit

Seagate Barracuda ES 250GB
Sony BWU-100A
Enermax Galaxy 850W PSU

Our standard setup from now on includes a dual-boot between 32-bit Windows XP and 64-bit Vista, when that is possible. Since we had several different versions of drivers, we installed 32-bit Vista as well. So, a triple-OS combo. Of course, each and every operating system was installed on a different partition, with complete set of drivers and patches. .NET Framework 2.0, DirectX April 2007 Update, Visual C++ Express and Microsoft Office 2007 were also installed.




Problems, what problems?



Board in action...BSODMark is really high, and this is the score that every hardware vendor should avoid


Sadly, it seems that software part did not get along well with the drivers in hand. We have tried on several different hardware configurations, both Windows XP and Vista - but to no avail. Drivers were not stable at all, and BSODs were often as rain in Blighty. Even though we had several different drivers, such as 8.31, 8.34, 8.37 and so on - we just could not get this thing to complete a single benchmark, especially favourites like synthetic 3DMark05 and 06. We did manage to get a score in Stalker, but it was so bad (8600GT level), that we decided to postpone the benchmark scores until we get a decent driver to test this card with...

This is where Graphzilla can start celebrating. While AMD has far better hardware on paper, and packs more power under the hood, the products are just not ready. High-end may be ready to fly of the shelves in a way that Nvidia could never deliver (we are getting reports of channel having more HD2900XT's than nV had in two of previous launches together), but mainstream and low-end are markets where the real money lies... and right now, nV is enjoying the ride of its life.

In short
What we could tell from this prototype card is that it crashes in every test we tried, regardless of hardware combination. If it worked, it would be nice and not so loud - but it does heat up significantly, leading us to believe that GDDR-4 memory still has some problems. Joe Macri's GDDR-3 memory is constantly proving itself as the best memory standard in the history of 3D and further. DAAMIT is actually lucky to have this guy on their payroll. Meanwhile, GDDR-4 has higher latencies and heat dissipation, making it less-than-ideal choice for current batch of graphics cards.

AMD still has lot of challenges ahead. For a company that has an interesting slogan - Smarter Choice would probably be not to cut the pipe down on R&D all the time - and keep losing talents from Satan Clara and Markham offices. This only helps constant build-up of engineers over at Chipzilla and Graphzilla, who are happy to get their claws on any engineer available.

Meanwhile, the wait for AMD's own mainstream and low-end DX10 cards continues. But now at least we know what AMD will come up with. Only, make it stable - pretty please? µ


http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39540

regards

[Caparroz]

Originally Posted by mascaras

regards

I don't to be an ass about this but why do you always post the full story that's linked in the first post already? Don't get me wrong, you're frequently posting good news but this kind of polutes the whole thread...

If you wanna be the News guy just ask Perkam. I think you deserve it.

[alexio]

GDDR4 is proven technology. I'm not sure why they blame the memory. Looks more like driver issues or in the worst case a faulty GPU or flawed PCB design, the closest to a GDDR4 issue being a faulty memory controller.

Blaming the memory is rather odd.

[mascaras]

Originally Posted by Caparroz

I don't to be an ass about this but why do you always post the full story that's linked in the first post already? Don't get me wrong, you're frequently posting good news but this kind of polutes the whole thread...

If you wanna be the News guy just ask Perkam. I think you deserve it.

Its OK i dont get you wrong but i can explain to you :

Sometimes I post the full story that's linked in the first post When the links are to the INQ or Fudzilla and 99% of the users dont even open it when sometimes they had interesting news

btw: i dont wanna be nothing , im admin of two other foruns that already take me a lot of time .


regards