AMD 8000M Series To Debut at CES

[3DVagabond]

TechPowerUp from Expreview.

I know it's not desktop, but it's coming sooner than many of us thought. Maybe this means they're going to get serious about regaining some of the mobile GPU market they lost last round. Curious to see what it brings to the table. Could we see the 8800 series about the same time? Usually uses the same chip as the top of the mobile range.

 

[Jaydip]

"Expreview" a Chinese site was cited as the source of the article it may be true but it is not probably official news.

 

[3DVagabond]

"Expreview" a Chinese site was cited as the source of the article it may be true but it is not probably official news.

My bad. I'll update that. I just read the text of the article and it makes it seem like AMD is the source. There have been a few things from TPU lately that are not up to their norms. Oh well. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[Borealis7]

An AMD 8800 would be hilarious! that was the card that destroyed them back in 2006.
but it would probably be something like a 8870 *boohoo*

 

[Jaydip]

Np as I said it is probably true.The names are pretty interesting though "Mars" , "Venus"

 

[3DVagabond]

Np as I said it is probably true.The names are pretty interesting though "Mars" , "Venus"

Call me sick, but this was the funniest comment.

who will be the first to overclock Uranus?

 

[Jaydip]

lol missed that

 

[ShintaiDK]

Might just be a rebranded HD7xxx. Its a classic for mobiles to begin with. The 15 first HD7000M GPUs was rebranded 40nm.

 

[jacktesterson]

I'm thinking this will be a Rebranded Series with possibly higher end 89xx coming out later.

 

[zebrax2]

My guess is its either re-branded or a lower end GCN based GPU

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Might just be a rebranded HD7xxx. Its a classic for mobiles to begin with. The 15 first HD7000M GPUs was rebranded 40nm.

My guess is its either re-branded or a lower end GCN based GPU

Agree with you there. I smell a considerable re-brand... :|

 

[Blitzvogel]

I wouldn't mind at all seeing Cape Verde again but going by wiki and it's unsubstantiated facts, the Orust GPU looks to be Cape Verde's replacement with it's 768:48:16 configuration. Sounds like it would make an excellent upper midrange mobile GPU as long as AMD doesn't ever pair it with DDR3. Along with their bad graphics switching software, AMD needs to take firm stand in:

1) simplifying the line of mobile graphics
2) using GDDR5 in all models above the low range. No models in general should have less than 32 GB/s in the first place.
3) keep up with graphics drivers
4) work with OEMs and builders to market their products across the entire range. The middle range tends to provide the most substantial value with good performance at good cost. AMD should embrace it.

 

[Red Hawk]

Might just be a rebranded HD7xxx. Its a classic for mobiles to begin with. The 15 first HD7000M GPUs was rebranded 40nm.

This. Half of the chips put in laptops are just rebranded chips from the last generation, maybe clocked a little higher.

 

[boxleitnerb]

They are new GPUs with the exception of the 8800M which is a renamed 7800M:

http://www.computerbase.de/news/2012-12/amd-praesentiert-radeon-hd-8000m-fuer-notebooks/
http://www.pcgameshardware.de/AMD-Radeon-Hardware-255597/News/AMD-Radeon-HD-8000M-Serie-1040709/

It's German, but the slides (English) and tables speak for themselves.

The 8800M should be slightly slower than the 7800M and the 8700M should be on par with the 7700M or slower if it uses DDR3. People should watch out for the exact specs of the notebook they buy, otherwise they might be in for a nasty surprise.

 

[tviceman]

Looks like these one of these chips will likely be significantly smaller than 100mm^2 in die size if stream processor count is any indication. Cape Verde has 640 stream processors, one of these new chips (looks like two chips in all) has 384 stream processors. The 8800m is likely based off Cape Verde, with some possible small tweaks or natural improvements with 28nm maturing.

 

[boxleitnerb]

Okay, those GPUs don't have anything to do with Sea Islands. heise.de asked AMD and they said, those GPUs are still based on GCN 1.0.

So HD7700M, 7800M and 7900M are based on GCN but 7400M, 7500M and 7600M were still based on VLIW4 (Northern Islands). These new chips are just the missing part of the GCN 1.0 lineup.

 

[joshhedge]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6520/amd-announces-their-first-8000m-gpus

Official.

 

[RussianSensation]

These specs look extremely underwhelming. It appears AMD is shifting priorities to lowering power consumption and dropping prices to make these parts attractive as their performance improvement looks MIA. Marketing is misleading as can possibly be. HD8870M is slower than HD7800M series and is pitted against 650M from NV? Yawn.

I have to ask what AMD's engineers/management were doing for the last 12 months? Did they take a 12 months vacation in an all-inclusive resort? I hope they went to a high end one where the premium white rum was not under the counter because this might be the last AMD vacation they'll ever take.

Source

If this is a sign of things to come for HD8000 series as a whole, things are looking dare I stagnant at Team Red HQ. I think the right word I was looking for is catastrophic. What do they intend to do release Sea Islands as HD8900M and then have a 2.5-3x performance gap between a 2048SP (?) HD8970M and HD8870M or is HD8970M going to be a 1536 SP "all new" HD7970M part? 640 SPs for HD8870M to serve as a mid-range notebook GPU, really? I was hoping someone would finally ditch the product segmentation (re: crippling) of DDR3/GDDR5 mix&match but I guess this ill practice continues. AMD's HD8000M market positioning/product strategy is shaping up to be worse than taking HD6000 series and calling it a new generation.

Oh, I know what the marketing/engineers were doing for 12 months. They figured out a clever way to mimic the famous 4 "Ps" of marketing into 4 "Cs" of gaming. Took a lot of work to come up with that one. :hmm:

 

[boxleitnerb]

Well aside from naming hiccups, it's okay to ditch the VLIW4 GPUs and replace them with GCN ones. I've read somewhere that 8600M and 8700M are based on a new smaller GCN chip, smaller than Cape Verde, that is. Why not, should save them some money in making it.

 

[RussianSensation]

Well aside from naming hiccups, it's okay to ditch the VLIW4 GPUs and replace them with GCN ones. I've read somewhere that 8600M and 8700M are based on a new smaller GCN chip, smaller than Cape Verde, that is. Why not, should save them some money in making it.

So you are suggesting it's OK to release a crappy new generation because the low-end parts of previous generation were even more garbage based on rebadged HD6000 series? That's not exactly setting the bar very high when NV's GTX600 parts are eating away your market share Pac-man style in the notebook dGPU sector. Also, you didn't address HD7870M --> HD8870M, both based on GCN, the latter is positioned as the slower part. Desktop HD7770 1Ghz is faster than HD8870M. The next level up is just HD8900M series. It can't be 25-30% faster than HD7970M or they'll have a major gap between HD8870M and HD8900 parts. If it's barely faster, what was the point? Desktop HD7770 is selling for $100 on Newegg with 2 free games. 12 months later and all they could come up with for HD8870M was a 30% slower clocked variant of that product? :thumbsdown:

 

[USER8000]

It seems that GCN is now replacing the low end VLIW5 based GPUs. The GPU of the HD8500,HD8600 and HD8700 series looks smaller,than the HD8800 series. It is probably cheap to make too and probably means they can get more wins in laptops,especially if power consumption is low. I wonder if the next AMD APU will end up having 384 GCN shaders now?

 

[RussianSensation]

It seems that GCN is now replacing the low end VLIW5 based GPUs. The GPU of the HD8500,HD8600 and HD8700 series looks smaller,than the HD8800 series. It is probably cheap to make too and probably means they can get more wins in laptops,especially if power consumption is low. I wonder if the next AMD APU will end up having 384 GCN shaders now?

The average consume doesn't care what architecture is inside because they probably don't even understand what VLIW4/5 vs. GCN is. As long as the performance is there, they see progress. Imagine buying a laptop with HD8870M only to find out it's slower than HD7870M? I am sorry but that type of marketing practice is unacceptable and a disservice to the consumers. Also, looking at their overall product positioning, performance hasn't moved at all in a positive way and the only series left is HD8900M. In other words everything they are paper launching today is looking extremely weak. Replacing VLIW parts with GCN on the low-end is not an excuse because HD7000 should have been GCN from top-to-bottom to begin with. Where is the performance increase 12 months later?

 

[USER8000]

The average consume doesn't care what architecture is inside, as long as the performance is there. Imagine buying a laptop with HD8870M only to find out it's slower than HD7870M. I am sorry but that type of marketing practice is unacceptable and a disservice to the consumers.

It might not be slower. You are making the assumption it has the same performance or lower. It probably uses tweaked GCN shaders,appears to have greater memory bandwidth and also it probably uses boost clocks too. People judged the HD6870 and thought it would be "slower" than an HD5850 based on leaked specifications since it had far less shaders.

Until reviews come out we cannot tell,so I am not passing judgement until then.

Whether it will be a big performance boost,I don't know,but all indications,seem to point towards the next generation AMD and Nvidia GPUs being tweaked versions of the current ones, with between 15% to 30% more performance overall.

 

[Red Hawk]

Well aside from naming hiccups, it's okay to ditch the VLIW4 GPUs and replace them with GCN ones. I've read somewhere that 8600M and 8700M are based on a new smaller GCN chip, smaller than Cape Verde, that is. Why not, should save them some money in making it.

Why would they even do that? AMD did not make a smaller GCN chip because such a thing would already be obsolete. Trinity and to a lesser extent Ivy Bridge have pushed up the bar for integrated graphics, removing the market for low end discrete graphics chips, especially in the mobile market. 2013 will bring Kaveri and Haswell, which will push the integrated graphics bar even further (I bet Kaveri will include GCN itself). There's no point to designing a new small graphics chip when all the CPUs it will be sold alongside will have graphics that are just as good as it.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Yep, it was a rebrand. Seems the real HD8xxx series are scheduled for Q2 2013. I bet discrete cards too.