AMD Radeon 7000-Series 28nm (Southern Islands) | 7990 7970 7870 7770 | Discussion

[Zed03]

still showing 32 ROPs. maybe they have some really odd architecture for the GCN cards.

32 rops would be death for this card.

 

[-Slacker-]

I'm guessing the sites who have a good relationship with AMD (read: They actually honor NDAs) already have the cards and are finishing up the reviews for when the NDA lifts on Thursday.

Well yeah, but it would be nice if the NDA would be shifted to -say - 2 days early? (I mean, sure, that goes without saying that it would be nice for us, but maybe AMD would stand to profit form this too?)

 

[piesquared]

Yeah... the 4x chips probably means it ends up 128bit.
And the fastest clocked chips memory settings AMD has are the 6970's around 1375mhz (5500).

So at best that 7770, will come out with 88gb/sec memory bandwidth at stock. Unless AMD found some way to get memory clocks up.


Radeon HD 7770 (guessing) = ~88 gb/s memory bandwidth
Geforce 550 ti = 98 gb/s memory bandwidth
Geforce GTX 460 SE = 108 gb/s memory bandwidth
Radeon HD 6850 = 128 gb/s memory bandwidth

It ll probably end up slower than the 460 SE, but might have a shot at the 550ti in terms of performance.

a stock 550 ti @1920x1200 is around 13% faster than a 5770 on avg.
My guess is the 7770 is there to take that back, and equal the 550 in perf.

From the original leak of this board shot indicates that there are 8 mem chips, so 4 more on the back side..

 

[videoclone]

Could the 32ROP's be some strange ringbus thing with 64 ROP's but 48 link real ones

 

[lavaheadache]

32 rops would be death for this card.

death.. no

stupid, yes

 

[Arkadrel]

From the original leak of this board shot indicates that there are 8 mem chips, so 4 more on the back side..

Can I see that picture? got a link?

ei:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-...s-Leaked-Packs-Cape-Verde-XT-GPU-241419.shtml

Just like it’s the case with Juniper XT, the HD 7770 requires only a single 6-pin PCI-e connector, which seems to imply that its power consumption is set at a little over 100W.

Two-way CrossFireX is also supported by the AMD graphics card and the reference design includes four GDDR5 memory chips, which seems to indicate the presence of a 128-bit wide memory controller.

They only show the one picture though:

 

[Silverforce11]

32 rops would be death for this card.

There's a major difference to previous architecture, here, each CU cluster gets their own independent TMU/ROPs directly with bigger caches including a huge global L2. Previously, their ROPs were all shared and a "shader export" interface regulates access. 128 TMUs/32 ROPs in 16/4 cluster.

Could be a lot more efficient.

 

[apoppin]

@Boxleitnerb

I think apoppin, ment it as sarcasm, going by the innocently whistling smily.
Doesnt make sense that a 7990 is only 40% faster than a 580... a 6990 already is something like that.

i'll have a preview up tonight

i was referring to the next AMD GPU after 7970 - the one that will probably take on the GTX 680 in Q1
^_^

 

[RussianSensation]

death.. no

stupid, yes

The specs listed on Tom's, supposedly also from Donanim Haber, list different # of ROPs and larger transistor count than the slides. :hmm:

• 4.50 billion transistors, die-area of 380 mm², built on TSMC 28 nm process
• Advanced GCN 1D architecture
• 2048 1D processing cores
• 128 TMUs, 48 ROPs
• 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, memory clock slightly below 1 GHz, target bandwidth of 240~264 GB/s

My head is spinning. Last minute hope for more than 32 ROPs even if that graph linked above shows 32......

 

[HurleyBird]

That makes a bit more sense, esp. die size and ROPs.

Memory clock looks a bit fishy, although with 384-bit there is less need for high memory clocks. Could be that 7970 has a less advanced but wider memory controller.

 

[toyota]

384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, memory clock slightly below 1 GHz, target bandwidth of 240~264 GB/s

what? at 240-264 GB/s would be 1.250-1.375 GHz

 

[Arkadrel]

@Toyota

yeah, its probably a typo or something, and/or they ment the gpu core @ abit below 1ghz...

because 384bit x 1,375mhz = 264GB/s

 

[Pacman4]

Also, if the card is not 30% but 50-60% faster than HD6970, would that change your mind? Or would you need it to be at least 100% faster?
.

We'll have to see, but what I like about the idea of approx 100% more performance than a 6970 is that I could buy a 2500k, 16gig ram and a 7970 and live happily ever after for presumably a long time, ie, the whole PC would be a good mix of powerful components, whereas a 6950/70 could easily be overwhelmed by any number of games next yr.

The beauty of buying a powerful card/part now is that you get the benefits of it immediately vs a buy a $250 GPU every 12months approach.

 

[ArchAngel777]

We'll have to see, but what I like about the idea of approx 100% more performance than a 6970 is that I could buy a 2500k, 16gig ram and a 7970 and live happily ever after for presumably a long time, ie, the whole PC would be a good mix of powerful components, whereas a 6950/70 could easily be overwhelmed by any number of games next yr.

The beauty of buying a powerful card/part now is that you get the benefits of it immediately vs a buy a $250 GPU every 12months approach.

Yeah, if the 7970 is a good 60-70% faster than the 6970, a 2500K + Cheapo Z68 (Biostar) + 7970 would be a very well balanced system. Actually, if in fact the 7970 is that great a performer, I don't have to worry about having an SLI/XFIRE motherboard. That is a decent savings right there.

 

[Pacman4]

My friend I don't buy cheap mobo's or PSU these days.....too many dead systems taught me otherwise, lol.

 

[Pacman4]

Wow, looks expensive...I hope its worth it.

are we sure we can compare GCN cores to VLIW4 cores?

spamming moron, who buys your moronic gear this way

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

My friend I don't buy cheap mobo's or PSU these days.....too many dead systems taught me otherwise, lol.

Cheap mobo's? Yes. Power supplies? No.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Cheap mobo's? Yes. Power supplies? No.

I am all for a quality PSU, but the scare tactic of saying a cheap PSU will take out the rest of your system is just silly. I have the luxory of knowing our RMA rates for PSU failures. We use cheap ones, 250 watters and never encountered a scenario where a failed PSU ruined the motherboard, memory, etc... That doesn't mean it cannot happen, but I haven't seen it out of thousands of systems. I certainly have seen a lot of PSUs fail though. For that reason alone I'd go with a quality one, but not because I was scared it was going to ruin any of my components.

 

[Olikan]

MOAR slides! The last one is actually awesome
yes.. it will be 50% better for mining

 

[Pacman4]

Cheap mobo's? Yes. Power supplies? No.

http://www.gamedude.com.au/prod_show.php?art_no=mbASp8z68_v_gen3

ASUS P8Z68-V-GEN3 Intel Z68 Chipset

This would be the cheapest mobo I'd buy atm....

 

[ArchAngel777]

Seems kind of odd that those slides compare the 7970 to a 5870 (n/m, only the second slide was)... Why not compared to a 6970? We get that 5D shaders had a lot of utlilization issues, but 4D was supposed to improve that a bit. However, I suppose the chart wouldn't look as cool if it only showed a 10% improvement... Maybe they should have compared it to R300? I kid...


Tell you what though, I would tip my hats off to AMD if they could somehow pull out a 100% performance increase over the 6970. Heck, even if it was in 3dMark 11 only... I'd be a heck of a lot impressed. At this point, anything greater than a 50% improvement is going to be icing on the cake, IMO.

 

[poohbear]

Seems kind of odd that those slides compare the 7970 to a 5870 (n/m, only the second slide was)... Why not compared to a 6970? We get that 5D shaders had a lot of utlilization issues, but 4D was supposed to improve that a bit. However, I suppose the chart wouldn't look as cool if it only showed a 10% improvement... Maybe they should have compared it to R300? I kid...

cause they were thinking of me!") most ppl w/ a 6xxx series card prolly wont upgrade, but the 5xxx and before crowd prolly will! so makes perfect sense that they're targeting us with these bechies!

regarding the quality mobo & psu, spend a little more on the PSU and it'll last u for years! the mobo if you're overclocking is extremely important to have 8+2 vrm (or better) otherwise ure gonna be extremely frustrated trying to figure out if its ur temps or cpu, but the reality is your mobo can't supply the needed voltage!!!!!

 

[toyota]

the 7970 is not looking so so good here. apoppin acts like it could be slower the 6970 in some cases. it looks like the gpu division might have followed the cpu division's handbook. :biggrin:


http://alienbabeltech.com/abt/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=23899

 

[Silverforce11]

the 7970 is not looking so so good here. apoppin acts like it could be slower the 6970 in some cases. it looks like the gpu division might have followed the cpu division's handbook. :biggrin:


http://alienbabeltech.com/abt/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=23899

He doesn't have cards to review from those post. Just more speculation on estimated perf levels.

AMD has always gone for perf/mm and perf/watt btw.

 

[Nintendesert]

the 7970 is not looking so so good here. apoppin acts like it could be slower the 6970 in some cases. it looks like the gpu division might have followed the cpu division's handbook. :biggrin:


http://alienbabeltech.com/abt/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=23899

Looking forward to reading some reviews from people that have an actual card. That thread was just more fud.