[chiphell] rumor control: hd 8900 & 8800 series spec's leak, the can of whooptitan@$$

[Kippa]

A while ago I was contemplating getting a 6gb 7970 which would be good for 3d rendering and video processing, glad I waited now that new cards might come up with 6gb and better gpu processing power.

 

[Pottuvoi]

lol...

and the Wii U has an AMD apu? does IBM know about this?

WiiU doesn't use GCN.

 

[Silverforce11]

If this were true, are they just going to dump the not-perfect curacao's?

Yup, stupid leak is so anti-logic.

A die with that many transistors is going to be around ~440mm2, not small by any means and thus yields wont be awesome, lots of opportunity for binning cut down versions for the PRO cards. ie 8950 would be Curacao PRO and not a beefed up 256bit bus die.

AMD took forever to launch the 7990, there's no indications they are preparing next gen on 28nm.

They don't have to fight Titan or the 780, the price category is way above most gamer's budget. The masses of fanboys can drool at it all they want, but they aren't going to afford (or allowed!) these cards.

 

[blackened23]

The leak may not be 100% accurate, but given that's it's from a seemingly long time poster at chiphell, there's a very good chance that it is at least partially based in reality. Chiphell is not your average tech forum - these are guys who don't care about NDAs and who are also close to the supply chain in Taiwan. These guys, without exception, find out about the goods before everyone else; this is how leaks of the 680, 7970, and Titan first became known.

So....you will see nvidia fanboys discredit everything involving AMD. That's not to say the AMD fanboys are innocent, either, they definitely do the same....That aside, I think leaks are exciting in at least one way. The rumor mill churning indicates something is likely coming, even if the specifications aren't 100% accurate. That itself would be a great thing, it'll be fun to see what AMD has to get back in the game.

 

[5150Joker]

So lets say AMD pushes out a Titan equivalent on 28nm by oh I dunno, December, will Fx1 reneg on all his "oh 28nm is worthless and I'd never buy it because 20nm is around the corner" talk? I have a feeling he will.

 

[MrK6]

Even if the specs of 8970 are true, can't say I'm excited, probably the best thing is 50% more ROPs. That said, a possible extra 25% performance isn't worth it for me to tear my loop apart.

 

[Kippa]

If they did announce a new line of cards next week, how long after the announcement would we have to wait for the new cards to be come available in retail outlets? Could they do it a couple of weeks after the announcement or would be shorter or longer time wise?

 

[GlacierFreeze]

Any amount of time. Anywhere from immediately to never. Only the company would know the answer to those questions. Totally depends on if the products are ready to ship at the time of announcement or how long until they're ready to ship.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

Hopefully GPU mining is still profitable when these things come out so I can finance another upgrade. I swear, ASICs are the worst thing to happen to people trying to pay for new gaming cards.

 

[Aeiou]

I don't give a [hoot] about anything but price wars.

I want a good old fashioned price war in the GPU market god damnit, none of this GIVE US 10 THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR OUR NEW CARD [stuff] that's been going on since this generation began.

No profanity in the tech forums, please
-ViRGE

 

[Kippa]

If it were $10,000 Zibabwean dollars then I'd take it. Personally I think AMD have been rather sneaky. They've kept quiet and let Nvidia play their hand. Now AMD might counter with something better. If not better, cheaper but still good.

 

[ozzy702]

Hopefully GPU mining is still profitable when these things come out so I can finance another upgrade. I swear, ASICs are the worst thing to happen to people trying to pay for new gaming cards.

Anyone have an idea of how well these new cards would mine based on the current speculated specs?

 

[TheUnk]

Anyone have an idea of how well these new cards would mine based on the current speculated specs?

At $600 it better be 900+ ! lol

 

[exar333]

Title should be changed here....

Why are people excited to pay $100 more for the 8950 vs. 7950 when the specs are all the same except for the freq bump? Am I missing something?

The title should read 'More of the same, for more $$'.

I won't argue that it's not priced according to the market, but I would simply buy a couple 7950s NOW, versus waiting to pay more $$$ for the same card...

 

[ocre]

Thats where i am stuck. The pricing makes no sense. I just dont see how the prices would be set right now for cards that come out months from now. Its way too suspicious. As a matter of fact, i call bs on that.

And if their is wrong information/ misleading information then its not accurate. If it contains made up stuff in it (and i think it does for sure) then its hogwash.

I think this is mostly made up from wishful thinking. But i also think its a collection of whatever information could be gathered on their future products, which is not much. The rest is filled in with whatever they thought would fit. Anyone of us could do that. The 8970 is a hyped up version of a sapphire product listing from a year ago. Its nothing new at all, just regurgitated and made more exciting.

The part that excites me isnt this "leak" at all. Its that AMD could be sharing some more solid information real soon according. Hopefully this would clear up some things and its way more reliable.

 

[taq8ojh]

I hope it's true, because I'd probably be able to get 7970 for reasonable price

 

[tential]

I hope it's true, because I'd probably be able to get 7970 for reasonable price

It's already reasonable with a lot of 7970s breaking into the high 300s. That's pretty decent to me unless I'm missing something....

 

[taq8ojh]

Oh well, everyone has some sort of limit for how much he is willing to spend on specific components without feeling silly.

 

[sushiwarrior]

Title should be changed here....

Why are people excited to pay $100 more for the 8950 vs. 7950 when the specs are all the same except for the freq bump? Am I missing something?

The title should read 'More of the same, for more $$'.

I won't argue that it's not priced according to the market, but I would simply buy a couple 7950s NOW, versus waiting to pay more $$$ for the same card...

The leaks are wrong on all the specs, people are just excited because this confirms there will be a new card coming this year rather than next.

 

[Smoblikat]

I doubt AMD would design their top "XT"and "pro" chips with such large architectural differences, if only because they haven't done that for several generations. When was the last time we saw differences in rop counts or bus width between chips bearing the same codename?

I agree 100%

There is NO way AMD gives their flagship 384-bit and their secondary only a 256-bit. Also, 600$ for 8970, yet 400$ for 8950? That doesnt even make sense. I think 500$ for an 8970 is more than reasonable.

 

[sushiwarrior]

I agree 100%

There is NO way AMD gives their flagship 384-bit and their secondary only a 256-bit. Also, 600$ for 8970, yet 400$ for 8950? That doesnt even make sense. I think 500$ for an 8970 is more than reasonable.

Everyone is demanding a $600+ single GPU card to compete with the Titan, are they not? AMD may be more attentive to the "halo" card market now... Albeit not with these specs.

 

[futurefields]

This will certainly prove GCN efficiency, 8970 looks way more oriented towards gaming than 7970. Shader wise it was already near 780 level, around 4 tflops. Now with the added gaming capabilities it should show what AMD uarch is capable of.

Sorry, this quote puzzles me. What is 7970 oriented towards, if not gaming?

 

[taq8ojh]

meditating I guess?

 

[badb0y]

At best this barely nips at the heals of a GTX 780......certainly no Titan killer as claimed by the OP.

 

[RussianSensation]

honestly if this leak is any true, if the prices are true, it brings very little as far as performance per dollar. I expect the prices to already creep down slowly as the year progresses anyway.....

If those specs are true, it's way better than the 780. 780 is only 17-22% faster than 7970GE for $650. This shows a card 35% faster for $600.

At the same time, how does one increase die size from 365mm2 to 420mm2 (15%) and performance increases by 35% without a major GPU clock speed bump? If it was possible to increase the number of ROPs by 50%, number of SPs/TMUs by 12.5% and die size only goes up 15%, how come it took AMD more than 1.5 years to do this? Sounds too good to be true. :hmm:

If AMD decides to release a 420mm2 28nm card, I can see delays to the launch of 20nm parts. I don't see the point of launching these parts in Q3 2013 just to follow them up with 20nm in Q1 2014. Either this rumor is fake and AMD will stick to their guns that there will be no new flagship card above 7970GE in all 2013 (based on TPU interview), or 20nm is facing delays and AMD has been purposely releasing wrong information about them continuing with HD7970GE in 2013 without any faster parts to keep NV in the dark.

Given that RR is very conservative, and he already stated that moving down to lower nodes is too risky and very expensive, it was somewhat hard to believe those rumors of AMD having 20nm parts by Q4 2013/Q1 2014. With AMD you never know what to believe.

Without making a judgement on this particular rumor, I agree AMD would be foolish to leave their lineup unchanged through the end of the year.

Depends. See NV has a very large market for Tesla/Quadro cards, while AMD doesn't. Consider the cost of designing and fabricating a new line-up of 28nm chips and the possible profits may not be worth the hassle. NV has already gone through break-even analysis and it obviously made sense for them since GK110 was planned to service different markets from the very beginning. Now NV simply allocates failed GK110 chips across Tesla/GTX780. AMD doesn't have this luxury. It would also be foolish for AMD to spend half a billion dollars on getting these updated 28nm chips out, using a large number of their engineering resources and then not have sufficient funds and resources to fight Maxwell. Right now, NV only has 2 chips faster than HD7970GE and the rest of NV's line-up is nothing special. If AMD messes up, the entire 20nm Maxwell line-up could walk all over AMD's if AMD doesn't manage its resources effectively. If AMD has no new 28nm parts for the next 8-9 months, it will not be as bad as getting completely dominated because you didn't have enough resources for 20nm generation. AMD has to be very careful here. The real battle is 20nm because 28nm generation is way past the half way point and GTX780/Titan will hardly matter for overall sales. Chasing those cards for a short period of time doesn't make sense if AMD is starved for resources which are imperative for 20nm generation. However, if AMD needs another 12 months to launch 20nm parts, well then it makes sense for this major 28nm refresh.

If I were AMD I'd spend $0 on 28nm parts and spend all my $ on 20nm because I expect Maxwell to be a monster. It is a brand new compute architecture from NV and has been in design for 3-4 years. AMD will need to counter it with a 2-year-old GCN -- good luck! Considering NV was able to surpass GCN with a slightly massaged Fermi architecture, dating all the way to 2010, AMD better not underestimate how great Maxwell can be. GTX780/Titan are not a threat in the context of what NV has coming next...