Early R600 details?

[vmsein]

To be taken with a large grain of salt at this point, but interesting nontheless!
http://www.hardspell.com/news/showcont.asp?news_id=30133

 

[Yanagi]

Chinese, me dont understand. ugh..

 

[CP5670]

From what I can make out (just from the english text), it's saying that it will have 1024MB of 2500mhz GDDR4 memory on a 512-bit bus. :Q That would be a seriously powerful memory subsystem.

 

[vmsein]

I've also heard mentioned that the R600 will have embeded eRAM as well, along the lines of the XBOX 360!

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: CP5670
From what I can make out (just from the english text), it's saying that it will have 1024MB of 2500mhz GDDR4 memory on a 512-bit bus. :Q That would be a seriously powerful memory subsystem.

These are probably wild speculations. Though, it could be a repeat of the NV5800 Versus 9700 Pro.... Nvidia decided not to up the memory buss and they paid the price. Maybe jumping from 256 to 384/320 wasn't the right move, or maybe it was. But requireing 1024 versus 768 memory is going to up costs even more... I am doubtful about ATI going to 512bit interface, because they will price themselves out of them market, or so I would think.

Fun to speculate, but who knows...

 

[CP5670]

Yeah, the 512-bit bus in particular sounds a little outlandish at this point.

 

[redbox]

If ATI make this card the with 1024mb and a 512bit interface I will buy one. That is just too much to pass up. I'm not putting to much faith in it though at this point. I will wait untill we get better information. Still it looks like the GPU race will be on once R600 gets to market. It's just too bad that we will have a long period of time with Nvidia not having any competition. That is always bad for the consumer.

 

[Matt2]

No way in hell.

But...

If true, Nvidia is toast.

It kinda makes you wonder how ATI/AMD can afford to mass produce this card. How much are we gonna have to pay?

If these wild claims turn out true, ATI is going to prone to a lot delays me thinks.

Look at how bad R520 was delayed and that didnt really bring anything to the table besides 90nm and HDR+AA.

Now we're looking at 80nm, 512bit bus, eRAM... you get the point.

I wouldnt be surprised if R600 never goes toe to toe with G80, but maybe G81?

 

[Pete]

Originally posted by: vmsein
I've also heard mentioned that the R600 will have embeded eRAM as well, along the lines of the XBOX 360!

Who needs 10, 20, even 40MB of 256MB/s EDRAM (that still won't be enough for HDR + AA buffers, so PC devs would be forced to use tiling like on the 360) when you can have 1GB of 160GB/s GDDR4?

Man, that number sounds crazy. I'll believe it when I see it, but it wouldn't hurt in progressing to see AA+AF default to always on at the high end.

 

[zephyrprime]

The idea of having a 512bit bus seems kinda odd since the thing is rumored to have eram as well which would reduce the bandwidth pressure on the card.

 

[TOAOCyrus]

Maybe having AMD's fabs will make it cheaper. I would imagine they must spend a lot of money hiring companies like TSMC to make their chips.

 

[Wreckage]

The card is not due for 4-6 months.... They may not even have a final design yet. I hope the AMD take over does not delay things further. I want full competition to bring the price down ASAP.

 

[Creig]

As with all video card pre-release speculations, I'll reserve judgement until I see some hard benches. There's really no point in saying "ATI will blow Nvidia out of the water!" or vice versa. ATI and Nvidia have been swapping leadership back and forth for the past couple years now and they've generally been neck and neck in terms of performance. I don't expect that to change in the future either.

 

[TOAOCyrus]

Originally posted by: Creig
As with all video card pre-release speculations, I'll reserve judgement until I see some hard benches. There's really no point in saying "ATI will blow Nvidia out of the water!" or vice versa. ATI and Nvidia have been swapping leadership back and forth for the past couple years now and they've generally been neck and neck in terms of performance. I don't expect that to change in the future either.

Unless these specs are right. ATi wouldnt spend all that money on that all that bandwidth without a killer of a GPU to feed it.

 

[Elfear]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
The card is not due for 4-6 months.... They may not even have a final design yet. I hope the AMD take over does not delay things further. I want full competition to bring the price down ASAP.

Do you have a link to that info?? Last I heard was early Q1 of '07.

 

[Creig]

Before this already some news confirmed NVIDIA G80 will use 384bit to reveal saves the position funds, but the present top reveals the card all to use the 256bit position width. Although ATi R520/R580 but the interior used 512bit ring-like to reveal saves the main line its only then 4 to reveal saves the channel, the outside reveals saves the position width still was 256bit.
R600 will bring unprecedented true 512bit to reveal saves the position width, if will provide 2500MHz GDDR4 to reveal saves, then the band width will achieve astonishing 160G/s,we knew even if is the eDRAM band width which X-box in 360 inlays also only then 256GB/s,although in the speed eDRAM is quick many, but X-box 360 eDRAM only then 10MB, but R600 provides is actually 1024MB.
The R600 research and development code number will be Pele, will use TSMC 80 nanometer craft manufacture, will support DirectX 10 completely, will estimate in the next year first quarter issue.

And now let the arguments commence...

 

[Cooler]

The R520 has an internal 512-bit ring bus and is one of the reasons R520/R580 huge die size. I think it would not be that hard too add full 512 support for R600. We already know that GDDR4 will be used.

 

[josh6079]

Now we just need some leaked pics....

I'm curious, what card is this now that we've seen the X1950XTX and its cooler? I'm guessing it is some engineering sample of the X1950XTX since I think the R600 will have the internal SLI-like connectors on the pcb.

As far as the 512-bit goes.....I can hope, but that's about it right now. 512-bit would be a very nice touch.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: Elfear

Originally posted by: Wreckage
The card is not due for 4-6 months.... They may not even have a final design yet. I hope the AMD take over does not delay things further. I want full competition to bring the price down ASAP.

Do you have a link to that info?? Last I heard was early Q1 of '07.

Well, it's the beginning of October so Q1 is 4 to 6 months away. October, November, December, January, etc.

 

[Munky]

The 512-bit internal mem controller resides entirely on the gpu, so it only needs the extra transistors. A 512-bit external mem interface would also require a lot more pins on the gpu itself, as well as a much more complex board to route all the additional traces. I'm not saying that it can't be done, but the added cost and complexity would be quite significant, and there would have to be a comparable performance benefit, but with Ati's efficient ring bus controller and ddr4 on a 256-bit bus I dont believe they're starving for more bandwidth ATM.

Also, I realize that the r600 should be much more powerful than the r580, so it may seem like it needs the 512 bit bus, but then there's the continued trend of emphasizing ALU performance over texturing performance, and math ops also dont require as much bandwidth as texturing, so even with a much more powerful gpu, Ati doenst necessarily have to move to a 512-bit memory bus.

 

[Elfear]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: Elfear

Originally posted by: Wreckage
The card is not due for 4-6 months.... They may not even have a final design yet. I hope the AMD take over does not delay things further. I want full competition to bring the price down ASAP.

Do you have a link to that info?? Last I heard was early Q1 of '07.

Well, it's the beginning of October so Q1 is 4 to 6 months away. October, November, December, January, etc.

I guess I should have specified better. I've been hearing January as the likely release timeframe. So it would be 2.5 to 3.5 months. Even a February release would be ~4 months away at the max.

 

[CP5670]

Originally posted by: josh6079
Now we just need some leaked pics....

I'm curious, what card is this now that we've seen the X1950XTX and its cooler? I'm guessing it is some engineering sample of the X1950XTX since I think the R600 will have the internal SLI-like connectors on the pcb.

Yes, that's an early X1950. I remember the cooler looked a little different on the leaked images back then.

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: Elfear

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: Elfear

Originally posted by: Wreckage
The card is not due for 4-6 months.... They may not even have a final design yet. I hope the AMD take over does not delay things further. I want full competition to bring the price down ASAP.

Do you have a link to that info?? Last I heard was early Q1 of '07.

Well, it's the beginning of October so Q1 is 4 to 6 months away. October, November, December, January, etc.

I guess I should have specified better. I've been hearing January as the likely release timeframe. So it would be 2.5 to 3.5 months. Even a February release would be ~4 months away at the max.

Well I did hear February somewhere. Either way it's far enough away that the details could change a bit (and that early specs are always better than actual product). The AMD takeover could delay things further. I hope it comes out and does well. The shrinking GPU market could slow down the whole system.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: TOAOCyrus
Maybe having AMD's fabs will make it cheaper. I would imagine they must spend a lot of money hiring companies like TSMC to make their chips.

Not going to make it cheaper.
AMD are using TSMC fabs as well I think to supplement their own production, R600 will also likely be on 80nm or 65nm, and AMD only has 90nm and 65nm fabs, and their 65nm is not really up to mass production yet, and when it is, you can bet it will be full up cranking out CPU's.

 

[SpeedZealot369]

You can't decide which one (g80 or r600) is gonnna be better, even if this info is true, They are robably way different architectures and we can only wait till real benchmarks come out to say anything.

But 1gb of 2500mhz ram would be pretty damn cool though

-Josh