HD 2900XTX Benches

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: SexyK
Man, ever since the failed launch 6 weeks back I've been saying that there must have been major performance problems or a showstopping bug, and I was shouted down every time. "They're just waiting for a top-to-bottom release" was thrown around so many times it's unbelievable. Now not only was I correct about the performance issues, but it appears that there still WON'T be a top-to-bottom hard launch anytime soon. Don't see how this launch can be any more of a failure. Even if they make a lot of XT sales with low-ball pricing, that will still be murder on their bottom line. It's a disappointing day, I truly loved my 9500 Pro back in the day. On the bright side I've been playing every game maxed out on my 8800 for over 5 months now, so it's not all that bad!

i have been saying it for six months
... i even got a thread *dedicated to me* in FI for my prophecies

and i am *beyond sad* ... but i am already over it since i *expected* this cluster(^@#
from an angry and confused AMD ...
if anyone bothered to read between their Fud-lines

Unless someone - with a *vision* - buys AMD and fires their entire top management and ad department ... even IF Barcelona is "competitive" - unlike r600 - AMD is down the tubes and will just be a minor player

forget Fusion

 

[Wreckage]

NOVEMBER 2006....

Computer Geek1: Should I buy a G80?
Computer Geek2: Nah, just wait a little bit and the R600 will be out.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: dreddfunk
It certainly looks like the highest 2900 is going to be somewhere between underwhelming and down right horrific: late, slower and less power-efficient than its competitor. What does it say when the best case scenario is repeat of the x1800xt? Underwhelming at the time, hidden value later. The only thing that I can imagine saving the 2900 series is if DX10 titles put massive pressure on the memory subsystem. Still, clock for clock, AMD is way behind here.

It's still early but what a potential train wreck in the making.

The jury is out for me on the merger, with regard to its impact on AMD. The merger got AMD into the platform business, and we'll see how that works over the next several years. From a neutral standpoint, I'd like to see them survive and thrive. Intel needs a long-term competitor, as does nVidia.

I just hope something, somewhere begins to put downward pricing pressure on lower high-end parts. With this revelation, I can't imagine any new, lower-high end part like an 8800gs falling in price very quickly, which bums me out. Not to mention that this revelation bodes poorly for the true midrange. The 8600 series disappointed me and I can't imagine that the 2600 will fare any better after seeing the 2900XT/XTX benchmarks.

DX10, as always, is still the wildcard.

maybe AMD should bring Jerry Sanders back

http://www.eetimes.com/blog/news/archiv...QSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN?loc=semiconductors

Maybe Jerry Sanders should return to AMD

1. AMD is floating some $2.2 billion in notes. My assessment: AMD is highly leveraged and may become a house of cards. Notes are a good short-term solution, but AMD really needs to develop a new and innovative processor line--again. Opteron was a winner. But the company has been resting on its laurels since the intro of Opteron. AMD's next-gen processor, dubbed Barcelona, just doesn't excite me. A real snoozer. Come on AMD! You can do better than that!

2. To keep up with Intel, AMD has got major fab projects in Germany, India and New York. My assessment: AMD still acts like an IDM. Let's get real and stop pretending. How is AMD going to fund these fab projects? They should drop fab plans in India and New York. Focus on the fab in Germany. Outsource more chips to Chartered, IBM and Samsung.

3. Some say AMD should go the private-equity route. My assessment: That's the company's only route right now. I hate private equity, but AMD won't last the year unless Silver Lake or Francisco Partners jumps in to save them.

4. Perhaps AMD should get acquired by IBM or a member of IBM's ''fab club.'' My assessment: IBM is a bad choice. IBM is a great IP firm, but it never really understood the semi business. Here's a crazy idea: Samsung wants to go toe-to-toe against Intel. How about Samsung buying AMD? However, I'm afraid Intel would kick Samsung's ass in processors. Samsung is a mere one-hit commodity wonder.

5. One more crazy idea: Maybe Jerry Sanders could return to AMD. My assessment: He couldn't do any worse than AMD's current management, which squandered its technology lead over Intel. What a waste.

i am truly SAD to say it ... it also looks like my "rants" were right

... over the past 6 long months i have been saying the r600 is a *flop* and AMD is *doomed*

the next *disaster* i expect will be Barcelona
-they they can stick a fork in it

toldjaso

I hope not,AMD is the only real competitor to Intel and Nvidia.I just hope they get the pricing right(as well as performance) on the rest of their new range next month,guess only time will tell,as to Barcelona, think its too early to speculate on that one.

word on the street is AMD mid range is another 8600GT

 

[swtethan]

Originally posted by: otispunkmeyer

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: dreddfunk
It certainly looks like the highest 2900 is going to be somewhere between underwhelming and down right horrific: late, slower and less power-efficient than its competitor. What does it say when the best case scenario is repeat of the x1800xt? Underwhelming at the time, hidden value later. The only thing that I can imagine saving the 2900 series is if DX10 titles put massive pressure on the memory subsystem. Still, clock for clock, AMD is way behind here.

It's still early but what a potential train wreck in the making.

The jury is out for me on the merger, with regard to its impact on AMD. The merger got AMD into the platform business, and we'll see how that works over the next several years. From a neutral standpoint, I'd like to see them survive and thrive. Intel needs a long-term competitor, as does nVidia.

I just hope something, somewhere begins to put downward pricing pressure on lower high-end parts. With this revelation, I can't imagine any new, lower-high end part like an 8800gs falling in price very quickly, which bums me out. Not to mention that this revelation bodes poorly for the true midrange. The 8600 series disappointed me and I can't imagine that the 2600 will fare any better after seeing the 2900XT/XTX benchmarks.

DX10, as always, is still the wildcard.

maybe AMD should bring Jerry Sanders back

http://www.eetimes.com/blog/news/archiv...QSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN?loc=semiconductors

Maybe Jerry Sanders should return to AMD

1. AMD is floating some $2.2 billion in notes. My assessment: AMD is highly leveraged and may become a house of cards. Notes are a good short-term solution, but AMD really needs to develop a new and innovative processor line--again. Opteron was a winner. But the company has been resting on its laurels since the intro of Opteron. AMD's next-gen processor, dubbed Barcelona, just doesn't excite me. A real snoozer. Come on AMD! You can do better than that!

2. To keep up with Intel, AMD has got major fab projects in Germany, India and New York. My assessment: AMD still acts like an IDM. Let's get real and stop pretending. How is AMD going to fund these fab projects? They should drop fab plans in India and New York. Focus on the fab in Germany. Outsource more chips to Chartered, IBM and Samsung.

3. Some say AMD should go the private-equity route. My assessment: That's the company's only route right now. I hate private equity, but AMD won't last the year unless Silver Lake or Francisco Partners jumps in to save them.

4. Perhaps AMD should get acquired by IBM or a member of IBM's ''fab club.'' My assessment: IBM is a bad choice. IBM is a great IP firm, but it never really understood the semi business. Here's a crazy idea: Samsung wants to go toe-to-toe against Intel. How about Samsung buying AMD? However, I'm afraid Intel would kick Samsung's ass in processors. Samsung is a mere one-hit commodity wonder.

5. One more crazy idea: Maybe Jerry Sanders could return to AMD. My assessment: He couldn't do any worse than AMD's current management, which squandered its technology lead over Intel. What a waste.

i am truly SAD to say it ... it also looks like my "rants" were right

... over the past 6 long months i have been saying the r600 is a *flop* and AMD is *doomed*

the next *disaster* i expect will be Barcelona
-they they can stick a fork in it

toldjaso

I hope not,AMD is the only real competitor to Intel and Nvidia.I just hope they get the pricing right(as well as performance) on the rest of their new range next month,guess only time will tell,as to Barcelona, think its too early to speculate on that one.

word on the street is AMD mid range is another 8600GT

DOOMED!

 

[chizow]

Ouch....

AMD/ATI really should've just released the XT months ago. No lame excuses about a unified product launch, rumors about a die shrink, or whatever else. That's what's really giving them a black eye with the R600...because its so late AND its still not outperforming the G80. If they had a decent part that fell somewhere inbetween the GTS and GTX everyone would've been happy even if ATI didn't gain back the crown.

I do think there is some hope for the XT in the way of driver updates and tweaking. There's also the rumors from "friends of friends from other forums" that show the XT performing better against the GTX than what DT showed. Benching against an OC'd GTX isn't quite fair imo, however, DT's XT overclocking results showed very little performance gains even with a 100MHz OC on the core.

I'm anxiously awaiting AT's R600 analysis though. There's CLEARLY something wrong with the core architecture itself. Almost 3x as many stream processors, higher clock speeds, wider memory bus, more memory bandwidth than the GTX but still runs slower from preliminary reports. Others hit the nail on the head though, the bottleneck has to be somewhere on the core itself. The R600 isn't bottlenecking on the memory side, but if the core is the bottleneck then it can't take advantage of the extra memory speed, bus and bandwidth. If I had to guess, its either a problem with the efficiency of the vector shaders on the R600 or a problem with the clock speeds of the stream processor creating the bottleneck. Not much has been written about either, which is why I'm really looking forward to an in-depth analysis from AT.

 

[nyker96]

I think this might be a April fool's joke right? Don't seem to be true, maybe AMD allows Daily Tech to do a April fool's prank that's what their deal was to fool some people like us here :] or else it makes no sense why they allow one site exclusive reporting right while others are gaged. It only makes sense they stop all sites from leaking benchs or else how can they keep a secret on their products. I think this is an AMD hox.

 

[43st]

Originally posted by: Aikouka
Paying $650 when the 8800GTX came out doesn't sound so horrible anymore .

It's kind of like buying a car now and then seeing the new models that will come out.. then being relieved when they're really not better than what you have.

Yeah, almost doubling the price of a performance card in the past 2-3 years. Doesn't sound bad at all. Also must be nice to see AMD unable to put the screws to Nvidia's pricing, thank goodness. At this rate we'll have $1000 cards in one generation.

But hey, whatever gets you to sleep at night after being anally raped for a graphics card.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
NOVEMBER 2006....

Computer Geek1: Should I buy a G80?
Computer Geek2: Nah, just wait a little bit and the R600 will be out.

Computer Geek3: forget AMD ... something isn't "right" ... they are *lost*
Computer Geeks 4-1000+ "kill computer geek 3"

:roll:

AMD's "midrange" looks to be solid ... who gives a flying J?

:thumbsdown:

their Partners are gonna desert them - nevermind their disgusted and long-suffering fans ... most of them have already been alienated by AMD's stupid decisions re: SKT 939 and crap performance compared to C2D

you want to wait to be disappointed by Barcelona ... also?

AMD IS *lost* and adrift and in need of a *Hero*

 

[swtethan]

Originally posted by: 43st

Originally posted by: Aikouka
Paying $650 when the 8800GTX came out doesn't sound so horrible anymore .

It's kind of like buying a car now and then seeing the new models that will come out.. then being relieved when they're really not better than what you have.

Yeah, almost doubling the price of a performance card in the past 2-3 years. Doesn't sound bad at all. Also must be nice to see AMD unable to put the screws to Nvidia's pricing, thank goodness. At this rate we'll have $1000 cards in one generation.

But hey, whatever gets you to sleep at night after being anally raped for a graphics card.

.... some people can afford a ferrari, some cannot... simple truth





I will have my ferrari GTX soon :Q

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: 43st
Yeah, almost doubling the price of a performance card in the past 2-3 years. Doesn't sound bad at all. Also must be nice to see AMD unable to put the screws to Nvidia's pricing, thank goodness. At this rate we'll have $1000 cards in one generation.

But hey, whatever gets you to sleep at night after being anally raped for a graphics card.

Eh, I was raped by the bleeding edge, really. The cards dropped to $500-ish in what... 2-3 months at the most? I didn't really mind too much, I was building a new PC and the last thing I needed was a spare... actually scratch that, a spare would've been handy since my old BFG 6800GT died the other day and I wouldn't have had a dead server for a day if I had a spare.

Originally posted by: apoppin
AMD IS *lost* and adrift and in need of a *Hero*

NBC 9PM baby, you got lots of Heroes on then :thumbsup:!

 

[terentenet]

Yeah, Barcelona might also be a flop. What do we know about it so far? They also said "running good and strong" about R600.

 

[TecHNooB]

MY GOODNESS WHAT HAPPENED. Second try with unified shaders and this is what they churn out? I had such high hopes too... AMD is now officially a sinking ship.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Aikouka

Originally posted by: apoppin
AMD IS *lost* and adrift and in need of a *Hero*

NBC 9PM baby, you got lots of Heroes on then :thumbsup:!

that IS the kind of fantasy world AMD already is *Lost* in
:thumbsdown:

i mean a *real hero* ... a Terminator
:shocked:

clean up the 'mess' in their company ... no big severance packages, either
- not financial

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: nyker96
I think this might be a April fool's joke right? Don't seem to be true, maybe AMD allows Daily Tech to do a April fool's prank that's what their deal was to fool some people like us here :] or else it makes no sense why they allow one site exclusive reporting right while others are gaged. It only makes sense they stop all sites from leaking benchs or else how can they keep a secret on their products. I think this is an AMD hox.

What planet are you from?

 

[swtethan]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: nyker96
I think this might be a April fool's joke right? Don't seem to be true, maybe AMD allows Daily Tech to do a April fool's prank that's what their deal was to fool some people like us here :] or else it makes no sense why they allow one site exclusive reporting right while others are gaged. It only makes sense they stop all sites from leaking benchs or else how can they keep a secret on their products. I think this is an AMD hox.

What planet are you from?

thats exactly what theyre doing! i am still waiting for 3dfx to pop up and say april fools! and totally wipe G80

 

[agathodaimon]

I'm still getting the 2900XT regardless. (IF) it's in my price range.

 

[TecHNooB]

So what does this all mean? The 2900XTX is like the PS3... it's got all quality parts. 320 stream processors, sound processor, physics processor, DDR4... surely the benchmarks don't reflect this?

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: swtethan

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: nyker96
I think this might be a April fool's joke right? Don't seem to be true, maybe AMD allows Daily Tech to do a April fool's prank that's what their deal was to fool some people like us here :] or else it makes no sense why they allow one site exclusive reporting right while others are gaged. It only makes sense they stop all sites from leaking benchs or else how can they keep a secret on their products. I think this is an AMD hox.

What planet are you from?

thats exactly what theyre doing! i am still waiting for 3dfx to pop up and say april fools! and totally wipe G80

i really DOES seem like a bad joke ... that AMD delayed the punchline .... for six months
:Q

when i suggested this - back in November - it was a pretty unpopular opinion

Originally posted by: TecHNooB
So what does this all mean? The 2900XTX is like the PS3... it's got all quality parts. 320 stream processors, sound processor, physics processor, DDR4... surely the benchmarks don't reflect this?

AMD's DustBuster

it *isn't* that r600 is *so bad*

--rather 8800GTX is *that good*

get it?

 

[43st]

Originally posted by: swtethan

Originally posted by: 43st

Originally posted by: Aikouka
Paying $650 when the 8800GTX came out doesn't sound so horrible anymore .

It's kind of like buying a car now and then seeing the new models that will come out.. then being relieved when they're really not better than what you have.

Yeah, almost doubling the price of a performance card in the past 2-3 years. Doesn't sound bad at all. Also must be nice to see AMD unable to put the screws to Nvidia's pricing, thank goodness. At this rate we'll have $1000 cards in one generation.

But hey, whatever gets you to sleep at night after being anally raped for a graphics card.

.... some people can afford a ferrari, some cannot... simple truth





I will have my ferrari GTX soon :Q

Very true... Might as well have $2k graphics card then! Good news for everyone.

Seriously though... I tend to think Dailytech has slipped into the realm of BS articles. They even have anti-global warming articles now, not that I care either way but it's certainly not their area of expertise. But they feel qualified to write about it so that puts them firmly in FUD territory in my opinion.

If the R600 is DOA then I'm surprised it's even being released. Why would you do that rather than skip a generation and attempt to catch up? I guess it's all fair play in the end. Nvidia did firm face plants for several years, and maybe it's ATI's turn.

My hope for ATI was a good performing power efficient card, as I'd like to remain as near 100 Watts (idle) as possible on my PC. I thought the Wii development would've helped that a bit, as it did Nvidia for the Xbox. I'm currently on a 7900GS that just sips juice at idle and was looking forward to what ATI had to offer. I suppose wait and see is the answer.

 

[apoppin]

ATi is *gone*

dead deceased swallowed-up acquired invisible-ghost dusty-bones memories

AMD delayed r600 ... ATi would have got it right out the door in November, it would have taken its lumps and they would be already be talking about their next card.

wtf was AMD thinking when they bought ATi?

--they had to KNOW about r600


were they just completely blindsided by g80?
:Q

unfortunately AMD was too *proud* to release r600 "as is" and had to "tinker" with the damn thing

i hope AMD thinks the time they spent was "worth it"

 

[TecHNooB]

Ah well. All aboard the S.S. NVidia.

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: apoppin
clean up the 'mess' in their company ... no big severance packages, either
- not financial

AMD needs to blame it on the Apprentice .

What I think DailyTech needs to do is explain what their benchmarks were. People are complaining about differences between benchmarks and I checked the settings listed and both are the same. So it's quite possible that DT did not attempt to run the same exact test as they did in the XT preview (note that it's not a review, but a preview.. they don't try to review products but give an idea).

 

[Noema]

Originally posted by: Aberforth

Originally posted by: Pugnate
Even better drivers won't catch up that much. This is a massive disappointment. I can't believe it.

Why are you so sad you've got GTX...I'm quite happy with this news

Why are you happy? A strong ATI card is beneficial to the consumers, even if you don't ever buy an ATI card in your life.

No reason for nVidia to drop prices on the GTX, I reckon

 

[ArchAngel777]

Well, I am quite dissapointed myself. I was really hoping that the R600 would eat least equil the 8800 series. Oh well, I am just dissapointed with performance in general. I purchased my 7800 GTX almost two years ago now and in most games, the 8800GTX is not even quite 2X the speed of my current card. I dunno, maybe I just expect to much. But in two years time, I really expected more performance from either nVidia or AMD/ATi. This does indeed dissapoint me. With the way things are going, I am pretty sure my rig will last me for another year at least. So, if anything R600 postponed my system rebuild another year with its lacklustre performance.

 

[n7]

Originally posted by: n7

I suspect the poor performance is due to the stream processors layout for the AMD cards vs. nV's, but i can't find anything stating just how it's set up.

From a poster commenting on the DT article:

The R600 has 64x5 Vec5D units which maces each unit handle a maximum of 320 stream ops per second, but makes it's worst case scenario a lot worse with 64 stream ops per second (for the lack of a better term). You can think of that in the same manner as you see that SIMD units in our current processors can deliver huge amounts of processing power if, and only if, used correctly and optimized accordingly, otherwise we see no gains.

In my opinion AMD/ATI made a design compromise, they used this approach as it could prove to be way better in the dx10 world, and in a much more interesting way, in the GPGPU world.

Think about it, if you open up your architecture with CTM and give the people the power of 64x5 vec5d units you end up with an amazing amount of processing power. That's where I think they are focusing.

Nvidia has a much more favorable place in the gaming world. If you have 128 scalar units, in a worst case scenario you'd still issue 128 stream ops (all else constant, and given you have the bandwidth). But your best case scenario isn't that good.

I believe they delayed it because they were expecting dx10 games (of course, this is just speculation on my part). And I hope, for their sake, that it performs a lot better in that world.

Still, if I am somewhat right, drivers could provide better optimization for shader programs that aren't made with a simd architecture in mind, but then again, I could be entirely wrong.


This is what i was thinking too.