Originally posted by: bunnyfubbles
Originally posted by: malG
Originally posted by: virtualgames0
Pipelines doesn't matter if it has the clockspeed to makeup for the loss in fillrate. As long as the fillrate of the 16pipe card is the same as the 24pipe card, the performance should be similar.
Perhaps you're right but how can it be competitive when the R520 (at 700Mhz) is making use of an inefficient design?
high MHz = high heat = dual slot cooling = high power consumption
How is it inefficient? Have you seen reviews? Inefficient could be argued with the X800 vs. the 6800, where two competing GPUs with the same pipes and different clock speeds perform similar.
We don't know if it will be efficient or not with the power it is given. Right now the numbers are close, whether they are in real life is to be determined. You could argue that based on past history, the nVidia parts have been faster clock for clock and thus high MHz for ATI wouldn't be as good but we do not yet know.
Heck for all we know these 16 "extreme" pipes could be extreme not for the clockrate, but for some other reason, perhaps they are more efficient on top of the high clockrate. Right now you're just associated high clock rate with "inefficient" because you somehow think that getting more done with less is the only way; how about getting even MORE done with
more?
Right now we do not really know anything more than we did 1, 2, 3, 6+ months ago, because we have no performance reviews or benchmarks to prove otherwise, all we have is speculated specs...
Although I do agree, from what we've been getting used to basing performance on going just by such specs, it is dissapointing to hear "only" 16 pipes. It would be more exciting to hear a for sure 24+ pipes @ 700MHz, becuase that'd be some major performance just based on X800 numbers.
There really is no reason to get dissapointed or excited about anything until we know how the product is actually going to perform based on tests.