[wccftech] rumor: amd hawaii benchmarked in 3dmark11 firestrike AMD attacks titan

[Mr Expert]

The 7970 was also a manufacturing process leap, and a whole new architecture. Hawaii probably doesn't have either going for it, this will be more along the lines of a refresh than a truly new generation of GPUs.

Just like the GTX 770 refresh only that AMD will be faster and hopfully cheaper.

 

[tviceman]

The 7970 was outright faster than the 580 so i think this next gen will be the same and historically it is usually the way it goes.

What? That is an invalid comparison. The closest comparison to make right now is to compare the HD6970 to gtx480 or gtx580, the HD6970 came out 8 months later than the gtx480 on the same node and essentially matched the gtx480, while remaining 15% behind the gtx580. In the case of the upcoming hd9970 is that AMD has a larger performance gap to make up while having less TDP headroom to work with than when they transitioned from the hd5870 to the hd6970.

 

[JEDIYoda]

I've seen stock titans(no water etc) with an overclock breaking 5200 on this test. It really means nothing until we see actual reviews anyway.

easy to say...produce links please.....

 

[rgallant]

I'd still like to know who's buying tsmc's 20nm risk production chips.
any one know ? 2 x Q by oct. no ones saying they have any products on 20nm ,so could it be amd.
-could it be high end on low volume 20nm , the rest on tweaked 28nm ?

 

[Tempered81]

Got my pencil ready.

For pencil modding?

 

[Silverforce11]

Generally next gen tablet n smartphone arent hyped up until near launch so if these guys have 20nm SoCs soon at years end, they will prolly launch in Q1 and we wont hear about it til near then.

There was talk of Apple paying a fab for exclusive access to 20nm (and its not Samsung fabs). So they prolly get first dibs on volume.. which pushes PC GPUs to late 2014. I just dont feel like 20nm GPUs are gonna be here anytime soon and thats why you see these refreshes on 28nm, gtx770 for NV, and upcoming 9 series for AMD.

 

[tviceman]

I'd still like to know who's buying tsmc's 20nm risk production chips.
any one know ? 2 x Q by oct. no ones saying they have any products on 20nm ,so could it be amd.
-could it be high end on low volume 20nm , the rest on tweaked 28nm ?

My guess is Apple.

 

[wlee15]

Generally next gen tablet n smartphone arent hyped up until near launch so if these guys have 20nm SoCs soon at years end, they will prolly launch in Q1 and we wont hear about it til near then.

There was talk of Apple paying a fab for exclusive access to 20nm (and its not Samsung fabs). So they prolly get first dibs on volume.. which pushes PC GPUs to late 2014. I just dont feel like 20nm GPUs are gonna be here anytime soon and thats why you see these refreshes on 28nm, gtx770 for NV, and upcoming 9 series for AMD.

The first S4 Plus SOC from Qualcomm were announced in October 2011 while the first devices to used thos SOC only came out around April 2012.

 

[raghu78]

I'd still like to know who's buying tsmc's 20nm risk production chips.
any one know ? 2 x Q by oct. no ones saying they have any products on 20nm ,so could it be amd.
-could it be high end on low volume 20nm , the rest on tweaked 28nm ?

risk production is a period when the fab tries to work up their yields to meaningful levels. for most cases yields during risk production are so low that commerical production of chips is not economically viable especially for the fab customers.

TSMC volume production starts Q2 2014 with 2% wafer volume on 20nm.. but the real volume ramp is H2 2014.

 

[blackened23]

I was about to say. Nobody is buying risk production runs. The yields would be so low with astronomical costs, that it would not result in a feasible end-product.

Don't expect 20nm anything until Q2 2014 from TSMC.

 

[el etro]

Bonaire-Like. It seems to be a superior architecture to Pitcairn or Tahiti.

They could have another arch altogether. You need to open your mind a bit.

One thing is clear: Bonaire can challenge Kelper on the efficiency run, and this is very good.

Bonaire-like dual GPU? Don't makes sense.
Hardware metering on new AMD's gpus: Not this time.
Bonaire-like big cores? I'm really don't think it. Seems AMD did this time great improvements vs. the Original GCN cores. Reading the Charlie's article it seems to be a little more than the improvement Nvidia was planning on the canned GK114(Bonaire like-cores was to be the GK114 challenger on the old Amd Roadmaps. Something happened then and most of the Sea Islands v1.1 cores was canned).
Maybe AMD are already targeting Maxwell competition with the new cores.

Another rumor from the Overclock.net forums puts Hawaii XT (or was it Maui XT? The top model I presume) at:

Maui seems to be the high-end GCN1.1 core based on Sea Islands. Maui would be based on Bonaire's architecture.

 

[rgallant]

thanks for the feed back.

 

[el etro]

http://www.overclock.net/t/1416677/various-amd-hawaii-announcement-launch-info/90#post_20574523
Another rumor from the Overclock.net forums puts Hawaii XT (or was it Maui XT? The top model I presume) at:

3840 SP
240 TMUs
64 ROPs
512 bit with 4 GB
370-390mm2 @20nm
8.x bn transistors

Preview: September (probably only architecture)
Official Announcement/Papers Launch: October-November
Launch: Q1 2014

As usual, grains of salt. I love to speculate

Sadly this is more to be "no way" than other thing. With this SP count it would outperform everything in the market todays with a great margin.

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

Considering that in the last 5 years, AMD has only ever taken the lead when they are a node ahead, I guess the hopes of it being faster than Titan are slim... Sadly
Though the real competitor is the 780... Titan has been an overpriced pos since day 1 with one of the worse values in the history of video cards

Im guessing the 9970 will be within 10% of the 780 (meaning up to 10% faster) give or take depending on the game, but probably undercut it by 100$-150$

 

[Silverforce11]

Considering that in the last 5 years, AMD has only ever taken the lead when they are a node ahead, I guess the hopes of it being faster than Titan are slim... Sadly
Though the real competitor is the 780... Titan has been an overpriced pos since day 1 with one of the worse values in the history of video cards

Im guessing the 9970 will be within 10% of the 780 (meaning up to 10% faster) give or take depending on the game, but probably undercut it by 100$-150$

Huh? Whats the gap between Titan and 780? Especially all the custom cooled 780s with better PCBs?

 

[blackened23]

Considering that in the last 5 years, AMD has only ever taken the lead when they are a node ahead, I guess the hopes of it being faster than Titan are slim... Sadly
Though the real competitor is the 780... Titan has been an overpriced pos since day 1 with one of the worse values in the history of video cards

Im guessing the 9970 will be within 10% of the 780 (meaning up to 10% faster) give or take depending on the game, but probably undercut it by 100$-150$

Up to 10% faster would make it dead even (or faster) than the Titan, though? Heck, factory OC'ed 780s are faster than the Titan stock.....There's very little performance difference between the two, especially when you clock the 780 a little higher.

I don't know where it will end up but i'll be glad when the goods are released so these debates are put to rest.

 

[boxleitnerb]

risk production is a period when the fab tries to work up their yields to meaningful levels. for most cases yields during risk production are so low that commerical production of chips is not economically viable especially for the fab customers.

TSMC volume production starts Q2 2014 with 2% wafer volume on 20nm.. but the real volume ramp is H2 2014.

But there is no guarantee that it's as bad as you say. It could just be outside of your mentioned "most cases". As for quantity, doesn't TSMC have more fabs/capacity doing 20nm risk production now than they had fabs doing 28nm risk production 2 years ago?
And finally - AMD doesn't really need many GPUs. FirePro is a very small market and the enthusiast segment ($500+ GPUs) as well. 10,000 GPUs would be perfectly sufficient for the beginning.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or TSMC, the world’s largest chip foundry, is planning on installing equipment for its 20nm chip manufacturing facilities on April 20, some two months ahead of the schedule, according to China’s Economic Dailys News.
At such pace, TSMC should start 20nm systems-on-chip production by the end of Q2 2013 at a rate of 5000 12-inch wafers per month. TSMC will ramp up production to over 10 000 wafers in the third quarter.
The internal goal for 20nm chips is a 30 000 to 40 000 wafer starts per month by the end of Q1 2014.

http://www.phonearena.com/news/TSMC-20nm-chip-manufacturing-goes-ahead-of-schedule_id41451

End of Q2 is June. That would give you 10s of thousands of wafers until Oct/Nov. Say AMD gets only a total of 1000 wafers at a miserable 20% yields for a 365mm2 GPU@20nm. That would give them 176*1000*0.2 GPUs, so 35200 in total. Way more than enough for a late and limited 2013 launch. If they sell their FirePros for $4000+ and their graphics cards for $500-700+, they likely would even make profits and good ones at that.

 

[RussianSensation]

This gen isnt not too bad for AMD on the PC, but they lost majorly on mobile to NV, which completely dominated notebooks and ultrabooks. Theres very few good models with radeons in them. The rest are just Intel iGPU.

The irony is that NV mobile GPU pricing is a huge rip-off. At least GTX780 spanks 7970GE handily. On the mobile side you gotta pay 300 EURO or $400 USD for 15% more performance for 780M vs. HD8970M. HD8970 spanks 770M by more than 20% at a similar price. D:

When you are gaming on flagship GPUs you are plugging the laptop into the wall outlet unless you feel like gaming for 1.5 hours only. This means Enduro vs. Optimus is irrelevant for the flagship dGPUs. My guess is Apple will switch to AMD GPUs next round because NV's dGPU mobile pricing is slowly becoming a laughing stock for everyone but the most die hard NV fanboys. Seems AMD's management can't get design wins and yet 8970 is by far the sweet spot between 770M and 780M. Their business development/sales department really needs to step up.

 

[NostaSeronx]

Here you guys go:

28nm -> 20nm
Malta -> Hawaii
Tahiti -> Maui
Pitcarn -> Iceland
Bonaire -> Tonga

4096/256/64/768 -> 7680/480/128/1024
2048/128/32/384 -> 3840/240/64/512
1280/80/32/256 -> 2816/176/48/384
896/56/16/128 -> 1536/96/32/256​

 

[Kippa]

Considering that in the last 5 years, AMD has only ever taken the lead when they are a node ahead, I guess the hopes of it being faster than Titan are slim... Sadly
Though the real competitor is the 780... Titan has been an overpriced pos since day 1 with one of the worse values in the history of video cards

Im guessing the 9970 will be within 10% of the 780 (meaning up to 10% faster) give or take depending on the game, but probably undercut it by 100$-150$

Overpriced? 6gb of ram and 2688 cuda cores works wonders for 3d rendering in programs like Octane, and is great for hd video processing at a fraction of the cost of a Tesla. Plus you can use it for gaming as well. Worth every penny when you factor both gaming and none gaming useage.

 

[Jaydip]

Overpriced? 6gb of ram and 2688 cuda cores works wonders for 3d rendering in programs like Octane, and is great for hd video processing at a fraction of the cost of a Tesla. Plus you can use it for gaming as well. Worth every penny when you factor both gaming and none gaming useage.

Indeed.Titan as a gaming card is a complete ripoff but 1/3 DP do well for people who can't afford Quadro/Tesla.Also lets not forget 6GB vram which is great for people who game on multiple displays.

 

[imaheadcase]

Bring up micro-stutter on crossfire? Pimp the advantages of PhysX or Cuda?

I'm talking about price cuts and bundling games. That is what weighted me into getting a GTX 580 when it came out, was going with AMD. Most people don't have microstutter or problems with physx or cuda fyi.

 

[boxleitnerb]

Here you guys go:

28nm -> 20nm
Malta -> Hawaii
Tahiti -> Maui
Pitcarn -> Iceland
Bonaire -> Tonga

4096/256/64/768 -> 7680/480/128/1024
2048/128/32/384 -> 3840/240/64/512
1280/80/32/256 -> 2816/176/48/384
896/56/16/128 -> 1536/96/32/256​

Let's see what sushiwarrior says about that.
He hinted at more bandwidth than a 384-bit interface with 7 Gbps could provide and suggested, that the specs and TDP look like 20nm is used:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=35254678&postcount=54

 

[hawtdawg]

Ok, so here's the most believable specs I've seen so far:

http://videocardz.com/45324/possible-specs-of-the-amd-volcanic-islands-hawaii-gpu

2560 sp's, 160 TMU's, 40 ROP's, same core/mem clocks and bus width as the 7970 GE.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Ok, so here's the most believable specs I've seen so far:

http://videocardz.com/45324/possible-specs-of-the-amd-volcanic-islands-hawaii-gpu

2560 sp's, 160 TMU's, 40 ROP's, same core/mem clocks and bus width as the 7970 GE.

Thats possible. But would maybe be a 300W card. But for an AMD version of Titan. Completely believeable.

One thing is sure, 20nm is not happening for another year.