Radeon HD 7000-series rumoured for May production
The new range is rumoured to be based on the Cayman design of the HD 6970 2GB, pictured.
Taiwanese tech site DigiTimes claims the move will follow the introduction of the company's Radeon HD 6670, 6570 and 6450 GPUs this month, citing graphics card makers as its source.
There's no word on the specifications of the new GPUs yet, but previous rumours have stated that they will be fabricated using TSMC's 28nm facilities.
We originally expected to see new GPUs based on TSMC’s 28nm manufacturing process in autumn this year, and the smaller transistors will represent a large step down the process scale from the current 40nm process used for AMD’s Radeon HD 6000-series and Nvidia’s latest GeForce 500-series GPUs.
The usual benefits of a process shrink are higher frequencies and more space for resources in the die. This can all be squeezed into a piece of silicon that’s the same size as the previous comparative GPU, so costs per comparable GPU (or card) usually remain similar.
Previous rumours have suggested that the new range of GPU, codenamed Southern Islands, will be based on the same architecture found in AMD's current Cayman-architecture chips, such as the Radeon HD 6900-series. This seems sensible, given AMD's claims that the VLIW4 stream processor architecture of Cayman is more efficient per mm2 of silicon than the VLIW5 design of its previous GPUs.
However, while we’d expect some upgrades in other areas of the GPU design to complement the stream processor design, it looks as though we shouldn't expect anything as radical as the original Nvidia Fermi design, which broke up the front-end of the GPU and distributed various elements throughout the design.
There may still be room for adding new stream processors to the GPU, though, especially if AMD does indeed deploy a 28nm process. There are no figures yet, of course, but given the huge process-shrink, a doubling of the stream processor count seems a conservative estimate. This could potentially result in the fastest GPUs featuring over 3,000 stream processors.
Are you excited by the rumours about the Radeon HD 7000-series, or are you going to wait until you see the reviews here before making a judgement? Let us know in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyIt'd be a hell of way to drum up hype and allow retailers to offer special AMD bundles of CPU, Mobo and GPU for the release.
This stemmed from wishful thinking that Bulldozer itself would see release in coincidence with the rumoured 7-series. :p
That would be pretty awesome, new bulldozer processor, new 900series chipset with built-in usb 3.0 and a pair HD7970 cards for some pretty sick performance at a nice launch price. Idea me likes.
More importantly I hope that with the launch of the HD6670 / HD6570 and HD6450 we will start to see the equivilant discrete mobile GPU's appearing in mid range laptops (preferebly 14" replacing the HD5650m - my ideal M11x replacement).
The sooner we get a repeat of something like the 8800GT the better.
I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Could be a nice card and the high end single GPU will undoubtedly be faster than the NVIDIA GTX 580 but AMD are going to have to improve those, IMO, lacklustre drivers significantly if they want my money. Proper per-game profiles a la NVIDIA would be nice too.
A nice bit of competition is just what we need to keep going.
It'd probably be 3000 stream processors and a 20-30% overclock from the previous generation as well.
dunx
I guess we'll have to wait and see.
*groan* this AMD driver myth is incredibly boring. You say this as if nVidia don't have driver problems, whereas AMD do, and no, anecdotal evidence isn't valid either "Well I had problems with my AMD card, but my nVidia one was fine, AMD drivers suck" isn't valid.
I find it really hard to understand why people keep propagating this myth as if it's true, it's never aluded to in any sort of "professional" capacity, review websites don't mention it, they seem to get on fine with AMD and nVidia drivers equally well, yet there's people on forums pretending AMD drivers never ever work, ever.
Another thing, people need to learn the difference between what a driver is, and what a control panel is, I understand completely people preferring a control panel, like the way (when using SLS/multiple monitors) nVidia's let you choose, in pixels how much bezel compensation you want to use, whereas with AMD you've got to mess around with the stupid on screen triangles and a straight edge, I know how many pixels equate to the size of my bezels, just give me the option to set that! However, that's not a "driver problem" as some people might suggest, and if people learnt the difference, maybe we'd see less people making such claims.
28nm will probably be the start of us regularly seeing 1Ghz GPUs as standard with the upper end cards. It seems completely plausible considering the clock speeds of the current top end cards.
Rumor has it that AMD are moving over to Global Foundries. I'm not sure if nVidia would be allowed to, or even allow themselves to really, even if it was for the better (as TSMC is junk and they need to sort their crap out).
Going from 40nm to 28nm should have some excellent results!
TSMC screwed 32nm up.
MYTH????
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1559534&highlight=uvd
The fix for that particular UVD powerplay issue is to.... flash your vbios. I know, I had to do it myself. Sorry, but its a pretty big black mark against ATI.
Yes, because people act like AMD have driver issues, while saying "nVidia just works" which is not true. I didn't say AMD don't have driver issues, "AMD's driver don't work" myth is what I'm talking about, they're just as good, or bad as nVidia's. Remember nVidia's driver that killed off old cards suspiciously close to the Fermi release?
I have the cursor corruption bug, and have done for ages, it's annoying but I'm not gonna pretend that AMD on the whole have crap drivers that most users suffer with.
So much power, nothing really using it.
It'll be difficult to let go though...
Mmmm I dont think they would want to go over 350 square mm die size for the next product. Cayman is really too large for them, I think they were just pushed into a corner due to 32nm getting scrapped.
If Cayman has 24 simd blocks, then I would say that the top ATI 28nm gpu would have 40 blocks. I think 48, an exact doubling, would be to far for them.
Better questioin is will nvidia go for another very large flagship gpu??
GT200 -> gf100 -> gf110 -> gf???
Caymen is a forced evolution of the HD5xxx chip given that it, Caymen, was meant to be on 32nm. TY TMSC!
However, the switch in Caymen from 5 to 4VILW was done with 32/28nm (and beyond?) in mind. As you get smaller you have to get more power efficient. Which is why Fermi won't shrink!
Now let's talk drivers. If you take an out-of the-box-GTX590 and OC it/overvault it, using the provided on disc drivers, your nVidia flagship card goes 'BOOM'. Nice!
It is curious that BIT-TECH have yet to provide ANY information regarding the OC capabilities regarding nVidia's new "king of Cards". Why? The 6990 was reviewed on the 08.03.2011 ...oc'ing inc..
The 590 was revieved 24.03.2011 ...oc capabilities? Still pending!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XRhne0odjJA
Maybe we can get back to the subject of the 28nm process now.
also do not know if they have Fixed the issues with noisey VRMs on the ATI side the noise they make is completely unacceptable (not sure if it was an 5850 or 6850), that alone is what would defernatly stop my from ever buying an ATI card as that noise was louder then the whole system every time i moved the mouse never mind when an game was running
590 was only blowing up due to drivers that should of not been used + stupid OC at the same time that an norm user of an 590 would not do (you would not use the drivers provided on the cd any way), OC the 590 is bit harder as hardocp has found out the oc mite be stable but the OVP will kill the overclock performance
28nm is a half node of 32nm, as is 40nm of 45nm. My guess is both companies will be aiming for the Nvidia GF11x tweak of the mix between high and low leak transistors in their cores.
The launch schedule of NV and AMD is entirely dependent on TSMC. It had a whole load of trouble with its 40nm and 32nm, so I would not expect 28nm to be early given recent history and the fact TSMC are doing High-k MG and Gate Last for the first time. Unless, that is, TSMC make a phenomenally lucky breakthrough I would doubt it.
To put it in perspective, Intel is already on its 3rd gen of both and its CPUs use HALF the transistors of current GPUs...
Also, even if AMD has experience at 32nm with GloFo, it won't help, because GloFo is only using SOI and Gate First still, so the Fab tech is completely different.
couldn't agree more
But let's have a look for amd
5970 needs a full bios refresh To even work
5870 in crossfire was great perfromance when it worked ( I had it )
580 sli alot easier to live with in terms of driver issues and stability
I think you have grammar issues...
That's just low. Get some balls and find some good arguments to counter his arguments. Not just "I think you have grammar issues...".
Yes i have been an ati fan had a 3870 4870 5770 and not a single driver problem and good value powerful cards which are quiet and efficient and then i buy my first nvidia card since the gt 8800 the gtx 470 and wow driver problems everywhere games crashing programs not responding overheating artifacting Rmad within 3 months noisy so yeah this arguement is just ridiculous anyone who says ati have driver problems are stupid nvidia fan boys and have never owned an ati card or have only owned like a 2000 series card and based all future judgements upon this.
nvidias last great card was the 8800gtx and that thing was ages ago.
AMD pulled ahead with the 4870x2 and has not once lost the performance lead, and has in fact given us new tech like eyefinity that has moved screen size forward (3x30 inches is the new sweet spot for gamers)
I sincerely hope that nVidia can do something to be competitive again, I hate to see one company so completely dominate.
Yours in 3 screen of 30 inches Plasma,
Star*Dagger
Star*Dagger sorry but we are in 2011, you must have slept a few years because you have no idea in technology of GPU's and you don't read enough reviews so dont try writing about stuff you dont know yet and the competition between AMD and Nvidia are close and it all depends mostly what game you want to play and what range card you have in your rig!!
Really, how many more people have an AMD card than a 590? As if the 590s are selling in any meaningful numbers, however, let's not pretend there's not threads about the 590 issues. You're the type of person who will go in to a new AMD driver release thread, and start trash talking about how AMD drivers are crap and don't work, but with nVidia, there's never problems, it just works, then when there's a new nVidia driver thread, you go in and blab about how happy you are that these new drivers are out because *problem* has been doing your head in for weeks.
580 SLi might be a lot easier to "live with" in your opinion or experience, but neither of those make up a picture that is representative of AMD drivers as a whole.
What do you say to people when they tell you they've had nVidia driver problems? "It's okay, it's just a temporary glitch, they'll sort it out very quickly" *cough*overheating cards dying caused by drivers, windows Vista release*cough*
It depends on where you read, nVidia are struggling, their prices are bad, either for us, or for them, pretty much constantly. Their current top end cards are likely losing them money, their cards are overly hot, and draw a lot of power (again, depending on where you read, as some places like to pretend otherwise).
But yeah, nVidia aren't competing that well, their top end card is overprice and underperforms for its price, the GTX560 competes with the GTX 570, the GTX590 is broken and largely pointless since it doesn't take the performance crown while being more expensive (and its performance is being lowered in even more in later drivers to try and smooth over a hardware problem).
nVidia are a joke currently, they're a shadow of what they used to be, their CEO is a liabetic, they just fall out of his mouth and they need to kick him out because he's bringing them down. They're running on arrogance and not much more at the moment.
the 6970 is slightly below par of the GTX570, which means the much cheaper GTX560ti comes too close for comfort.
They definitely need a speedboost if they want to keep prices up.
The alternative course would be to make the same sized chip as prior but with more performance/shaders etc. This cost the same to make/sell/buy.
And remember there should have been a 32nm step between the two. So the jump down (two steps not just one) to 28nm is going to look quite impressive.
the 580 are selling like relatively hot cakes. it's not overpriced nor underperforming, it's the fastest single GPU you can buy! with vastly superior minimal FPS across the board to any competitor GPU.
560 compete with 570 in the same way 6950 competes with 6970. but both more expensive cards can always be overclocked further. it's like saying a tuned Escort is as fast as a stock Skyline. :(
i doubt their 7000 said to be produced in this story will be high-end, will probably be a cheaper 6870 successor based on Cayman architecture, a straight dieshrink. but this "production" could mean producing for silicon testing for all we know.
Huh? I got my 5970 at launch. Didn't have any issues with it, neither bios nor drivers. Funny I didn't even hear of some critical problem regarding that card until your post.
TSB
Oh driver issues? Only issue I had with ATI/AMD drivers was the older gen,l was struggling to get dual screen working(HD4850). My GTS450.. latest driver update halved my FPS in gaming and prevented me from folding on it at all.. Had to roll back drivers.
;)
It's been very quiet though.
Bindi: Tell me what you know! You obviously know something Asusboy! :D
There's no point in creating more "low-end" card, old(er) VGA's that were once mid/high end *are* today's low end GPU's.
whoops...
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/27/nvidia-drivers-responsible-for-nearly-30-of-vista-crashes-in-20/