Sunday, November 6th 2011

New 28 nm Graphics Cards To Be 45 Percent Faster And Overclock Like Never Before?

The next generation NVIDIA and AMD GPU's are going to be built on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) brand new 28 nm process, which may offer a 45% speed boost to these new products. Smaller geometries usually mean that a processor will use less power and can be made smaller, faster and more cheaply than previously. It's good news then that TSMC reports that the new process is ready for mass production and is running very well indeed. So well in fact, that unnamed sources within TSMC claim the new 28 nm process allows for a 45% increase in clock speed over the current 40 nm process. Put this together with improved GPU architectures and the next generation of graphics cards could be wickedly fast, something every enthusiast likes to see. However, it appears that NVIDIA and AMD may go for a blend of performance and power usage, rather than outright performance, since power use of modern graphics cards is already hitting limits of acceptability. So, does this mean that these new cards will overclock like never before? We will have to wait and see. AMD's cards should be out around the new year and NVIDIA's a couple of months later.

Head on over to DailyTech for a lot more detail on this.
Source: DailyTech
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64 Comments on New 28 nm Graphics Cards To Be 45 Percent Faster And Overclock Like Never Before?

#1
Frizz
oooo sounds interesting, I'll definitely be expecting a big jump in performance similar to 4xxx series to 5xxx series AMD wise as the 5850 completely destroyed the 4850 in all aspects.
Posted on Reply
#2
radrok
randomoooo sounds interesting, I'll definitely be expecting a big jump in performance similar to 4xxx series to 5xxx series AMD wise as the 5850 completely destroyed the 4850 in all aspects.
Yeah we got two generations of GPUs based on the same lithography and that brough to a marginal performance increases, AMD and NVIDIA had to work around and hard with their architectures to squeeze additional performance out of the 40nm process...
I'm looking forward to AMD's Graphics Core Next, seems a big jump for them :rockout:
Posted on Reply
#3
Chipset
Title is somewhat misleading so let me make this abundantly clear.
45% higher clock rates DOES NOT EQUAL 45% higher performance, there are tons of other factors that go into the final performance of a chip.

That being said this is interesting news, coupled with what I hear about AMD using XDR 2 memory this is shaping up to be an interesting graphics card generation.
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#4
Unregistered
Aye 45% more expensive for the new cards using these 28nm gpu's too.
#5
Delta6326
Well this is sounding good as my 4850's x2 are getting old and slow.:D
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#6
HossHuge
randomoooo sounds interesting, I'll definitely be expecting a big jump in performance similar to 4xxx series to 5xxx series AMD wise as the 5850 completely destroyed the 4850 in all aspects.
And 4850 destroyed the 3850 and they were both 55nm.

Architecture is most important.
While all of these changes will benefit compute applications, it is not yet clear what impact this will have on current games and those already in the pipeline. The architectural changes may end up helping or hindering performance. Nevertheless, the entire 28nm graphics lineup will support resolutions of up to 16000 x 16000 pixels.
:confused:
Posted on Reply
#7
pantherx12
ChipsetTitle is somewhat misleading so let me make this abundantly clear.
45% higher clock rates DOES NOT EQUAL 45% higher performance, there are tons of other factors that go into the final performance of a chip.

That being said this is interesting news, coupled with what I hear about AMD using XDR 2 memory this is shaping up to be an interesting graphics card generation.
If they built the exact same chip on the 28nm and clocked it 45% closer it would be pretty damn close to 45% though eh?

For example if I overclock my 6870 to 1ghz core I get a %10 performance increase ( 11% overclock)

And running it at 1100 core nets me a 20% improvement ( unfortunately it's only noticable in source games but heh!)

Not quite perfect scaling but close it it.
Posted on Reply
#8
1Kurgan1
The Knife in your Back
I can see large overclocks coming. I remember barely being able to OC cards in the past, now with lower nm I have almost a 20% OC on my 6950, it's just crazy.
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#9
micropage7
why everybody talk about speed and performance? with smaller fabrication it should eat lower energy. and its pretty interesting where the performance raise but the power that needed reduced
(i hope its true)
and its like asus mars just with 6 pins power
Posted on Reply
#10
mlee49
Great, make a card with performance of a GTX 580 that consumes as much power as a 550, oh and make it run passive.
Posted on Reply
#11
arnoo1
Wow i want kepler so bad with this very good news! Can't wait!!! I also need a new graphics cards so my rig will be blazing fast
Posted on Reply
#12
pantherx12
HossHugeAnd 4850 destroyed the 3850 and they were both 55nm.




::
AMD could of theoretically released a 4800 style gpu instead of 3800 then?

They would of done very very well if they had!

Silly AMD.
Posted on Reply
#14
cadaveca
My name is Dave
45% smaller process= 45% power saving, does NOT equal 45% higher clocks. Idiots.

Making claims liek that need to be verified with an offical statement, not by an anonymous source. If there is no officail source, then it is jsut rumour, and shoud be ignored. I dunno why I still gotta say that...
Posted on Reply
#15
pantherx12
cadaveca45% smaller process= 45% power saving, does NOT equal 45% higher clocks. Idiots.

Making claims liek that need to be verified with an offical statement, not by an anonymous source. If there is no officail source, then it is jsut rumour, and shoud be ignored. I dunno why I still gotta say that...
Good call, news should be news afterall.
Posted on Reply
#16
wolf
Performance Enthusiast
Chipset45% higher clock rates DOES NOT EQUAL 45% higher performance, there are tons of other factors that go into the final performance of a chip.
Like? clock speeds definitely make up a whole big chuck of that. I have to disagree, with most AMD and Nvidia cards I have owned since the nvidia 6000/ATi X800 series, clocking them up has a very direct and measurable impact on performance, and i think it has been getting more and more so since then.

I am certain at least with my GTX460 and GTX570 voer the last 12 months, that clocked up 15% across the core and memory, they both perform damn close to 15% faster overall, it is generally within the margin of error unless the game engine is outdated or say has a CPU limitation for example.
HossHugeArchitecture is most important.
Very very much so but what they are aiming to hit here, as indeed with many past generations, is improve the arch greatly while also increasing clock speeds across the board. lets have a look at this done historically.

8800GTX 575 mhz 128 sp's
GTX280 607 mhz 240 sp's
GTX480 702 mhz 480 sp's

HD4870 750 mhz 800 sp's
HD5870 850 mhz 1600 sp's
HD6970 880 nhz 1536 sp's (VLIW4)

naturally there are examples inbetween too but for instance GTX280 to 285, all the die shrink accomplished was higher clocks/lower power, but having said that they did that same thing with the 480 to 580 without even jumping to a different node.

in short from 40 to 28nm is a big jump alright, and both camps are launching new arch on it, so in all likelyhood the GPU's themselves will be considerably more powerfull, but the other side of the same coin is that we could/should still see higher clockspeeds emerge across the board of low to high end, AMD or Nvidia.
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#17
W1zzard
can we get same or lower performance and good games developed for pc instead ?
Posted on Reply
#18
wolf
Performance Enthusiast
W1zzardcan we get same or lower performance and good games developed for pc instead ?
BF3 ;) but probably the most valid point about PC gaming today.
Posted on Reply
#19
radrok
We are bound to fugly console ports and coding abominations :(
Posted on Reply
#20
cheesy999
radrokWe are bound to fugly console ports and coding abominations
not all console ports are bad
Posted on Reply
#21
cadaveca
My name is Dave
cheesy999not all console ports are bad
A game being a port doesn't matter, really. It DOES matter when that port is BROKEN, functionality-wise.
Posted on Reply
#22
pantherx12
Well new consoles out next year I think, so at-least graphically he console ports wil get a boost.
Posted on Reply
#23
HossHuge
pantherx12Well new consoles out next year I think, so at-least graphically he console ports wil get a boost.
And lets pray that they use DX11 in those consoles cause there aren't as many DX11 games as I thought there were going to be.
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#24
radrok
cheesy999not all console ports are bad
Sure but history tells us that the majority of them are bad :(
Posted on Reply
#25
cheesy999
radrokSure but history tells us that the majority of them are bad :(
To be fair the majority of games are bad, no one remembers them in a years time because nobody bought them

it's not as if they're haven't been any Awful games/games with bad coding that were aimed at the PC
Posted on Reply
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