Friday, June 15th 2012
AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition "Tahiti XT2" Detailed
We've known since May, the existence of a new high-end single-GPU graphics card SKU in the works, at AMD. Called the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, the SKU is being designed to regain AMD's competitiveness against NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680. We're hearing a few additional details about the SKU. To begin with, AMD has worked with TSMC to refine the chip design. The Tahiti XT2 will be able to facilitate significantly higher clock speeds, at significantly lower voltages, than the current breed of Tahiti XT chips.
Tahiti XT2, or Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, will ship with a core clock speed of 1100 MHz, 175 MHz faster than the HD 7970. The GPU core voltage of Tahiti XT2 will be lower, at 1.020V, compared to 1.175V of the Tahiti XT. It's unlikely that AMD will tinker with memory clock speed, since Tahiti already has a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, which gives it 264 GB/s memory bandwidth at 1375 MHz (5.50 GHz effective). According to the source, the new SKU enters mass-production next week. So best case, it should reach markets by late-June or early-July.
Source:
OCaholic.ch
Tahiti XT2, or Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, will ship with a core clock speed of 1100 MHz, 175 MHz faster than the HD 7970. The GPU core voltage of Tahiti XT2 will be lower, at 1.020V, compared to 1.175V of the Tahiti XT. It's unlikely that AMD will tinker with memory clock speed, since Tahiti already has a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, which gives it 264 GB/s memory bandwidth at 1375 MHz (5.50 GHz effective). According to the source, the new SKU enters mass-production next week. So best case, it should reach markets by late-June or early-July.
112 Comments on AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition "Tahiti XT2" Detailed
as for XTX I think they are saving that for the 2304 shader tahiti XD
if the tahiti XT that was released in jan wasnt exactly what AMD had planned then we can safely assume that crossed out 1000mhz 2304core tahiti was the original one XD
lets all dream, ghz edition 2304core tahiti for less than $500
Tahiti XT is what Kepler 680 should have been to Fermi 580.
Kepler can only handle Double-Percision at Single-Percision rate. This is why their Quadro series features x2 GK104s chips to make up for the lack of compute power and its also being marketed to a lower specific tier market than before since it lacks the DP.
"GK104 lacks the ECC and compute flexibility of the Fermi Tesla cards"
"NVIDIA’s goal for K10 is to go after the specific market segments that don’t need ECC and don’t need flexibility"
AMD didnt need to cut down/out Compute Power to achieve low power usage nor did it have to introduce the problamatic GPU Boost feature thats causing so many headaches to keep temps and power usage tamed.
I'm sure Nvidia could have made something similar in size and performance but something happened that they either couldnt shrink the die small enough with computation power on it and still have low power usage so I guess they just cut out the computation power to compete with AMD in similar die size and power usage.
Higher clocks for less heat/power... that's what I'm talking about :P
parallelis.com/kepler-underperform-on-gpgpu-gtx680/
edit: I "was" a pure AMD fanboy, but now im just a hardware realist, I go for what will do my tasks the best for the price and efficiency, so if the nvidia maxwell rumors are true with being 12x! more performance.. NOT 12% but 12x! the biggest leap between 2 gens than the fermi articulture, then ill be getting a GTX780, but until then im content with my HD7970.
xD
And then we have the various optimizations / cuts AMD has performed in their drivers over the last 3 years to gain more FPS something which not many people accept (until they run a game at default settings and start noticing various objects not where they should be - something which changes once you place every setting in high).
I could continue about this and talk about PhysX, GRID and VGX but no point in doing that.
I support both teams because i have both but calling the 79xx series better than the GTX6xx series is.....Weird.....AMD lost this round, plain and simple...Even if you just look at the fact that they still haven't released the 7990 that's more than enough.
Your basing your premise on GAMING only. The GTX 680 is what 2-5% better in certain games. I hardly think that justifies the lack of computation power being 35%+ less.
PhysX thats the biggest marketing joke. You still take a 30-40% performance hit when its active on a single card.
GRID is a nice theory on paper but its a service. They explained it at E3 look it up. Current testing is being compared to console latency one-way. Highest test population they had is 40 people. You can say GRID is Nvidia responce to loosing all 3 Console contracts.
VGX is another nice thing on paper but has to do more with Nvidia dumping almost 2 billion in the last 6 months into the Mobile market than it doesn with its descrete graphics division. One of its prime focus will be to upscale performance from Tablets and Mobile devices. That in it of itself will cause all kind of backlash from their mobile hardware partners.
And whoever claims that he's getting a card based on computing power so they can help SETI or Folding@Home well there are still previous gen cards with crazy computing power.
Even a 5% increase in Games (even if we don't take into consideration the various driver optimizations) is a 5% increase, thus a better card for gaming. If the 7970 was 5% better it would be a better gaming card. It's simple.
@Googoo , Google is your friend, it should clear this up for you.
And I'm still not getting how GRID is an incentive to buy a Nvidia card.
it is they that started the compute on Gpu revolution with physx, yet there behind on my score card, AMD made a card that really was a beast in all scenarios, nvidia went for a bit more on gameing not shit loads more , A Bit ,and for more money.
for ages you couldnt even buy NV if you wanted too and in all that time amd's been rollin em out and then those early adopters got their egos spanked by the 670 which for a gamer(NON FOLDING) is clearly the one to buy.
@theoneandonlymrk However the immediate opponent of the 5870 was the GTX 480 so no NV didn't lose that round then in terms of performance.
In any case if the "trend" of out times is for AMD to release a card, sell it and then release the same basically card with higher clocks and sell it for even more then i really hope NV doesn't follow the same path.....I like to see technology progressing and not the same chips getting slightly updated and released again, that's all.
AMD (ATI at the time) had released 9500/9700 and then released 9600/9800 as a product refresh.
NV did the same thing then.
Product refreshes were only just reintroduced now since after they dropped the idea with the HD 2000 series
5900 ultra -> 5950 ultra
5600 -> 5700 ultra
4870 -> 4890
GTX 280 -> GTX 285
9700 pro -> 9800 pro -> 9800XT
X800XT -> X850XT
X1900XT -> X1950XTX
7800 GTX -> 7800 GTX 512
etc....
PD: now that i think about it, the jump from GTX 280 to GTX 285 was almost like GTX 480 -> GTX 580 hehe...
As you say most often 210W is what it pulls at normal gaming/stress loads, but there’s something like 20% buffer on max power in the design of a reference board. What this indicates is probably AMD will hold to around that 210W, but now can add 20% higher clock while still holding within that. That's not something you get from binning chips, but a improvement of the manufacturing process that controls gat leakage.
However even if that was always the case i don't think we should be happy about it nor accept it with open arms.