Friday, February 20th 2009
RV790 Essentially An Overclocked RV770
A lot has been said about AMD's rather mysterious new performance GPU, the RV790. Clues about the new GPU surfaced as early as in November last year, when we first reported about AMD working on a successor to the RV770 before the RV870 comes to be. During the course of time, we were given several scoops about its specifications, with some reports hinting at increased stream processor and TMU counts alongside increased clock-speeds to give out early projections of as much as 20% performance increments, taking its single-GPU flagship product to the domain of the GeForce GTX 285, but as multiple sources confirm now, none of that looks plausible.
The RV790 is essentially a reworked RV770 with higher clock-speeds. AMD seems to have reworked the design of the RV770, perhaps altered or removed rudimentary components that facilitate slightly higher clock speeds. While samples of the RV790 are spec'd to run at 850 MHz, one can expect a slightly increased overclocking headroom. The samples also carried Qimonda IDGV1G-05A1F1C-40X memory chips that are originally specified to run at 1 GHz, yet running at 975 MHz on the samples. The core continues to have 800 stream processors, 40 TMUs and 16 ROPs. It features a 256-bit wide memory interface to support GDDR5, GDDR4 and GDDR3 memory standards. It will be built on the existing 55 nm TSMC manufacturing node. Products based on the RV790 can be expected only by April.
Source:
X-bit Labs
The RV790 is essentially a reworked RV770 with higher clock-speeds. AMD seems to have reworked the design of the RV770, perhaps altered or removed rudimentary components that facilitate slightly higher clock speeds. While samples of the RV790 are spec'd to run at 850 MHz, one can expect a slightly increased overclocking headroom. The samples also carried Qimonda IDGV1G-05A1F1C-40X memory chips that are originally specified to run at 1 GHz, yet running at 975 MHz on the samples. The core continues to have 800 stream processors, 40 TMUs and 16 ROPs. It features a 256-bit wide memory interface to support GDDR5, GDDR4 and GDDR3 memory standards. It will be built on the existing 55 nm TSMC manufacturing node. Products based on the RV790 can be expected only by April.
51 Comments on RV790 Essentially An Overclocked RV770
www.driverheaven.net/reviews.php?reviewid=668&pageid=12
here is a review... keep in mind that this is the GTX 260 AT STOCK... and that these cards are 15% faster on average when OC'd to their full potential.
lame.
Good news is my 4870 just lenghtened its life cycle! :D
With both nVidia and AMD milking their cows for a bit more time, we might at least expect some decent driver support from them!
There's no reason to bitch anyway. AMD didn't overpromise and underdeliver. No specs, performance projections, or statements ever surfaced from AMD about the RV790.
bah, new GPU's already.
leads me to believe the oc headroom on these wont be too far either. kinda annoying since we've been hyped for 900mhz + speeds on the core.
Their driver support has gone to the complete crapper.
They didn't officially support the HD4670/50 until more than 3 months after it was released. That means in the 3 driver released after the HD4600 series' launch, they couldn't even be bothered to add in support for a card they had officially launched.:shadedshu
The HD4850x2 was officially launched with the HD4870x2, and the HD4850x2 cards started showing up on the market about 3 months later, but they just finally officially released drivers for it last month. Thats about 9 months without driver support for an official product.:shadedshu
If the monthly driver releases were actually improvements in any way beyond a few added Crossfire profiles, adding support for these cards would come the very next driver release, not months later.
pretty much every release there's performance improvements, new physx drivers.... they just keep getting better and better.
honestly drivers were a decent factor in me getting rid of my 4870's, they seem few and far between, then you wait a month for a release and it hasn't even got what you want in it :shadedshu
another reason they annoy me is no "per game profiles" for image settings, sure i loved 24x edge detect AA, but its either ON or OFF, and naturally not all games will play with such a high level of AA, and really screw goin into the CP every time to disable or enable it.
come on ATi, get a workin' on those drivers.
-Indybird
I know I won't be buying one since I already have 2 4870s that I'm going to build another rig around, not to mention the 280 & 260 that's in my old rigs.
the same way ddr2 differs from ddr3 gddr3/4 differs from gddr5
Let just hope they'll not f?ck us like in time of r360 chip based grapic cards that they now w/ rv790 release has been often mentioned. when most of r9800xt/pro (rv360/350) had a much shorter lifespan just caused just cause they obviously neglect power requirements.