AMD Pits Dragon Against Spider, Expects Significant Performance Gains

[btarunr]

"Spider" is the codename for a high-end desktop platform by AMD, which came to light late last year. It consisted of an AMD Phenom series processor, an AMD 790FX-based motherboard, and Radeon HD 3800-series graphics card(s). AMD would be offering a new high-end gaming platform based on its products, called "Dragon". It consists of a Phenom II (http://www.techpowerup.com/76417/Phenom_II_Final_Nomenclature_and_Launch-Schedule_Revealed.html) processor, running on an AMD 790-series motherboard, and Radeon HD 4800-series graphics card(s). Expreview sourced a company-confidential side which illustrates the company's expectations from the platform, in terms of performance increments over its predecessor.

With office and productivity applications, AMD slates a 20~40% performance increment. The trend stays with multimedia applications. The gaming performance is where the money lies, with increments up to 280%. Again, take into account that the Dragon testbed is using a Radeon HD 4800 accelerator. 20~40% seems a significant figure, nonetheless.

http://www.techpowerup.com/img/08-11-18/40a_thm.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/img/08-11-18/40a.jpg)

Source: Expreview (http://en.expreview.com/2008/11/18/amd-dragon-platforms-plan-and-performance-exposed.html#more-1307)

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

yummy, too bad this dish isnt for me

[niko084]

Now that would be nice, but I'll wait for real benchs :)

[ShadowFold]

I am dieing to hear some prices AMD. I already know its gonna be awesome :p

[DaMulta]

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm


They didn't say what games.

[btarunr]

They didn't say what games.

Look at the x-axis. Crysis is in the list too.

[ShadowFold]

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm


They didn't say what games.

Says Call of Juarez, Company of Heroes, Lost Planet, Quake 4, Crysis and 3dmark(which isn't a game lol)

[DaMulta]

Ok I'm sleepy.......


Hmmmm again.

I have heard rumors of this being THE CHIP way back, way back.

Hmmmmm again.

[DaMulta]

See the NDA stamp. I wonder who leaked that, or has AMD released it yet?

[wolf2009]

Ok I'm sleepy.......



LOL, you have been up to much watching i7 threads :laugh:

[Exavier]

might build a phenom backup rig..hmm..

[wolf2009]

might build a phenom backup rig..hmm..

ahem .. ehh ... ehh. phenom II .. .. ehh ... cough cough ...

[johnnyfiive]

Meh, I want REAL benchies.

[btarunr]

This platform gets there in those gaming performance charts all thanks to the Radeon HD 4800, it's still not established what Agena vs. Deneb in games is. The comparison becomes apparent in the productivity and multimedia charts, where the significance of the Radeon HD 4800 is lesser.

[DaMulta]

This platform gets there in those gaming performance charts all thanks to the Radeon HD 4800, it's still not established what Agena vs. Deneb in games is. The comparison becomes apparent in the productivity and multimedia charts, where the significance of the Radeon HD 4800 is lesser.

They could be testing 8 GPUs on a dragon.

4 x2 cards.

790FX-based=4PCI-E slots.

[btarunr]

That's impossible as of now. The drivers cannot make >4 ATI GPUs work in tandem, although you can install 4 R700 cards on one machine.

[DaMulta]

That's impossible as of now.

Why?

Why?


I guarantee you in the driver lab they have a button to turn it on with.

I bet 4 x2 cards will only work right( slow on other chipsets) on the AMD chipset, because they will know how to tune that right now.

[DaMulta]

Then they get to work on drivers for the next cards that will have 4 GPU more or less per card.

[btarunr]

Why?


It might not be as easy as we think. Creating mini-queues of 8 (!) frames to go in succession (in AFR) could be a very painful task, at least it would make the scene stutter to unpleasant levels. Making 4 HD 3870 cards do CFX itself gives you an idea how bad the problem of micro-stuttering is. It might not be as easy as replacing a "4" with an "8" somewhere in the drivers' source code.

[DaMulta]

Chuck has said(on the INQ) they could of done it on day one with the 3870x2 cards.

When CF was made they used to run like 30 or so x800 cards for airforce flight simulators.


You know they are combining cores, and ATi always likes to keep ahead. Like moving to netframe works wayyyyy back.


I have talked with the driver guys, and more or less a lot of issues are political. Or a way to sell products. This was a few years ago, but it is the same people today.
When the 2900XT was released(that pic you seen me in)they were flashing 2900XT to run at 900Mhz stock, and they would all be stable. CRAZY



Saving the card of 8 GPU in CF would be a good card to hold on too.

[newbielives]

The fact they are stating how they are beating themselves instead of how they are beating Intel's i7 could be a bad sign

[WarEagleAU]

Looks like it may be somewhat living up to its hype. Benches dont tell everything but Im really liking the Denebs and dont mind waiting on them to come out.

[KBD]

The fact they are stating how they are beating themselves instead of how they are beating Intel's i7 could be a bad sign

i think you are missing the point, they are showing how much better the new platform is going to be compared to the old one. Corei7 was also compared to C2Q to show what improvent it has over the latter, this is perfectly normal. if 20-40% is in fact true its a good sign for AMD. Who knows Deneb may hold its own against C2Q.

[mdm-adph]

The fact they are stating how they are beating themselves instead of how they are beating Intel's i7 could be a bad sign

Not if the price is right. :D

I really have no problem with Intel chips being faster, as long as I can still get a good deal from AMD.

[DaMulta]

The fact they are stating how they are beating themselves instead of how they are beating Intel's i7 could be a bad sign

They could also not care what intel is doing. AMD is selling on electricity use.



One thing that we are overlooking at is this is just one piece of the NDA doc.

How long has the 790FX been out?

http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/news/2007-09/asus_l1a64ws.jpg
Here is a 4x4 working board that runs Phenom

AMD’s FASN8 (first AMD silicon next-gen 8-core)

With 4 x2 cards.

It would be a 8x8 system.


http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-3362-view-ASUS-L1a64-WS.html
Here is the motherboard ASUS L1a64 WS, based on AMD RD790.

ASUS L1a64 WS
]http://xtreview.com/images/ASUS%20L1a64%20WS.jpg
This motherboard is equipped with two processor socket ( socket F+ ) for the installation of the promising four core processors phenom FX. Furthermore, there are four slots PCI express x16 (connected to the system bus PCI express x8), intended for four video card AMD. As it is expected, three video card will work in the regime triple crossfire and the fourth video card will be occupied by physical effects acceleration .

The future AMD chipset is characterized by a comparatively low heat emission. There is no high end cooling on the motherboard ASUS L1a64 WS .


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_700_chipset_series

790FX

* Codenamed RD790, final name revealed to be "AMD 790FX chipset" [10]
* Dual-socket (Quad FX, Dual Socket Direct Connect (DSDC) Architecture) or single AMD processor configuration
* Maximum four physical PCI-E x16 slots and discrete PCI-E x4 slot [11], the chipset provides a total of 42 lanes solely in the Northbridge
* HyperTransport 3.0 with support for HTX slots [11] and PCI Express 2.0
* ATI CrossFire X
* AutoXpress
* AMD OverDrive
* Energy efficient Northbridge design
o 65 nm CMOS fabrication process manufactured by TSMC
* Extreme overclocking, reported to have achieved about 420 MHz bus for overclocking an Athlon 64 FX-62 processor [12], from originally 200 MHz.
* Optional discrete chipset cache memory of at least 16 KB to reduce the latencies and increase the bandwidth [11]
* Supports Dual Gigabit Ethernet, and teaming option [11]
* Reference board codenamed "Wahoo" [13] for dual-processor system reference design board with three physical PCI-E x16 slots, and "HammerHead" for single-socket system reference design board with four physical PCI-E x16 slots, also notable was the reference boards includes two ATA ports and only four SATA 3.0 Gbit/s ports (as being paired with SB600 southbridge).
* Will pair with SB750 southbridge with support up to six SATA ports and enhanced Phenom processors overclocking via ACC functionality, and will later support Socket AM3 with DDR3 SDRAM support in the first quarter of 2009.
* Enthusiast discrete multi-graphics segment



So who knows but AMD The Dragon could be a new revamped AM3 790FX dual CPU board, and would be out maybe around the time of skull trail.

8x8 would be very very sweet, and very very powerful.

[KBD]

damulta, do you think 4x2 cards will be bottlenecked by the Phenom, even if its 2 Phenoms?

[btarunr]

Unfortunately, L1A64WS is shelved, or at least awaiting Phenom FX launch. Phenom (II) FX is just binned Agena/Deneb parts in a s1204 package with DSDC support and unlocked multipliers.

[DaMulta]

damulta, do you think 4x2 cards will be bottlenecked by the Phenom, even if its 2 Phenoms?

I don't know, and it depends on how the buss system would work with 8 GPUs and 8 Cores. Maybe AMD has a driver that talks to each core separately....That would be cool.....I'm just throwing ideas out.


CPU are bottlenecks to ram themselves.

When they invest 40% into making it faster, they only get 20% back because there has been this game between CPU Speed and Memory speed growing for years.



AMD did it before, they just came out and BAM. I think they could do it again, and I have kept faith in them doing so. I really think they have been drilling out there idea, and their idea is the right path. It's just taking some time to get there.



IDK I have always expected AMD to just slam out a Dual CPU board. That's how the 3870 was given to us, just slam here it is.

They wanted to hide all the facts from Nvidia, and AMD I'm sure is hiding all their little facts as hard as they can from Intel.

[KBD]

They wanted to hide all the facts from Nvidia, and AMD I'm sure is hiding all their little facts as hard as they can from Intel.


I have faith in AMD also, they have always been about innovation, their financial situation is most liklely the cause of the lack of progress at the moment and i also think that they may be working on something big but keeping hush hush about it. And just releasing roadmaps that dont tell the whole story.

[DaMulta]

The 790 can be sooo much more than it is.....

[KBD]

The 790 can be sooo much more than it is.....

meaning what?

I'm actually surprised that 800-series chipsets are not out for to the Dragon platform

[DaMulta]

meaning what?

I'm actually surprised that 800-series chipsets are not out for to the Dragon platform

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_700_chipset_series

[KBD]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_700_chipset_series

i see, i beleive you are referring to its ability to support 2 physical CPU sockets, if thats the case why arent they out, only nvidia chipset has dual socket for AMD.

on a side note, in that article it sez that the chipset is capable of running at 420mhz HT frequency with an FX 62. I'm very surpirised to hear that, FX-62 are very poor overclockers, i'm actually about to sell mine and moving to intel for that very reason.

[DaMulta]

Maybe they backed off the idea when they made slow chips. Wait for a day when it matters to release it.

Would be a cool release day.

New 790FX
Dual CPU sockets
DDR3
A cpu that will run 4ghz on air.
Letting you use up to 8 cores x 8 GPU CFx
Shrink the 790FX down to 40 from 65.
http://www.eetimes.com/rss/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212100139&cid=RSSfeed_eetimes_newsRSS

[tigger]

You can certainly see were were the benefit of changing from 38xx to 48xx gpus shows.

[KBD]

Maybe they backed off the idea when they made slow chips. Wait for a day when it matters to release it.

Would be a cool release day.

New 790FX
Dual CPU sockets
DDR3
A cpu that will run 4ghz on air.
Letting you use up to 8 cores x 8 GPU CFx
Shrink the 790FX down to 40 from 65.
http://www.eetimes.com/rss/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212100139&cid=RSSfeed_eetimes_newsRSS


yea, most definately, may be they will when AM3 comes out next year. Though i'm sceptical that it will be capable of 4Ghz on air, right now its only possible on LN2.

[DaMulta]

Its what people have been screaming for a year lol
4Ghz

[TheMailMan78]

First Spider now Dragon?

http://www.majhost.com/gallery/BertL/Stuff/Lolz/quantities_of_win.jpg

[HTC]

First Spider now Dragon?

http://www.majhost.com/gallery/BertL/Stuff/Lolz/quantities_of_win.jpg

Lol :roll:

[KBD]

Its what people have been screaming for a year lol
4Ghz

i really hope u r right. but i remain sceptical until i see some reviews & benchies

[DaMulta]

The Dragon
http://img.techpowerup.org/081118/amddragon.jpg

[Exavier]

BUT wait you can't run four 4870X2s..they only have one CF 'finger' each...or am I missing something??

[DonInKansas]

3dmark(which isn't a game lol)

You obviously don't know fit or the rest of the bench-crazies very well.:roll:

[Polarman]

I'm still waiting for real benchies, not nice little graphs.

[DaMulta]

BUT wait you can't run four 4870X2s..they only have one CF 'finger' each...or am I missing something??

You can run CF on the buss SMOOTH on the AMD chipset.

Remember when I ran x1950XTX and X1950XTX together and only lost about 100 points in 3dmark without having a master card:)

Now soft crossfire sucks on all other chipsets......BUT the AMD ones.


This is from the 06 thread
42 DaMulta Connect3D / MSI X1950XTX XFire 675/999 10380 A64 FX-62 @ 3012Mhz - 200.8FSB

Now my CF 2900 score is only a couple thousand points higher using AMD chips.....

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=38667&highlight=x1950XTX

Haven't seen this thread in ages....

[DaMulta]

increments up to 280%

is just madness

[Hayder_Master]

im wait for that , so im wait too for tests