Official AMD Radeon 6000 Series Discussion Thread

[TAViX]

Relax guys. Word on the street (Akihabara) is that the new cards will be released not in October, but in December ready for X-Mass. And that's from some very trustful suppliers there.
End besides, 6xxx won't be e revolutionary card, just an evolution of the current 5xxx series. Read the news.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Relax guys. Word on the street (Akihabara) is that the new cards will be released not in October, but in December ready for X-Mass. And that's from some very trustful suppliers there.
End besides, 6xxx won't be e revolutionary card, just an evolution of the current 5xxx series. Read the news.

A bit like 4870 > 4890?

 

[surfingerman]

A bit like 4870 > 4890?

well based on what i heard on the conference call it was suggested (hinted) that the 6000 series would beat out the latest nvidia offerings in the single core, so my guess is ~15-20% more performance on a high side card,

now the real question is how will they achieve this? reduced leakage and more efficiency ?? (more OC potential)
or more 'powa' and a hotter card? (reduced OC potential)
my guess is a little bit of both

if AMD's marketing team has any brains they'll copy the heatsinc look that nVDIA released on their 480, just the look of it makes there perceived graphics speed 10% faster, it definitely helped nvidias sales a little bit whether its practical or not is of little importance

 

[Tatty_Two]

I think the 4890 came in about 10-15% over the 4870 and moved it beyond GTX260 territory, hence the advent of the GTX 275

 

[Hayder_Master]

ok wait a second, so new ATI 6000 release in October and right now there is nothing about specification or any details or even picture for card cooler design, that's mean they didn't made any GPU's for the markets yet, i guess we going to know everything about new HD6000 in October and it will be release in December 2010 or Q1 2011.

 

[largon]

I'd reckon it will be like RV770->RV790, and then some. But it definitely will not be another RV670->RV770. Cypress is already too big for such an expansion to happen. It would make most sense to make it pin-compatible with Cypress meaning they can toss the chips at the AIBs with a very short notice.

My guess on 6k:
- 32ROPs (tweaked)
- 100TMUs
- 2000SPs
- higher clock vs. Cypress, RV770->RV790'ish increase
- 256bit GDDR5 @ 6-7GHz
- higher perf/watt
- somewhat larger die than Cypress, sub 400mm²

 

[EastCoasthandle]

I would be surprised if this video card comes out by October.

 

[overclocking101]

i will be surprised if its anything more than a refresh

 

[mastrdrver]

Faster clock? I'd be extremely surprised seeing as no one has done that rumor.

My guess:
~2000 SP (850Mhz)
~100 TMUs
32 Rops
256 bit bus
5Ghz Gddr5 (the faster stuff needs more voltage and speed is really limited by the controller)
3-4 triangles/clock (since I believe that the DX11 tessellator parts will be added to groups of SMIDs)

Obviously this is way over simplified but I'd be amazed if faster core and memory clocks showed up. 400mm2 is usually what gets thrown around so upping clocks is going to hurt your yields on a process that has had a shaky past. No reason to push it and make the chips cost more than they need to.

The shader count alone may end up being the reason for the 20% performance increase. Start pushing tessellation and S.I. will start to really separate itself from Evergreen.

 

[erocker]

i will be surprised if its anything more than a refresh

That's what gets me. Months ago, Dirk Meyer said that the 5 series was getting a refresh. This never came to be. If it was going to be just a refresh they would of kept it the 5 series (5890 and what have you). Apparently what they are working on is too much to be considered a refresh so here comes the 6 series. Now the 4890 was 10-15% better performing than the 4870, so I'm thinking the 6 series will be more than 20% better than the 5 series (5870 ~ 6870). Who knows how much better really, but at the low end I'm guessing better than 20%.

 

[Steevo]

A quick shuffle of items on the die and some more time to try new dies on the same process they are already very good with could yield another 9XXX series home run for them. Really I think the core is limited by the cluster configuration, keeping that many units busy is very hard, and keeping that many units working at full power will require more volts and heat. So a shuffle and some tweaks is probably the way they are going. I imagine they also have issues with the design keeping stable power to all parts of the core with its current design, thus the reason for two connects per layer, and trying to maintain a smaller die size.

 

[a_ump]

i read that the 2 connectors per layer was due to the 40nm issues, really bad leakage so doubling the connectors per layer helps immensely with stability. Apparently that also had to do with ATI have more success with 40nm as they learned that from the HD 4770, whereas nvidia didn't know bout it since they hadn't tested it first like ATI did and learn the flaws of 40nm before going big with it.

 

[p_o_s_pc]

my idea to hold off till my b-day in November seems to have been a good idea

 

[Achilles1600]

Any annoucment's on th HD 6000 series

awwww im waiting for the HD 6000 series cant wait doe's any one have info on theas card's.?

 

[vMG]

Wow, i was planning to buy a Sapphire 5870 Vapor-X a few months after Crysis 2 comes out.
I guess I'll be getting a Sapphire 6870.

Do you guys think it'll be equivalent to (2) 5870's? If so, that would be amazing.
I'm sure it'll be priced between $400 - $450, similar to what the price is now for a 5870.

That's like getting a 5970 for like a couple hundred bucks cheaper!


EDIT:

Crap, nevermind. Someone stated in a previous page that the 7000 series will release late 2011.
Might as well wait for a 7870, or buy a 6970 after they release the 7000 series, so that the 6000 series cards are mad cheap!
I'm sure my 1GB 4870 can last me until then.

 

[a_ump]

nah, def dont' think it'll be = to 2x HD 5870's. more like HD 5830+HD 5850 or something. so my guess is rougly 30-50% better than HD 5870. My biggest hope is they've figured out a way hardware wise to utilize all their SPU's, as they're not very efficient n keeping them them all evenly loaded/balanced right now. If they can do that then i think we'll most def have a good successor on our hands.

 

[TheMailMan78]

It seems like I just got a 5850. Now the 6 series is coming out. Man I need to update my mobo.

 

[finndrummer]

catalyst 10.8 officially reveals HD6000 names :Barts, Cayman, Blackomb, Antilles and Whistler.
http://www.guru3d.com/news/catalyst-108-drivers-reveal-6000-series-codenames/
the fact that each code name is preceded by NI could indicate Northern Islands and non-Southern Islands, this is intriguing, ATI did it in advance?

 

[ERazer]

catalyst 10.8 officially reveals HD6000 names :Barts, Cayman, Blackomb, Antilles and Whistler.
http://www.guru3d.com/news/catalyst-108-drivers-reveal-6000-series-codenames/
the fact that each code name is preceded by NI could indicate Northern Islands and non-Southern Islands, this is intriguing, ATI did it in advance?

Thats interesting, prolly

 

[Super XP]

Wow, i was planning to buy a Sapphire 5870 Vapor-X a few months after Crysis 2 comes out.
I guess I'll be getting a Sapphire 6870.

Do you guys think it'll be equivalent to (2) 5870's? If so, that would be amazing.
I'm sure it'll be priced between $400 - $450, similar to what the price is now for a 5870.

That's like getting a 5970 for like a couple hundred bucks cheaper!


EDIT:

Crap, nevermind. Someone stated in a previous page that the 7000 series will release late 2011.
Might as well wait for a 7870, or buy a 6970 after they release the 7000 series, so that the 6000 series cards are mad cheap!
I'm sure my 1GB 4870 can last me until then.

Yes, Yes & Yes, I think so because it has Next Gen Northern Island GPU hardware inside along with current revamped Evergreen hardware. This new HD 6800 series is not going to be a HD 4890 vs. HD 4870 situation. It should perform just as well as a Nexg gen card would. Though it may run hotter than Evergreen IMO.
I mean maybe equal, slightly less or more. But no way is a Crossfired 2 x HD 5870 going to slaughter a HD 6870 IMO.

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

I hope we see some real pics/spec leaked out. I figured we already would have at least seen the card by now. I killed my GTX280 in my HTPC and don't want to get a new card for it. It will get my 5870 and my gaming rig will get whatever the 6k series has to offer. So AMD please keep the launch date in October!!!

I expect these cards to be faster than the 5K series, but not as big of a improvement from 4K to 5K series since they are keeping a lot of the same 5K architecture. Think it will be similar to the 3K to 4K step.

 

[phanbuey]

I hope we see some real pics/spec leaked out. I figured we already would have at least seen the card by now. I killed my GTX280 in my HTPC and don't want to get a new card for it. It will get my 5870 and my gaming rig will get whatever the 6k series has to offer. So AMD please keep the launch date in October!!!

I expect these cards to be faster than the 5K series, but not as big of a improvement from 4K to 5K series since they are keeping a lot of the same 5K architecture. Think it will be similar to the 3K to 4K step.

3k to 4k was even bigger than 4k to 5k... 3870's in CFX were getting pummeled by OC'd 4850's nevermind a 4870 1gb

 

[ZenZimZaliben]

3k to 4k was even bigger than 4k to 5k... 3870's in CFX were getting pummeled by OC'd 4850's nevermind a 4870 1gb

Hmmm. Ok. Then err uh... what I meant.. was it will probably be a smaller jump in performance and not a huge one where the top single core 6K series scores about the same as the 5890. Either way I want one! If it is a huge jump then even better.

 

[copenhagen69]

someone call me when the 5970's are down to like $200

 

[motasim]

someone call me when the 5970's are down to like $200

... me too ...