RV790 and RV740 Samples Surface, Specifications Gain Clarity

[btarunr]

Some of the first batches, rather iterations, of RV790 and RV740 engineering samples have begun surfacing. Sources reveal bits and pieces of the new GPUs' specifications to Hardware-Infos. Being some of the first samples, these are merely iterations en route the development of the final product, though trend has it that preliminary information about AMD GPUs have a tendency of turning out true. We will exempt the RV770's final stream processor count from these.

The RV740, a mainstream GPU from AMD, is on course of becoming the first GPU in production, to be built on the 40nm manufacturing node. It carries 640 stream processors and a core clock speed of 700 MHz. It features a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory bus, churning out bandwidth that rivals equally clocked GDDR3 with double the bus width. The memory bus will be clocked at speeds between 800 and 900 MHz (3.2 GT/s and 3.6 GT/s). Products will carry 512 to 1024 MB of memory. The GPU houses 32 texture memory units (TMUs) and 8 raster operations pipelines (ROPs).

As for the RV790, surprise: it shares the same clock speeds as the RV770XT: 750 MHz (core) and 900 MHz (memory). The samples were equipped with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory with chips made by Qimonda. The memory bus width remains unchanged at 256-bit. With so much similarity with the RV770, the shader domain is all that remains to serve as the differentiation factor, apart from the newer manufacturing process that hypothetically facilitates larger overclocking headroom. There is no word on the remaining specifications.

Source: Hardware-Infos

[HolyCow02]

sweet! This should be pretty good, beating nVidia to 55nm, and just skipping to 40nm!

Hope this drops RV770 prices! I want a chepater 4870!

Thanks bta!

[PCpraiser100]

Its about thing the RV790 won't be much of a micro-heater lol. i wanna see some overclocking tests.

[erocker]

We can rebuild RV770. Bigger, better, faster, stronger. I'd like to see a chip double the size of the RV770 with a big fat integrated heatsink on it.

[magibeg]

I'm very surprised they wouldn't try to clock their chips higher.... like closer to the 800mhz range even. I hope there's a good number more shaders or something to just put it in the same ballpark as the gtx285.

[oli_ramsay]

Originally Posted by magibeg

I'm very surprised they wouldn't try to clock their chips higher.....

Me too, surely 850 or more is possible with 40nm.

Originally Posted by magibeg

I'm very surprised they wouldn't try to clock their chips higher.... like closer to the 800mhz range even. I hope there's a good number more shaders or something to just put it in the same ballpark as the gtx285.

I think they are trying to sound greener and keep power down. Since any enthusiast can overclock by themselves.

[EastCoasthandle]

It will be interesting to see what the RV790 brings to the table. But IMO I think the card to look at will be the RV740.

[iamverysmart]

Clock speeds don't sound so important. Remember the 4800's actually have lower clock speeds then the 3800's.

[WarEagleAU]

Very awesome. Now if we can get them to clock their shaders like nvidia does, ATI wont have a problem competing with the GDDR3 part from Nvidia (which still does remarkably well).

[newtekie1]

Very nice, the RV740 should perform about where the HD4830 does, but should be cheaper, I like that.

Hopefully, RV790 will put the GTX285 in its place.

[1Kurgan1]

Originally Posted by iamverysmart

Clock speeds don't sound so important. Remember the 4800's actually have lower clock speeds then the 3800's.

Clock speeds matter when they are just die shrinking. The 4800's are a completely different chip than the 3800's where as the RV740 and RV790 are pretty much just die shrinks.

[newtekie1]

Originally Posted by 1Kurgan1

Clock speeds matter when they are just die shrinking. The 4800's are a completely different chip than the 3800's where as the RV740 and RV790 are pretty much just die shrinks.

RV790 should have more shaders also, I've heard something like 960.

[1Kurgan1]

Yeah, seeing as nothing else has changed about it, but for the most parts it's basically just a die shrunk RV770.

[alwayssts]

Most likely Rv740 will employ GDDR5 memory @ 900mhz. Why you ask? Simple - It will have 90% of the performance of 4850. Obviously artificially limited to not impose on it...Those Rv770's that don't make the cut have to go somewhere...especially since 4830 just became redundant.

Rv740:

640(x 2) x 700 = 896 Gflops (~.9 TF)
(128x3600)/8 = 57.6 Gbp/s

4850:

800(x 2) x 625 = 1TF (1000 Gflops)
(256x2000)/8 = 64 Gbps

I'll even make another prediction - at stock the 740 will outperform the 8800gt/9800gt but not the 9800gtx, it will reside somewhere in the middle. When overclocking is all said and done, the GT and 740 will perform similarly. The kicker - 740 will use 1/2 to 1/3 the power - Which makes sense since the die size will be ~1/2 of g92/b. That being said, 9800gt's can already be had for the $99 price tag 740 will likely demand.

As for 790 - I agree it's 960sp/48tmu or 20% faster than 4870. If it's 40nm, It's more-than-likely that 205mm2 chip that's been talked about by our chinese/thai friends. If you do the math on the shrinkage from 55nm to 40nm and add ~20% (obviously the memory controller and such is redundant, so slightly less) 205mm2 would make a lot of sense. Considering rv870 seems so far off and 205mm2 seems awful small for a "new" high-end part to replace the 256mm2 RV770, this could very well be.

If it's 55nm, I bet it's stockpiled rv770's with the redundancy activated (12 active instead of 10)...Anand's RV770 article in which he discussed the part with the engineers mentioned RV770 had redundancy built in, most likely so they could have both parts using the chip (4850/4870) to have 'all' arrays enabled.

Either way, be it faster or with less power, or both, I don't see it catching the 280, although it could be comfortably faster than the 260 (216), residing in a similar niche to rv740 will between 9800gt and 9800gtx. The $300 price tag might make for a hard decision against the rapidly dropping in price GTX280 though...granted, it again would be less than half the die size.

[eidairaman1]

yup 4830 has 640 SPs, so i guess R740 will replace the 4830?

[phanbuey]

Originally Posted by erocker

We can rebuild RV770. Bigger, better, faster, stronger. I'd like to see a chip double the size of the RV770 with a big fat integrated heatsink on it.

haha... i like where youre going with that.

[Exavier]

I like the sound of less heat

[mdm-adph]

Originally Posted by erocker

We can rebuild RV770. Bigger, better, faster, stronger. I'd like to see a chip double the size of the RV770 with a big fat integrated heatsink on it.

Almost sounds like the G200, without the heatsink.

[rozienzia]

yup..it could be a nice couple in crossfire i think,

cheers everyone, its my first post,
hope we can share any useful thing..

[fullinfusion]

AMD is going to SToMp the Yard with this!!!!! Bye ByE Nivdia
Sorry

[PCpraiser100]

Originally Posted by magibeg

I'm very surprised they wouldn't try to clock their chips higher.... like closer to the 800mhz range even.

You know why? its because they couldn't..

[soldier242]

wow i like the sound of 128bit wide bus with GDDR5, this could be a nice low/mid-cost card with nice performance

[Hayder_Master]

can do crossfire between RV770 with RV790

[rozienzia]

Originally Posted by hayder.master

can do crossfire between RV770 with RV790

so u what about the performance by your calculation?..