Official AMD Radeon 6000 Series Discussion Thread

[erocker]

wtf is wrong with ATi, arnt the 6800 serie's supposed to be double the power in spec's. tho's spec's arnt impressive at all if they dont turn out to be good, im going to stick with nvidia.

Yes, you should stick with Nvidia. Perhaps wait for the GTX 580! God knows why anyone would want to buy a video card when they are angry with the name of it. Besides that, 5770/5750 are being replaced with 6870/6850. The cards that are replacing 5870/5850 are going to be something like 6970/6950 which will be out next month. I'm not sure if this is difficult to understand or not, but AMD is "tweaking" their card naming.

 

[wolf]

God knows why anyone would want to buy a video card when they are angry with the name of it.

gold.

 

[Zen_]

... from a pure sales point of view; I think that changing the naming convention is a clever move by AMD, although it is pissing me off. Most of the targeted consumers and retailers are not members of forums such as this one, and don't have the slightest idea on technicalities.

The notion that there are huge numbers of consumers spending $100+ on a graphics card without know much about it is unfounded. If you're going to generalize most people at least look at a review before dropping a wad of cash and most reviews compare new cards to old ones. So while ATI and now AMD's naming schemes have always been confusing, people know what they're buying.

 

[CDdude55]

... from a pure sales point of view; I think that changing the naming convention is a clever move by AMD, although it is pissing me off. Most of the targeted consumers and retailers are not members of forums such as this one, and don't have the slightest idea on technicalities. They just know that ATI 5870 is an excellent GPU which somebody they know bought for $400, and now the 6870 is selling for $250, that must be a bargain! Although we know that this is not the case.

Honestly most people simply don't know, and at the rumored features and price level, I think that the new AMD GPUs will sell like hot cakes.

I agree actually, i think it's gonna cause a ton of confusion within the more mainstream groups. Can't for people to scream about how amazing they are for putting what they think their high-end GPU is out for only $250.:shadedshu

The notion that there are huge numbers of consumers spending $100+ on a graphics card without know much about it is unfounded. If you're going to generalize most people at least look at a review before dropping a wad of cash and most reviews compare new cards to old ones. So while ATI and now AMD's naming schemes have always been confusing, people know what they're buying.

People go off of assumptions, most people will assume the 6870 and 6850 are the high-end GPU's as that is the naming scheme they have been pushing out since the 3 series, it's come accustom to most and i don't think many average individuals will take much time out to read about it. They'll assume the 6870 is the best single GPU card you can get and the 6850 is the second best, while the 6900 is the dual GPU card.

 

[motasim]

The notion that there are huge numbers of consumers spending $100+ on a graphics card without know much about it is unfounded. If you're going to generalize most people at least look at a review before dropping a wad of cash and most reviews compare new cards to old ones. So while ATI and now AMD's naming schemes have always been confusing, people know what they're buying.

I used to work in a computer store as a part-time job during my undergraduate study for around 3 years, and I found out that most of the clients don't bother look at reviews, hell even my colleagues never bothered, they used to simply ask me on whatever info they needed. Most of the times they believe things they heard from their friends like GTX 480 gets too hot and noisy or whatever, and consult the sales person on what is the best thing for them within a certain budget. Take my word for it; A LOT of people are going to think that they are getting a bargain on the 6870 thinking that it is the next generation of the 5870. I guess that all is fair in love and war

... They'll assume the 6870 is the best single GPU card you can get and the 6850 is the second best, while the 6900 is the dual GPU card.

Exactly!

 

[largon]

6870 will confuse people? Seriously?

Is it any different from nVIDIA's GTX460?
"GTX" has always been nV's high-end part pre/suffix. Now it's used for performance-class parts too.

AMD was pretty much forced to brand Barts as 6800-series as nV slapped GTX on GF104.

 

[CDdude55]

6870 will confuse people? Seriously?

Is it any different from nVIDIA's GTX460?
"GTX" has always been nV's high-end part pre/suffix. Now it's used for performance-class parts too.

The transition for Nvidia was much more sound,they didn't switch to that new naming scheme until the 2xx series, so the make up of the cards numbering changed and was easier to refresh in most peoples minds. GTX 260, GTX 275, GTX 280, GTX 285, GTX 295 anything below that was either GTS or GT, right off the bat people could determine what was better then what as opposed to taking the same naming scheme and changing the actual cards performance.

 

[EastCoasthandle]

Its goes like this folks.....

5750/5770 = 6850/6870

5850/5870 = 6950/6970


I found this rumor on another site about the 69xx series.....



http://www.downloadatoz.com/driver/articles/amd-radeon-hd-6970-6950-graphics-cards-specs-leaked.html

In terms of cooling, the Radeon HD 6970 comes with a turbo-fan, TDP of 300w, as well as one 6-pin and one 8-pin PCI-E connector. However, for the Radeon HD 6950, it can not only be able to work with turbo-fan, but also some other fans, with TDP of 225w and two 6-pin PCI-E connectors.
What's more, in terms of Output interfaces, both of the AMD Radeon HD 6970/6950 features two 2¡ÁDVI+HDMI+2¡Ámini-DisplayPort.
By the way, if everything goes well, these AMD Radeon HD 6970/6950 will be launched by the end of November, obviously, aiming to GeForce GTX 480/470

The 6970 reads like a dual GPU solution:
-6pin, 8pin
-300 watt TDP

However the 6950 reads like a single gpu solution:
-dual 6pins
-225 watt TDP (which is 75 watts less than the 6970. That's a big difference for a card in the same tier)

for AMD Radeon HD COMPLETE 6800 Specifications SLIDE GO TOhttp://www.chiphell.com/thread-130729-1-1.html

NOTE:REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED!

Could you just post the pic? Use screen grab if you have trouble.

New rumor has it that the 6000 series may use a different type of AA called MLAA or Practical Morphological AA. Also, that this will be hardware driven. I have no idea if this needs to be implimented from the developer or if one can use it from CCC. But if this is true and one can use it from CCC over-riding AA in game it would be several times faster then normal AA and maybe a direct competitor to nv's CSAA option. It's still speculation, I have no proof this is real or not. But if you want an idea of how it looks I've added it to one of my older posts on the different types of AA thread a while back. The article relating to MLAA is here.

You can get between 4xAA-8xAA at a fraction of the time. And it's said that it could work with any game.

It looks like MLAA is confirmed to be a selectable option from CCC. This will now compete directly with nv's CSAA mode IMO. Benchmarks competing against the 2 will be very interesting in IQ and overall performance. Also, keep in mind that this AA option is also found in console games. Kill zone 3, for example, will be using it!

Edit:
Hmm, it says performance similar to edge-detect but applies to all edges. This may not be as fast as I originally thought.

 

[SNICK]

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a154/eastcoasthandle/csaa/18589868.jpg

it looks like mlaa is confirmed to be a selectable option from ccc. This will now compete directly with nv's csaa mode imo. Benchmarks competing against the 2 will be very interesting in iq and overall performance. Also, keep in mind that this aa option is also found in console games. kill zone 3, for example, will be using it!

by the way from where you got the slide?

 

[cadaveca]

by the way from where you got the slide?

I posted it earlier, and you can see the chiphell watermark, so I think the actual source is pretty plain.

 

[mastrdrver]

http://i11.photobucket.com/albums/a154/eastcoasthandle/CSAA/18589868.jpg

It looks like MLAA is confirmed to be a selectable option from CCC. This will now compete directly with nv's CSAA mode IMO. Benchmarks competing against the 2 will be very interesting in IQ and overall performance. Also, keep in mind that this AA option is also found in console games. Kill zone 3, for example, will be using it!

Idk maybe its just me but it looks like MLAA is nothing more than bluring similar to what we all enjoyed in GTA IV.

 

[EastCoasthandle]

by the way from where you got the slide?

Link for all of them

 

[Mr McC]

Idk maybe its just me but it looks like MLAA is nothing more than bluring similar to what we all enjoyed in GTA IV.

Could this be forced? If it could, maybe it entails less of a performance hit? Perhaps therein lies the novelty?

 

[SNICK]

 

[pantherx12]

Awesome so 6870 should = 5850 for the most part and perhaps even out do it, probably in dx11 games.

Sweet!


MLAA sounds good as well, will probably be my default AA method for new games : ]

 

[TheMailMan78]

The 6970 reads like a dual GPU solution:
-6pin, 8pin
-300 watt TDP

However the 6950 reads like a single gpu solution:
-dual 6pins
-225 watt TDP (which is 75 watts less than the 6970. That's a big difference for a card in the same tier)





Could you just post the pic? Use screen grab if you have trouble.

I know where you are coming from but I think the dual GPU will be the 6990.

 

[cadaveca]

I know where you are coming from but I think the dual GPU will be the 6990.

Yeah, would be odd for AMD to not use a core in 2 SKUs(Cayman will be in 6950/6970?). I had originally thought that becuase of this, dual gpu would be 6870x2. But 6990 works too, and seems ot be the right name for this gen's dual-gpu card.

 

[wahdangun]

so this HD 6870 can out perform HD 5850 with less SP and transistor, AMD really do wonder just like what they do, its like HD 4670 all over again

 

[afw]

Smaller DIE and 6-layer PCB .... still they sell it for $250 ... ... thats bad ... I hope the price will be lesser ... want to buy a 6870

 

[the54thvoid]

http://news.ati-forum.de/images/stories/Duesentrieb/2010/hd5850_hd6870.jpg

Interesting. 5850 bandwidth is not 153 - thats the 5870 bandwidth. 5850 bandwisth is 128.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desk...5850/Pages/ati-radeon-hd-5850-overview.aspx#2

Fake slide then? Or just a very poor presentation with the wrong info?

 

[Benetanegia]

http://news.ati-forum.de/images/stories/Duesentrieb/2010/hd5850_hd6870.jpg

So there's nothing new about the HD6000 series really.

1- 4D? It doesn't really look like it's 4D, 1120/14= 80, 80/16= 5, unless now they have made it 4x20=80, which would be strange, since it is not very efficient to work on quads (4x4 pixels), which is what they usually do...

2- What a dirty deceptive maneuver to say performance per mm^2 is higher now, it isn't. No die area efficiency has been improved at all, and they use the crippled chip in order to make it look like it has. :shadedshu

Using the HD5870, the real chip:

If 1600 SP + 80 TMU == 334 mm^2 then by rule of three 1120 SP + 56 TMU == 233 mm^2 < 255 mm^2.

I know it doesn't work that way and that same number of ROP/MC contribute to the excess, but die area efficiency has not improved. Period. Consumption has improved a bit though.

If they want to claim performance per dia area has improved, compare it to the HD5870 @ 900 Mhz, which does X10000++ on Vantage. If you do the math, yep, no increase. :shadedshu

3- No real better triangle output (still one tri/clock) suggest no real improvement in tesselation.

Renaming and now this. Anything to do with this? -> AMD hires ex-Nvidia CUDA VP Manju Hegde

It was not Nvidia per se, it was this guy!

 

[erocker]

Anything to do with this? -> AMD hires ex-Nvidia CUDA VP Manju Hegde

It was not Nvidia per se, it was this guy!

Thus... He's a witch!!!

...and what do we do with witches?

Burn them!!!

Okay, if this card (namely 6870) hasn't changed at all from 5870/5850 do you expect performance to be less than both then?

 

[cadaveca]

What a dirty deceptive maneuver to say performance per mm^2 is higher now, it isn't. No die area efficiency has been improved at all, and they use the crippled chip in order to make it look like it has. :shadedshu

I think that these chips will make better use of the same silicon design, due to the seperate dispatch/set-up engines. If they can get more shaders working at once via this method, then yes, I'd personally consider it a more efficient chip.

It all depends on how you define efficiency...IPC/watt, maybe, not in die space?

 

[Benetanegia]

I think that these chips will make better use of the same silicon design, due to the seperate dispatch/set-up engines. If they can get more shaders working at once via this method, then yes, I'd personally consider it a more efficient chip.

It all depends on how you define efficiency...IPC/watt, maybe, not in die space?

I'm not going to hold my breath if you don't mind. Performance on their own slides is no better than what you would expect from a 1120 SP Cypress @ 900 Mhz...

 

[cadaveca]

I agree with that, for sure...I've said the same a page back or so. I'm waiting for a real review...seem like there's potential for alot of what I'd call "5-series issues" to be addressed...everything that I thought was bad/wrong, seems to have changed..DP implementation, dispatch/setup engine, and hopefully, idle clock issues.

As a refresh, that's perfectly fine. I know that these cards aren't the top dog either, so I do expect alot more out of 69xx-series than these cards. And if all this is true, then 5-series cards will kinda retain thier value, of course, after a modest price drop.

Personally, think those slides are faked. Liek most good stories, they are grounded in reality, but that doesn't stop them from taking a crazy flight across the interwebs, picking up trash along the way...