Official AMD Radeon 6000 Series Discussion Thread

[Semi-Lobster]

Ol' Fudo is saying that the rumour ( http://www.donanimhaber.com/ekran-k...6bit-bellek-veri-yolu-destegi-ile-gelecek.htm the same site that broke the ATI name drop) is that 6700 series is going to use a 256-bit bus rather than a 128-bit one

http://www.fudzilla.com/graphics/gr...deon-hd-6700-to-have-256-bit-memory-interface

Radeon HD 6700 Series rumored to use 256-bit memory bus
Written by Slobodan Simic

According to a post over at Donanimhaber.com, AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 6700 Series graphics cards might use a 256-bit memory interface.

The 256-bit memory interface comes as a surprise considering that the current Radeon HD 5700 Series features a 128-bit memory interface, but it could make sense as all reports indicate that the upcoming HD 6000 series graphics cards are all about evolution.

This also could be the way to keep the available Radeon HD 5700 Series alive as AMD can drop its price and keep selling it until they clear out the stock as thanks to the "evolution" and the wider memory interface, Radeon HD 6700 Series should end up significantly faster.

Judging by some early benchmarks, Radeon HD 6000 cards will offer a significant performance boost over the current generation, but bear in mind that they still stick to the same 40nm production process. Using a wider memory bus could be one of the ways of boosting performance while using the same production process, but it would also increase production costs.

While this will probably increase performance, this could also increase price, which is sort of strange since the X600 series has always been the 'mainstream' cards while the X700/X800 cards have always been the performance ones and therefore have been priced accordingly so

 

[erocker]

i really really despise this all in one thread discussion for all things ati 6000, imagine if we had just ONE THREAD for ALL THINGS I7 .... its plainly a little over the top, ridiculous and you mods are being a huge pain in the keister, meh Hard forum is better anyway they dont have overzelous mods, and they're more worried about making cool tech than worrying about how many threads are open on ati 6000 zomg,

Once these cards are released, there will be no problems with multiple threads. Since it's all just speculation right now, there is absolutely no need to have more than one thread. Now I ask to to please keep on topic and not troll our forum with off topic garbage.

Thanks. Everyone please keep on topic.

 

[Zen_]

While this will probably increase performance, this could also increase price, which is sort of strange since the X600 series has always been the 'mainstream' cards while the X700/X800 cards have always been the performance ones and therefore have been priced accordingly so

Nvidia has neglected the $100-160 segment for so long that it's impossible to imagine how AMD could let them back in. The answer to the 4770 was a GTS 250 price cut, the answer to the 5770 was still the GTS 250 and a long delayed GTS 450 that is already reported to be a marginal performer. I wouldn't expect AMD to jeopardize dominance in segment (which constitutes a huge amount of total sales) with something that's overpriced. Perhaps they are aiming for a little more separation between the 6750 and 6770, e.g. the former with a 128-bit bus @ $110 and the latter with a 256-bit bus @ $160. That would make sense and provide more options depending on your budget.

 

[Semi-Lobster]

Nvidia has neglected the $100-160 segment for so long that it's impossible to imagine how AMD could let them back in. The answer to the 4770 was a GTS 250 price cut, the answer to the 5770 was still the GTS 250 and a long delayed GTS 450 that is already reported to be a marginal performer. I wouldn't expect AMD to jeopardize dominance in segment (which constitutes a huge amount of total sales) with something that's overpriced. Perhaps they are aiming for a little more separation between the 6750 and 6770, e.g. the former with a 128-bit bus @ $110 and the latter with a 256-bit bus @ $160. That would make sense and provide more options depending on your budget.

I doubt that AMD would have a different bus size between video cards in the same 'category', which is something they've never really done before, especially given that both cards will be sharing tweaked versions of the same GPU. As for price you're probably right, the X600 series of AMD cards keeps getting more and more expensive, the 4670 when it first came out was around $90 because thats what Nvidia priced its 9600 GSO at. Then the 5670 came out and it was about $120 for the 1GB version because that was a bit more than what the 9800 GT was going for. I assume AMD will try to price the 5670 at around the price/a little higher than the old GTS 250/9800 GTX+ is going for nowadays.

 

[overclocking101]

maybe th 68XX will have a bigger then 256 bus. its definately possible and would boost performance a tad.

 

[Super XP]

I don't see the ATI HD 6800 series coming out with anything bigger than the 256-Bit bus, but I could be wrong.

From what I've learned AMD is releasing all the ATI HD 6000 series this year to replace Evergreen B4 Christmas. Not sure about the Dual GPU card though. Though seeing the latest rumours, the HD 6870 equals and/or blows away the HD 5970

 

[_33]

Be ready for rebranding and confusion, the AMD way:

http://www.dvhardware.net/article45138.html

 

[DanishDevil]

Is it just me, or does that article contradict itself?

 

[_33]

And here we have some technical information, more specifically about the shaders for the HD6000 series from SA:
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/09/06/what-amds-northern-islands/

 

[_33]

Is it just me, or does that article contradict itself?

Yes I just noticed about the 6770.

 

[mastrdrver]

And here we have some technical information, more specifically about the shaders for the HD6000 series from SA:
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/09/06/what-amds-northern-islands/

Like I stated in the other threads, N.I. would come before S.I. I never said anything about the code names changing.

 

[wolf]

I tend to find the early performance slides to be predictably correct, why change their entire chip to a 512 bit bus at this point, when they can just use faster GDDR5 rated for 7gb/s.

200+ gb/s of bandwidth is already plenty for a high end card, which the early slides predicted.

 

[erocker]

I did a little photoshopping with the "leaked" pic. From what I can tell, the fan might be faked and was shopped on the card.. The rest seems legit.

 

[20mmrain]

With performance looking good in the mid enthusiast level of these graphic card line up for the new 6000 series.
If the 6830/6770 can out do a couple of GTX 460's and do better then them in tessellation. Then I am going total middle of the line this time.
There is no reason for spending over $1000 dollars for a Xfire setup when you can pay $400 to $500 and play every game just as good with lower cards.

So if the 6770 is better then the GTX 460's.... 6770 for me this time baby. 6770 FTW!

 

[mastrdrver]

From what I've read is suppose to do something like this:

6770 --> 5850
6850 --> 5870
5870 better than GTX 480

I wouldn't count on a single 6770 beating GTX 460 SLI. Even the GTX 480 can barely do that at stock clocks fwiw.

 

[finndrummer]

I did a little photoshopping with the "leaked" pic. From what I can tell, the fan might be faked and was shopped on the card.. The rest seems legit.

Maybe. These cards are not supposed to have the AMD logo ?

 

[copenhagen69]

what is the 128bit memory or 256 memory bus ... what does it do on the GPUs ...

 

[20mmrain]

From what I've read is suppose to do something like this:

6770 --> 5850
6850 --> 5870
5870 better than GTX 480

I wouldn't count on a single 6770 beating GTX 460 SLI. Even the GTX 480 can barely do that at stock clocks fwiw.

Yeah sorry I kind of read that wrong. Yeah that is kind of what I meant. Since the 6770 would be more powerful one on one compared to the GTX 460. That means a 6770 Xfire would be more powerful then a GTX 460 sli.

I kind of said that a little weird. (Had my kid talking to me while writing that message )

My biggest concern is the DX11 performance. Right now with a couple of GTX 460's in SLI I get around 61FPS @ 1920x1080 in Heaven Benchmark.

if two 6770's can beat that in Xfire I am sold! But if not then I will go higher probably like a 6830 in Xfire or wait for the GTX 500/600 series.

Since DX11 and More specifically Tessellation is the wave of the future. It would be point less to just buy the 6700 series on the terms of being faster then the GTX 460's. They would need better DX11 performance too.

**** EDIT*****

So actually after reading some more. ATi might be doing some re-branding. So this is the rumors going around or something like this....
6970 (Duel Chip) Now the 6990
6870 (High End Single Chip) 6970
6850 (Middle High End Chip) 6950
6770 (High end Performance Chip) 6870
So on and so on?

Or is it that they will be releasing a couple new cards like.
6990 (New Duel Chip SI)
6970 (New Single Chip SI)
6950 ( New Middle enthusiast chip SI)

6770 (Re branded 5850 or 5870 Evergreen family)
6750 (Re branded 5850 or 5830 Evergreen family)

If they are doing the second above and not increasing the DX11 performance for all of their cards. I will be waiting for Nvidia's refresh. Because I was not a fan when Nvidia did re-branding nor do I condone ATI doing it either.

So which is it rumored to be ?????

 

[mastrdrver]

Yeah sorry I kind of read that wrong. Yeah that is kind of what I meant. Since the 6770 would be more powerful one on one compared to the GTX 460. That means a 6770 Xfire would be more powerful then a GTX 460 sli.

I kind of said that a little weird. (Had my kid talking to me while writing that message )

Yea I could see how that could cause problems.

As for the second part this is no rebrand. If you read the S/A link posted earlier Charlie (no matter what you think of his opinions his sources about ATI rumors is usually spot on) said the SP count is going to grow slightly even though things are getting rearranged. ATI is going to change their shaders similar to how nVidia changed their shader groups from the gtx 2xx to the gtx 4xx.

It won't be exactly the same. Reason they are changing is because of DX11 not because of nVidia. nVidia was just there first to the inevitable change that came with DX11. Anyone who has been around long enough has seen this happen before. Some new DX version comes along and as a result of compliance, the way things are arranged in the gpu have to change and everyone ends up with a similar design.

 

[20mmrain]

Yea I could see how that could cause problems.

As for the second part this is no rebrand. If you read the S/A link posted earlier Charlie (no matter what you think of his opinions his sources about ATI rumors is usually spot on) said the SP count is going to grow slightly even though things are getting rearranged. ATI is going to change their shaders similar to how nVidia changed their shader groups from the gtx 2xx to the gtx 4xx.

It won't be exactly the same. Reason they are changing is because of DX11 not because of nVidia. nVidia was just there first to the inevitable change that came with DX11. Anyone who has been around long enough has seen this happen before. Some new DX version comes along and as a result of compliance, the way things are arranged in the gpu have to change and everyone ends up with a similar design.

Feww that is good to hear. I was just starting to worry that ATI/AMD was starting to get a big head kind of like Nvidia did when they took such a large lead in performance and sales. If that what was happening... I was going to say man. I hate to see what will happen with the re-branding pricing when they actually do get a lead.

Any Who my main concern was with the te re-branding.

But to hear how ATI is rearranging the shaders like Nivida did is encouraging. Now do you think ATI will keep the Hardware Tessellation as well to work in conjunction with the new arrangement of the shaders?
Just a thought?

Awesome man... well if everything is true about these cards. They will be beasts. All anyone will need is a couple of Mid level cards to play any game out there.

 

[Super XP]

Be ready for rebranding and confusion, the AMD way:

http://www.dvhardware.net/article45138.html

More like the NVIDIA way. NVIDIA does this way too much vs. AMD. Currently AMD has no reason to re-brand at this point in time. They are in the lead.

 

[Super XP]

what is the 128bit memory or 256 memory bus ... what does it do on the GPUs ...

The larger the bit the more memory bandwidth can be processed. It's how wide the memory bus is.
Going from 128-Bit to 256-Bit is massive and should gain you much better performance but the larger it is the more die space it needs, this is why 512-bit is a no go on 40nm IMO, but I can see a nice large 512-Bit memory interface with 28nm ATI's Northern Islands GPU coming out in mid 2011.

It has something to do with the games graphics being stored inside the frame buffer or something,

 

[copenhagen69]

The larger the bit the more memory bandwidth can be processed. It's how wide the memory bus is.
Going from 128-Bit to 256-Bit is massive and should gain you much better performance but the larger it is the more die space it needs, this is why 512-bit is a no go on 40nm IMO, but I can see a nice large 512-Bit memory interface with 28nm ATI's Northern Islands GPU coming out in mid 2011.

It has something to do with the games graphics being stored inside the frame buffer or something,

ah ok that makes sense

 

[mastrdrver]

But to hear how ATI is rearranging the shaders like Nivida did is encouraging. Now do you think ATI will keep the Hardware Tessellation as well to work in conjunction with the new arrangement of the shaders?
Just a thought?

Well I first read this on Techreport.com when they first looked at Fermi at the beginning of the year. Its just a natural thing for the tessellation part to be clustered together with the shaders. As TR mentioned, up until Fermi, triangles/clock has grown to a full 1/clock. If you were around or can remember the Voodoo days, everything else has grown by leaps and bounds except triangles/clock. With DX11 and tessellation it requires that a gpu be able to do more than 1 other wise it will get left behind as tessellation does nothing but has the potential to exponentially increase the triangles on a screen. The more you can do per clock, the higher and higher tessellation detail you can have as seen in the Heaven 2.1 bench.

Now the question is how many shaders, how much of the DX11 pipeline will be grouped together, and in what order these new ATI clusters we be arranged in is yet to be seen.

 

[meran]

better be worth the waiting cuz my 8800 is starting to show its age