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ATI Radeon 5870 and 5870X2 specs revealed?

explicit4u

explicit4u

explicit4u

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German site ATI-Forum probably scored a coup of 2009 - according to their sources, ATI's RV870-based cards are already out at selected partners.
We cannot say was this leak was a reaction on our joint-exclusive story about nVidia's GT300 architecture, but one thing is for sure - ATI wants to bring out their Cypress board as soon as possible - planned for July 2009.

The alleged specifications of RV870 reveal that this chip is not exactly a new architecture, but rather a DirectX 11-specification tweak of the RV770 GPU architecture. Just like nVidia's GT300 architecture, the actual RV870 chip is manufactured in TSMC's 40nm half-node process, packing more transistors than GT200 chips. Regardless of what ATI says about nVidia and large dies, the fact of the matter is that ATI is making a large die as well - but the company will continue to use the dual-GPU approach to reach high-end performance.

The RV870 chip should feature 1200 cores, divided into 12 SIMD groups with 100 cores each [20 "5D" units], while RV770 was based on 10 SIMD group with 80 cores total [16 "5D" groups consisting out of one "fat" and four simpler ones]. Thus, it is logical to conclude that when it comes to execution cores, not much happened architecturally - ATI's engineers increased the number of registers and other demanding architectural tasks in order to comply with Shader Model 5.0 and DirectX 11 Compute Shaders. The core is surrounded with 48 texture memory units, meaning ATI is continuing to increase the ROP:Core:TMU. For the first time, ATI is shipping a part with 32 ROP [Rasterizing OPeration] units, meaning the chip is able to output 32 pixels in a single clock.

When it comes to products, ATI plans to launch four parts: Radeon HD 5850 and 5850X2 in more affordable pricing bracket and HD5870 and HD5870X2 for the high-end parts. While there were no clocks for the Radeon HD 5850/5850X2 parts, alleged clocks for HD5870 and HD5870X2 reveal that for the first time, an X2 part is clocked higher than a single-GPU part. Was this a requirement of SidePort memory interface, we are not aware atm. German site Hardware-Infos placed all of the data in a very convenient table, which we are running here with permission. Their story also contains more data about the upcoming ATI RV870 architecture.

ATI_5870Specs_550.jpg


ATI 4870 vs 5870 table...courtesy of Hardware-Infos

These units should result in 2.16 TFLOPS for the HD5870 and 4.56 TFLOPS for the dual-GPU part. Yes, you've read correctly - we are going from 1TFLOPS chip to 4.6TFLOPS within 13 months. Is it now clear that CPUs are in a standstill when it comes to performance improvements? The biggest question though is - while there is no doubt that ATI pulled another miracle out of their hat with a brilliant on-time execution, releasing a 40nm part that will be relatively cheap to manufacture. BUT - can it beat nVidia's GT300 and by how much?

Some journalists allegedly have miracle 8-balls and claim that the ATI cards will blow nVidia out of the water. We are not so certain... stay tuned.
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Source = BrightSideOfNews
 
Looks like a fair bump from the 4000 series. Should be interesting.

Final8y said:
What would you like to see changed ?

I would like shared mem.
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Well, shared memory would be nice as it would eliminate a lot of the demons with crossfire / SLI (allowing a split-frame or tiled approach rather than AFR), but shared memory is a bit of a double edged sword. By doubling-up the memory (as is done now) you also get effectively double the memory bandwidth; ie each GPU can recieve information at the same rate as it would in a single GPU setup. With a shared memory this would not be the case, and the effective bandwidth to each GPU would be halved in comparison to a single GPU setup.
 
Duff-Man said:
Looks like a fair bump from the 4000 series. Should be interesting.



Well, shared memory would be nice as it would eliminate a lot of the demons with crossfire / SLI (allowing a split-frame or tiled approach rather than AFR), but shared memory is a bit of a double edged sword. By doubling-up the memory (as is done now) you also get effectively double the memory bandwidth; ie each GPU can recieve information at the same rate as it would in a single GPU setup. With a shared memory this would not be the case, and the effective bandwidth to each GPU would be halved in comparison to a single GPU setup.
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I liked Tiled but was not fond of split/scissors mode.

Shared mem would save on cost & maybe the bandwidth would be still more than enough. Having the ability to turn the feature on or off would be nice.
 
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I've said it before and I'll say it again - I hope there are actually some games available to test these cards when they come out.
 
ATI should push Trueform ( if l remember the technology name correctly ). If done correctly it would breath new life in older and ever newer games that don't require so much hardware power.

If the specs are true then it seems like ATI will have a nice product on its hands assuming that Nvidia doens't release something really good that will overperform ATI's new 5800.

It would be also interesting to see how much power this card will consume in comparision with the current ATI cards.
 
theforce said:
ATI should push Trueform ( if l remember the technology name correctly ). If done correctly it would breath new life in older and ever newer games that don't require so much hardware power.

If the specs are true then it seems like ATI will have a nice product on its hands assuming that Nvidia doens't release something really good that will overperform ATI's new 5800.

It would be also interesting to see how much power this card will consume in comparision with the current ATI cards.
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Well it's 40nm and newer cards usually require less power, But hmm i don't think any games will use full power of the 5870x2 fully in 2009.
 
Well i already know i will be getting a 5870X2 when they are out courtesy of a generous brother who is treating me so i am happy to wait and as long as it is an improvement over my current X2 (also bought by brother) i will be very happy :).
 
The numbers don't seem overly impressive to me... texture and pixel fillrate catches up the current 280/285 cards ballpark, peak GFlops is pushed to a theoretical 2160 which is nice but rumours are that the new high end nVidia parts will be capable of around 3500, both numbers being pretty meaningless as far as gaming goes anyhow as ATI's is a theoretical peak and nVidias takes into account functionality beyond what can really be applied to gaming.
 
Looks good to me, hope those specs are accurate it would suck to see another 2900 --> 3800 and 8800 --> 9800 situation.
 
TBH been looking at the nvidia 3d, so my next card will more than likely be Nvida unless something super cheap and special comes from AMD. Very happy with 4870 price/performance but amd seem to charge same as nvida on new cards
 
markiejt said:
TBH been looking at the nvidia 3d, so my next card will more than likely be Nvida unless something super cheap and special comes from AMD. Very happy with 4870 price/performance but amd seem to charge same as nvida on new cards
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Amd seems to charge the same for new cards as nvidia is laughable. So on release 4870 was just over £200 and the gtx260 was more like £300. I think you mean amd has forced nv to lower the price on there cards. If the 4 series was not so good you would still be paying nv's high prices. The 4850 came in way under what at the time was the 9800gtx and was faster. All over the price ranges amd has forced nv's prices down not because nv wanted to but because they had to.
 
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