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ATI Radeon HD 6000 Series ''Southern Islands'' Graphics Cards For Sale from November

Judging from 4000 series->5000 series, I guess agree that would probably be the case. I suspect speed wise it will be something like this:
6770=5830
6830=5850
6850=5870
6870=GTX480

I really can't see the speed bump being that low. If they were that low, arguably, they wouldn't change them to the 6 series, as your suspected performance would put a 6870 at around, or below what you'd expect a 5890 to be like if it ever came out.
 
I hope they work on tessellation performance and minimum frame rates.

lol, you know the 58xx series spanks the 460gtx in tesselation performance, and that Nvidia aren't going to be wasting as much die space in the future on such an overly complex and wasteful rendering core like the GF100 in the future. Not to mention the number of games to use tesselation effectively is still, no where. Tesselation performance for the 6xxx series would be a 100% waste of what very little space they have to increase transistor numbers.

THe 7xxx series will likely get a decent boost in tesselation as with almost everything else, but when you've got, at best half a billion transistors extra to work with, a 25% increase instead of the usual 100% increase for the 6xxx series, tesselation is the single worst place to use them. I'm not changing my mind, tesselation is great and I'd love to see it more widely implemented, but the very last thing on my list of improvements for what will be a very limited 6870 would be tesselation.


5xxx series prices won't go up because of reduced supply though, its not a vintage car/pair of jeans or something else that is "timeless" it will be obsoleted by the new cards so price will go down as demand will drop massively.

I am wondering if theres a very slim outside chance of a huge, absolutely huge surprise by AMD, if November for lower end and early 2011 for the high end is real, theres an incredibly slim shot they could be using risk production at GloFo on 28nm to make the high end.

As it stands rumours of 7xxx series cards basically as early as possible on 28nm could mean the 6870 might be out in say Jan, with the 7870 out 3-4 months later.

Its interesting though, its the first time in, well, the past 5 years we've had basically entirely no idea at all what the next cards coming out are. Even the 4870, the numbers were hidden and very last minute, and eyefinity was a secret, but the general ballpark area of the 4870 was known and wasn't surprising compared to a 3870.
 
I wasn't mad 4 months ago when I bought my first one. :P

It certainly doesn't suck now, by any stretch. It's a very powerful card and when I bought it, I was very happy with the price I paid. (£240 for 5850, £170 for 5830, GTX460 hadn't come out yet). It is completely ludicrous to buy one over a GTX460 now, unless you want two CF/SLI and have an AMD setup.

I want another for crossfire, I could have waited for the GTX460, but then I couldn't have had an SLI setup, because my board only does crossfire.

Still think I made the wrong choice? :P

yup :p

If you looked around you could still get a 5850 for pretty much £215 at worst the entire time since launch, except when TSMC screwed up a 6 week back near launch and there literally wasn't any stock. Admitedly on OCUK prices a 5830 wasn't "that" bad, however because the rrp on a 5850 was £200, I'd have waited for a great deal or frankly bought 2x 5770's. The 5830 is just too close to a 5770 too often to have ever been a good price.

Its not a terrible card, its just always been pretty much no where in terms of value, even if it was perceived value(in that really it was competing against a £200 5850). Also I'm just anti retailers, 90% of the price increases since launch are down to retailers, and I'm a fan of just ignoring them and refusing to buy rather than pay frankly, retailers more profit than profit going to AMD for the same card.
 
yup :p

If you looked around you could still get a 5850 for pretty much £215 at worst the entire time since launch, except when TSMC screwed up a 6 week back near launch and there literally wasn't any stock. Admitedly on OCUK prices a 5830 wasn't "that" bad, however because the rrp on a 5850 was £200, I'd have waited for a great deal or frankly bought 2x 5770's. The 5830 is just too close to a 5770 too often to have ever been a good price.

Its not a terrible card, its just always been pretty much no where in terms of value, even if it was perceived value(in that really it was competing against a £200 5850). Also I'm just anti retailers, 90% of the price increases since launch are down to retailers, and I'm a fan of just ignoring them and refusing to buy rather than pay frankly, retailers more profit than profit going to AMD for the same card.

Crossfire 5770s just don't make my penis grow. I did look round, 6 different places I can remember off the top of my head, then when the the 5830 came down to £165 I grabbed one. The next day it went up to £170, then a week later £180.

I know it's closer to the 5770 in performance than a 5850, but the prices mean more BHP per £ than a 5770. (Or did at the time).

At the end of the day, crossfire 5850s would have been £480. Crossfire 5770s £260, but I don't want them enough, and crossfire 5830s would have been £340, and if I get another now at £140 it will be £305.

I'm happy anyway, but I wouldn't do the same path now, or recommend anyone does. (Unless they want crossfire and don't have an SLI motherboard).
 
Judging from 4000 series->5000 series, I guess agree that would probably be the case. I suspect speed wise it will be something like this

How can you judge it from the 4->5 series jump? IIRC the HD5850 ended up being quite considerably faster than the HD4890 (the 5770 ~ 4870, would say the HD5830 is more like the HD4890?).

Surely in that case, the top end 6 series would be around double the speed of the HD5870?

I agree that you won't see that kind of speed bump until NI though, I reckon the top 6 series will be around HD5850 Crossfire, with the extra bump to come later.
 
The 5870 will have been out for over a year when the 6000 comes out, the speed jump should be quite high.
 
Depends on how the reworked core effects the performance. A 25% performance increase would allow for 25% less pipelines ~

They could increase the the memory bus width and allsorts then.

Looking at the move from 4870 to 4890 we seen a decent jump and that was quite a basic refresh, this is more like a generation jump.
 
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So were looking at 3200 shaders on the highest end part..

Not a bloody chance in hell.

GF100 is all but dead because frankly something that big is just so low yield, with no profits and with limited production capacity its daft to drop the output so much with such a big core.

Assuming it is 40nm (98% chance of that) then, GF100 is 3.05billion transistors, it would seem Nvidia is also, with the 460gtx using around 10% less transistors yet its 10% bigger than the 5870 die. So AMD can probably fit in around 3.2-3.3 billion transistors in something as big as the GF100 die, but they won't want to come close to that size, its simply not possible to make a decent yield high end part. AMD also aren't massively better in power usage, GF100 uses around 60% more power, it also is 60% bigger, so if AMD increased transistors by 60% or so, it would use 60% more power aswell, okay they are better than Nvidia, I would expect it to use less power, but not much.

So realistically AMD can't come close to the 3.3billion transistor mark, nor will they want to bump it beyond, what, 225W at most? At 3200shader part would frankly also require higher bandwidth, more rops, etc, etc, you'd be looking at a 4billion transistor part, its not going to happen at 40nm.

At best, they might go up to around 2000 shaders, if the efficiency increases means the rops/tmu's/bus take up a little less space throughout then they might just get enough room to get up to 2200.

I'm expecting something with a roughly 25% increase in die size/transistor count, something around 2.6billion transistors, and maybe a 30-35% performance increase.

The problem being, thats well without the performance limits 5850/5870/480gtx overclocked, however of course, if you overclock the new cards you get that lead back somewhat.

They might just go for absolutely smegging off Nvidia, if they can save 20% die space with efficiency increases, smaller more efficient rops/tmu's and a more effective balance of shaders/rops/tmu's/bus, then they could release things with similar performance at a lower cost, but I also don't really see that happening.

I think the new 6770 type cards(if there are any) could offer 5830>5850 performance at a lower cost though.

LIke I said, its interesting just because, due to the 40nm limit and complete inability to come close to the usual transistor count doubling, we have no idea where they will go, what they can get out of such a small increase available at 40nm and what cards they'll bring out at all.

The 5770 is a killer card largely because of its die size, while more performance is great, a bigger die is a bigger die, it will cost more. They might well continue to produce both and not EOL the 5770 series. With the 5xxx series becoming essentially the smaller value brothers of the bigger brother higher performance 6xxx series cards.
 
I will be very disappointed if the top end part does not match or beat a 5970, I mean a year is along time tech wise and they should produce the goods.
 
How can you judge it from the 4->5 series jump? IIRC the HD5850 ended up being quite considerably faster than the HD4890 (the 5770 ~ 4870, would say the HD5830 is more like the HD4890?).

Surely in that case, the top end 6 series would be around double the speed of the HD5870?

I agree that you won't see that kind of speed bump until NI though, I reckon the top 6 series will be around HD5850 Crossfire, with the extra bump to come later.
While the 5000 series bought out the support for dx11, Eyefinity and runs cooler, it hasn't really move forward much in terms of speed. While I do think at the 5850 was great performance at launch price £200, the other cards have not move on much both in terms of performance and price. 5770 is same speed replacement of 4870 at simpler price level of £100ish, and 5870 is pretty much the same speed replacement of the the 4870x2 at the £300 ish price level. And many people who got high-end cards last gen like 4870x2, GTX295, CF4870, SLIGTX260/275/280/285 don't really have an worthwhile upgrade option except for the 5970. And people who got cards such as a single 4870/4890 1GB, GTX275/280/285, they would get more performance boost for less money by going CF/SLI, unless they manage to sell the cards and get back big lump of cash to put toward getting a 5850; the 5870 wasn'ta very good option as it was priced at £100 over the 5850 wasn't really worth it.

Yes there is 5970, but £520ish was way too high priced (consider most people buy cards that cost around £200 or less)...if they launch the card at £450, then probably it would had been more attractive, but still doesn't change the fact it is expensive.

I really hope AMD/ATI will prove me wrong and bring out some much faster card in next gen, not something that moved forward as little as 4000 series to 5000 series in terms of speed. If they bring out a 6870 that's as fast as 5970 but single GPU and priced at below £400, then it would be interesting...but I seriously doubt that will happen...
 
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unless their single gpu or even dual gpu 6000 cards have at least 30% performance over the top end 5000 series then it looks like i'll be skipping this generation

and not gonna take tessellation performance into account.
 
What, no generation EVER has beaten easily the previous gen's sli of xfire, matching it is standard, why should one £300 card offer double the performance of a previous gen £600 setup, its never worked like that and why should it start now? Also don't forget the RRP for a 5970 is £430, it has been since launch, you can now just about get one at that cost now. Considering its 2x 5870's with lowered clocks, and if you can hit the same overclocks as a 5850 can then it WILL be faster, meaning you're getting 2x £300 cards for £440, thats not remotely bad value, especially as its significantly faster than a 480gtx, which, costs about the same. THe only real issue is UK retailers and UK customer who simply refuse to wait 2 weeks. If people refused to buy at £550, they'd be dropped to £450 in a matter of a week or two, I've said in another thread, its a joke that at £550 retailers will be making a huge amount more profit than AMD, or the AIB.

THe 3870x2 was faster than the 4870 in some games, slower in others, thats how life goes, the 4870x2 is roughly matched by a 5870. A 480gtx is roughly match by 275gtx sli, the 280gtx roughly matched a 9800gx2, a 8800gtx was slower than 2x1950xtx's, but significantly faster than 2x 7950gt's(largely a memory limit as most people had 256mb versions that gen).



As for Ravenxxx

I was actually quite willing to assume you were just playing around with Nvidia hardware and would continue to be unbiased, I'm sure many times you yourself have agreed that unrelealistic expectations would be silly as TSMC screwed up and dropped everyone in the dark.

But all of a sudden you'll now be dissappointed if the 6870 doesn't beat a 5970.

You really are starting to spout utter rubbish. AMD and Nvidia planned to have 32nm replacements out end of this year, AMD have had to reign in their plans and release a 2nd 40nm part, sorry but you can't double performance if you can't double transistor count, thats where increased performance comes from, pretending thats changed because you now have a 480gtx is truly ridiculous.

If you'll be dissappointed in AMD for not providing a 5970 matching single GPU this year, then I assume you'll be horrified to not get a 5970 matching part out of Nvidia at the end of this year then because its been over a year since the planned release of Fermi.

As you should know, the design team working on whatever Nvidia's next gen card is, works independantly and isn't reliant on the previous gen launching on time. For instance, the GF104 was released roughly on schedual, Nvidia for 3 years have launched their high end, then their upper mid range around 6 months later, it is their schedual, they are already back on schedual, so claiming they should be late because Fermi was doesn't hold any weight, if that was true the GF104 would have been delayed 6 months, and the GF106/108(which are a couple months late, but not much).

Infact, its looking increasingly like it will take till the end of next year before Nvidia can release something that only doubles the GF100 performance, is that dissappointing aswell?

Lets keep in mind that AMD are stuck on 40nm, and will be almost certainly releasing a part with quite a few less transistors, and smaller, that uses less power than a GF100 on the same process, if its faster then by the end of the year Nvidia will have a GF100, 40nm, 3.05billion transistors, 300W, and AMD will likely hav a 2.6billion-ish transistor, 40nm, 230W part that BEATS it. WHy would AMD's part be the dissappointing one exactly?
 
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Drunken you need to do the maths a bit better, expecting 5970 performance from a new part released over a year later than the previous tech is not great expectations, I can put up benches where my overclocked 5870/480 is only a few FPS slower than a 5970 and in some cases of the 480 actually faster. So yeah the fastest 6000 series single GPU will be disappointing to me if does not match a 5970 with its crappy stock speeds because I can get that close to it now with current tech.
 
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