AMD Hawaii GPU might launch on September 25

Kaapstad · 8 Aug 2013 at 18:05

bru said:
This is what I'm having trouble understanding, AMD need to do something because it been 20 months already and were still only hearing about dates a month and a half away and that is only the technical briefing the launch will be latter still and yet in ten +/- months time 20nm will be ready for mass production.

I'm reckoning on a large hot chip that will be expensive but with a relatively short shelf life, (positively miniscule by Tahiti's standards) possibly even only a limited run, meaning not a lot of stock to go round.

Only time will tell.

I suspect it will be one new chip for the top GPU and for the rest of the line up they will do an NVidia, rebadge, tweak and overclock older GPUs.

tommybhoy · 8 Aug 2013 at 18:12

LtMatt said:
7970 was £420 or higher on launch depending on which brand you went with. I remember Asus 7970 being £420 at launch from memory, some were much higher though.

Before the old chestnut of launch pricing being mistaken for gouging:

tommybhoy said:
'True' release day pricing some with gouging:

http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/33453-amd-radeon-hd-7970-launch-day-pricing-availability/

OcUK launch day 7970 pricing:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18361081

There was no point showing gouged pricing 10 days after release.

http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/36865-nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-launch-day-pricing-availability/

bfar · 8 Aug 2013 at 18:22

Kaapstad said:
I suspect it will be one new chip for the top GPU and for the rest of the line up they will do an NVidia, rebadge, tweak and overclock older GPUs.

Seconded. I think the business objective here is to maintain the highest pricing across the whole product lineup, much like Nvidia have done.

I suspect we're looking at a hot 250w TDP, $599 part, with an average 5 to 15% lead over GK110 cards. If it were available today, I'd be very excited, but if we're not gonna see this until Oct/Nov, than not so much. Our best hope is that the new architecture pays greater dividends than usual. A process node shrink is what we really want.

Orangey · 8 Aug 2013 at 18:25

What am I thinking of then?

With my bad memory I am doomed to chew on my foot constantly.

Rroff · 8 Aug 2013 at 18:31

Don't traditionally disagree with Charlie but theres some utter BS in that article.

Orangey · 8 Aug 2013 at 18:33

Rroff said:
Don't traditionally disagree with Charlie but theres some utter BS in that article.

+1

He spent several big paragraphs talking about some conspiracy theory as to how the location of the unveiling proves Hawaii is winnar.

JediFragger · 8 Aug 2013 at 18:35

Best start lubing up now boys, it's gonna be rough

LtMatt · 8 Aug 2013 at 18:38

tommybhoy said:
Before the old chestnut of launch pricing being mistaken for gouging:

Crap so i made £420 up.

Ooops.

JediFragger said:
Best start lubing up now boys, it's gonna be rough

I like the cut of your jib.

Suarez7 · 8 Aug 2013 at 18:46

JediFragger said:
Best start lubing up now boys, it's gonna be rough

Rough on our wallets or rough on those die hard nvidia bois?

LtMatt · 8 Aug 2013 at 18:47

Suarez7 said:
Rough on our wallets or rough on those die hard nvidia bois?

Hopefully the latter.

Orangey · 8 Aug 2013 at 18:48

The green goblin will have Titan II (on paper).

LtMatt · 8 Aug 2013 at 18:56

Orangey said:
The green goblin will have Titan II (on paper).

Didn't semi accurate say it had been cancelled? Or is that a different part? I don't pay much attention to the chip codenames.

As SemiAccurate said in April when we reported about Nvidia’s cancellation of the GK114 Kepler update, the company is showing severe financial stress related cracks in the development roadmap. Hawaii and the Volcanic Islands family is coming this fall and a late September public show likely means an October silicon launch. This is a massively updated GPU vs the minor tweaks in the last round. Given the timing, Hawaii is unquestionably a 28nm part so no shrink related performance bump but the architectural changes should more than make up for that. It is unlikely to be an incremental advance.
Nvidia in the mean time canceled the minor update that was due out last quarter and surprisingly canceled the first big Maxwell set for next spring. This leaves them with nothing to compete against AMD with for the fall “back to school” market and the winter holiday season. The next minor blip will be in the spring as described in the link above, but that is not competition for AMD, it is Nvidia salvaging the scraps they have left. Dire is barely adequate to describe their competitive situation for 2013 and 1H/2014.
Development costs are spiraling and Nvidia added to their development costs by bifurcating their GPU architectures. This lead to an unsustainable cost structure, something visible in their reshuffling architectures for cost, not technical reasons. The path Nvidia has locked itself into is unsustainable and they are unquestionably aware of this, their reactive roadmap changes are short-term holding actions but fatal long-term.

Rroff · 8 Aug 2013 at 19:07

^^ He also claimed Fermi was hot (ok that bit was right), completely broken, completely unfixable and completely unworkable and that nVidia was in a dire situation and was going back to the drawing board without releasing a new GPU for that generation... shortly before Fermi was released. Whoever was saying about him making money on nVidia shares probably isn't completely wide of the mark.

cainer · 8 Aug 2013 at 19:08

Orangey said:
What am I thinking of then?

With my bad memory I am doomed to chew on my foot constantly.

probably the 5870, iirc that had a lower price at lauch

Tonester0011 · 8 Aug 2013 at 19:13

Throws a spanner in the works, wait till tomorrow see what MSI come up with. If just over a month is true i'll probably be sticking with the red team at least i'm guaranteed a block for the card.

Duff-Man · 8 Aug 2013 at 19:22

Kaapstad said:
I suspect it will be one new chip for the top GPU and for the rest of the line up they will do an NVidia, rebadge, tweak and overclock older GPUs.

It seems the most likely option. Given that we're remaining on 28nm, I can only see another mid-range GPU being brought in if the architectural changes (i.e. performance "per-SP") bring really significant improvements. AMD already have a nice range of GPUs covering the low to mid-high performance spectrum, and it would seem strange not to make use of them for the next 9 months or so (until 20nm cards arrive). A new mid-range GPU is a lot of effort for a short product cycle, particularly when you already have a full range of GPUs available.

Regarding Semi-Accurate - I can't read any of Charlie's articles without cringing. He approaches everything from such a childishly-biased point of view that I can't take anything he says seriously. Besides, I don't see any "real" information in that article, aside from his (usual) speculation that Nvidia are heading for disaster due to strategic incompetence of some kind. This time he's claiming that it's the bifucation of their GPU manufacturing process that's to blame [presumably to feed the ever diverging needs of the gaming and GPGPU segments - something that, to my eyes, is simply good business sense given the growing GPGPU market and the ever diverging requirement that each market has]. He's been singing the same 'Nvidia is doomed' song for 10yrs now, and yet Nvidia are still here and still competing with AMD generation after generation.

Let's wait and see where things end up. After all the recent song and dance I'm still expecting the same thing with regards GPU spec as I have been for the past few months:

- 28nm process
- Around 2560 SP, coming in at around 420-450 mm^2
- 384-bit memory bus with ~7Ghz GDDR5
- Performance somewhere around the GTX780 to Titan window (stock for stock of course).
- Price around $550 to $650 dependent on performance relative to the GTX780.

As always, feel free to throw turds at me later if I'm way off the mark. But that's how I'm still calling it. I haven't seen anything yet to suggest a chip too far away from the above.

bru · 8 Aug 2013 at 19:30

Duff-Man said:
Let's wait and see where things end up. After all the recent song and dance I'm still expecting the same thing with regards GPU spec as I have been for the past few months:

- 28nm process
- Around 2560 SP, coming in at around 420-450 mm^2
- 384-bit memory bus with ~7Ghz GDDR5
- Performance somewhere around the GTX780 to Titan window (stock for stock of course).
- Price around $550 to $650 dependent on performance relative to the GTX780.

Sounds about right to me.

JediFragger · 8 Aug 2013 at 19:34

Ok I'm calling it now, 25/30% better performance and £100 more than current 7970. Imo Crossfire 7950's are still going to be great value :cool:

Duff-Man · 8 Aug 2013 at 19:37

JediFragger said:
Ok I'm calling it now, 25/30% better performance and £100 more than current 7970. Imo Crossfire 7950's are still going to be great value

Sounds about right to me (see above). And no - I don't think there will be anything much to tempt 7950 X-fire users away from their current setup. 7950 X-fire has been a great price-performance sweet spot for the high end for over 18 months now (frame rate irregularity with x-fire not withstanding).

LtMatt · 8 Aug 2013 at 19:40

JediFragger said:
Ok I'm calling it now, 25/30% better performance and £100 more than current 7970. Imo Crossfire 7950's are still going to be great value

I'll drink to that.