• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

AMD 6930 - 7950/7950 $ Prices.

blackninja said:
I got my godlike Sapphire 5970 OC for £430 on release ... anything higher was just greedy retailers and there were loads for £500 + ! Got my 2 5870 Vapor-Xs for £280 each as well at the same time ... these prices were delivered inc of VAT
Click to expand...

is it still godlike?
 
straxusii said:
How come the 5870 launched for £300 then? It was the fastest single GPU at the time.
Click to expand...
The 295GTX was already going for about £350 at the time, which was marginally faster in general, at the end of the day most people don't care about how big a GPU it is or whether it's two or one GPUs on one card, or whether NVIDIA even makes a profit, all they care about is, how much does it cost? and how much performance does it give me? The 295GTX was still being recommended on here because of this, despite the release of the 5870.

Also the NVIDIA 480GTX suffered the most long drawn out and embarrassing release at the same time so I wouldn't be surprised if it had been priced with that in anticipation as well as AMD wouldn't have wanted to suffer the same embarrasment that befell NVIDIA when they had to immediately slash the cost of the 280GTX because of AMD releasing the 4870 just afterwards.

The actual card release prices were as follows:-
3870 = $220
4870 = $299
5870 = $399
6970 = $369

The 6970 price drop was very much due to the slashing in price of the 4** series to less than £300 after the 580GTX was released. The 480GTX was a direct performance equivalent and it became apparent that it wasn't a temporary move to clear limited stock so they couldn't price it any higher.

28nm parts are going to be supply constrained for months, AMD (and NVIDIA) will both be wanting to make as much profit as they can out of the limited production availablity, that means maximising production of mid range cards (AMD will likely be able to churn out at least twice as many 7870 chips as 7970 chips) so it would be commercial suicide to drive higher sales of the 7970 at a lower price as it'll mean they won't be able to meet demand of both 7870 and 7970 cards, costing them money.
 
I think people should wait until the cards are released. The HD7900 uses the GCN architecture which seems to be more compute orientated and uses more of the chip for such applications. The GF110 is the same unlike the GF114. ATM,we don't know efficient it will be for gaming and how good launch drivers will be too. It seems a much bigger deviation than the VLIW5 to VLIW4 change which Cayman had.

I suspect the HD7800 series might be the better value cards as these will be more gaming orientated.
 
Yep, there is an assumption here that the move to a completely new architecture results in typical performance increases seen in previous generations, I'm hoping we're looking at a 9800pro or 8800GTX situation though rather than a 2900XT or Bulldozer.
 
Sleepless said:
see, you can make your point without resorting to personal insults. Waiting for a 7870 here, early adopters for the 79XX are going to get gouged, I just want a card that'll last me 18 months.
Click to expand...

I did not once use personal insults to make my point, maybe my response was abrupt but the post i responded too was simply expressing that the cards are too expensive because he was not in a position to afford them at the top scale of prediction.

I think my response was valid.
 
I think it is seriously unlikely that they'd do anything to hobble the gaming performance as it would undermine the entire series.
 
decto said:
Looks like pricing is aligned to the GTX580 but the AMD will be cheaper to make with the smaller die ... depending on yields.

AD
Click to expand...
28nm wafers are going to be very expensive, compared to 40nm ones, I can see that more than compensating for a smaller die size.
 
This generation of 28nm cards we will be paying threw the nose for the new process, it was really kind of obvious this would happen and with the yields being low it will add even more to the price. Now you see why Nvidia is treading lightly and waiting for all the quirks and kinks to be ironed out of this new manufacturing process and then they will release their high end cards almost a year later than what AMD is doing, if it is even true AMD are even going to release their high end soon.

I remember stating somewhere on these forms too "don't be surprised if they end up close to £500 for their top end single GPU card".

Found it here..

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=20540542#post20540542


I also think people are over estimating real word gains these new cards will bring. New process and new architecture does not mean 80% gains as some seem to think... I'm betting the new 7970 if faster then a GTX 580 it will be only 10%-15% in nvidia the way it's meant to be played games at most and the rest of the games we may see some nicer gains where Nvidia has not asked the game makers to cripple the performance on AMD cards and non Nvidia cards.


I believe the 8970 of the future will be the ones really showing the real large gains in performance that people are talking about today and i'm guessing these will come out around the time Nvidia bring out their first 28nm high end card or not long after that.


We will see anyway, as I said I hope i'm wrong and they bring out some cracking cards that leaves Nvidia pusing the limits again and giving us customers great value cards that really do show a huge improvement over the last generation and worth upgrading to.
 
Last edited:
I dunno, a big die shrink (twice as much cores straight off the bat) plus a (hopefully) more efficient (and therefore higher performance) architecture makes that 80% figure easily achievable for this jump. As you say though, process problems might result in sacrifices needing to be made.
 
Jokester said:
28nm wafers are going to be very expensive, compared to 40nm ones, I can see that more than compensating for a smaller die size.
Click to expand...

35% smaller with likely closer to 40-50% more cores per wafer due to the yields you get on "huge" dies(even if you were talking about 150mm2 and a 250mm2 die, the yields WOULD decrease between parts, the difference merely increases as you approach sizes considered "huge"). The rumoured increased cost for 28nm wafers is circa 20%.

That was before Nvidia dumped much of their 28nm wafer starts for the next few months as they have little to nothing ready to make on them, which both free's up capacity and leaves TSMC with less demand and wanting to encourage more orders from their other customers, which all leans towards decreasing 28nm prices rather than increasing.
 
Jokester said:
. As you say though, process problems might result in sacrifices needing to be made.
Click to expand...

Yes this is exactly how I feel it's going to play out, if they have cracked the 28nm process and don't have to fuse off too many things on faulty GPU cores then they may show amazing performance. BUT and the real BUT is can they make these cores 100% working or even 90% working to make a high end card that shows a nice jump in performnce relating to a new process.

Lets see really, AMD may find a large percentage of their cores are faulty to the point they have to sell them as low end or mid range cards and this may help with prices in that range of cards for the consumer due to AMD having many bad cores on their wafers and instead of trashing them they will fuse off the damaged parts and sell them as cheaper cards.

If this is the case it means a respin will be needed on the high end cores and these will come out later in larger numbers and numbers that retailers want, the first set of high end cards maybe specially binned out of the bad wafers just to allow some to hit the market and land atleast in reviewers hands and cause a stir in the market and most importantly have people excited to buy one ( I remember they did that with the 5870's, I was calling up every retailer to get one in the release week), when the respun versions finally hit the retailers. They know as we do an enthusiast will be willing to wait to get their hands on a great product.
 
Last edited:
One website I looked at claimed 2048 stream processors for the 7970 and 1920 for the 7950.

Guess that would scale about right for GTX580 level performance.

Same site had 7870 and 7850 at the same spec as 6970, 6950.

Any better sources about?


AD
 
drunkenmaster said:
35% smaller with likely closer to 40-50% more cores per wafer due to the yields you get on "huge" dies(even if you were talking about 150mm2 and a 250mm2 die, the yields WOULD decrease between parts, the difference merely increases as you approach sizes considered "huge"). The rumoured increased cost for 28nm wafers is circa 20%.

That was before Nvidia dumped much of their 28nm wafer starts for the next few months as they have little to nothing ready to make on them, which both free's up capacity and leaves TSMC with less demand and wanting to encourage more orders from their other customers, which all leans towards decreasing 28nm prices rather than increasing.
Click to expand...
I think he was talking about the difference between 500mm2 (NVIDIA) and 389mm2 (AMD) and the new 28nm being roughly the same die size presumably as it'll have way more transistors (near enough double I would imagine).

There's massive demand for 28nm wafers at the moment, not just GPU makers but a whole host of semiconductor manufacturers are after them, particularly for communications chips and what not so I can see prices being kept high, not only that, maybe being hiked up.

Edit: Saying that 50% more transistors does seem more realistic.

decto said:
Same site had 7870 and 7850 at the same spec as 6970, 6950.
Click to expand...
Rumour seems to suggest they are pretty much just a die shrink of the existing top end.
 
Purgatory said:
Yes this is exactly how I feel it's going to play out, if they have cracked the 28nm process and don't have to fuse off too many things on faulty GPU cores then they may show amazing performance. BUT and the real BUT is can they make these cores 100% working or even 90% working to make a high end card that shows a nice jump in performnce relating to a new process.

Lets see really, AMD may find a large percentage of their cores are faulty to the point they have to sell them as low end or mid range cards and this may help with prices in that range of cards for the consumer due to AMD having many bad cores on their wafers and instead of trashing them they will fuse off the damaged parts and sell them as cheaper cards.
Click to expand...

Most of this just confirmed you have no clue what you're talking about, you don't make 50million of wafers on a whim then find you can only sell them as low end dies.

You don't make a 320-380mm2 die, and sell it as fast as a 80mm2 one. This categorically will not happen at all. nor are there any signs of process troubles.

Sign of a chip in trouble, GK102 missing completely from a roadmap, sign of a chip not in trouble, taping out early, waiting on production capacity while not running multiple respins in the meantime.

They aren't any abnormal yields reported, they are lower than usual, that is bog standard on a new process, you would normally expect more of the 7950 parts to both be made, and due to yields be possible than 7970's, we will probably see a 7930 in the not too distant future as a more heavily salvaged part.

There is a reason you VERY rarely, if ever see anything beyond a 2nd salvaged part(5850 has circa 10% of the die fused off, 5830 has about the same again, that's two salvaged parts). If yields are so bad you have to have a third, you basically stop production, likely never get into full scale production and go for a full respin.

Fermi/GF100 was the last and only chip I can remember with 3 salvaged parts, as the 480gtx itself wasn't a full chip, with the 470/465gtx also.

Anything less than 70% of the chip working, and your next performance stop is, 60%, and you'd expect your midrange part to perform somewhere between 50-60% as fast as your high end part, making it pointless and vastly more expensive to make, to sell at the same price as a FAR more profitable midrange part. A 350mm2 chip being sold at £300 is more profitable than a 250mm2 chip at £150, but that same chip is more profitable than selling a 350mm2 chip at £150, which infact would almost certainly be making a loss.
 
Have the new high end ie *970 and *950 out performed ther previous generation x-fired?

I'm just wondering if I should xfire for christmas or wait for the 7950/7970...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom