All AMD R6xx chips are 65 nanometre chips, now

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Keysplayr

Elite Member
Jan 16, 2003
21,219
56
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Originally posted by: apoppin
Originally posted by: keysplayr2003
Look, it's obvious we are being fed a lot of BS. But you know what? It all comes around. Karma works... ;)

that's why Standard Oil, Haliburton, RAMBUS and MS are doing so 'poorly':p

:roll:

"karma" doesn't always manifest itself in a single generation ;)


:D

Exactly right.
 

RyanVM

Senior member
Oct 10, 1999
293
0
0
Originally posted by: apoppin
i think r600 had a serious HW bug just like x1800 series... while they were *looking* for it ... and 14 respins later - found it - the OTHER product they were working on at 65nm [anyway] are ready and they might as well release it all together as THOUGH they had "planned" it
I think you and I are essentially saying the same thing. Re-read my second paragraph.

I think it's perfectly reasonable that they were working on a 65nm shrink of R600 simultaneously but as either a backup or as a refresh part. They were having issues with the 80nm part, so they delayed under the premise we're both saying was silly so they could ramp up the 65nm part.
 

apoppin

Lifer
Mar 9, 2000
34,890
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alienbabeltech.com
Originally posted by: RyanVM
Originally posted by: apoppin
i think r600 had a serious HW bug just like x1800 series... while they were *looking* for it ... and 14 respins later - found it - the OTHER product they were working on at 65nm [anyway] are ready and they might as well release it all together as THOUGH they had "planned" it
I think you and I are essentially saying the same thing. Re-read my second paragraph.

I think it's perfectly reasonable that they were working on a 65nm shrink of R600 simultaneously but as either a backup or as a refresh part. They were having issues with the 80nm part, so they delayed under the premise we're both saying was silly so they could ramp up the 65nm part.

i'm sorry ... i was under the impression you believed their half-truths completely ... noticve Orton does NOT *deny* there was a bug although he acknowledges 'others' said it.

you bet they had a Plan B ... plan C also

they always do ... the Plan B for x1800 was x1900 ;)
 

RyanVM

Senior member
Oct 10, 1999
293
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lol, there's no way any company in as tight of a race as AMD/nVidia are in purposely delays a new high end card which would retake the performance crown in order to achieve a coherent product line.
 

apoppin

Lifer
Mar 9, 2000
34,890
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alienbabeltech.com
Originally posted by: RyanVM
lol, there's no way any company in as tight of a race as AMD/nVidia are in purposely delays a new high end card which would retake the performance crown in order to achieve a coherent product line.

that what i have been saying all along

it's silly to believe them
[except for fanboys ... but they don't count, anyway]

now ... if they look silly saying it ... to a reasonable person.... ;)

why the hell does AMD stick to it?
:confused:

it makes them look even more stupid then not saying anything :p
 

Gamingphreek

Lifer
Mar 31, 2003
11,679
0
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This is getting ridiculous. AMD needs to release a chip and then improve on it. Even if it isn't up to snuff with what Nvidia has, at least they will have SOMETHING. They can't keep delaying it trying to make it better each time without releasing it.

Also, there is no way they just trashed all of the R600's they already produced and flat out switched to 65nm process. Absolutely no way. What the Inquirer is probably saying (Rather misleading tho) is that the R600's derivatives (Low End segment) are being produced on the 65nm process because there is no way AMD and TSMC have the power and money to completely trash a design and redo it.

If I were Nvidia though, I would get off my ass and release the low-mid products. If they would have released those a few months ago, they would REALLY be raking in the cash. But as it stands they have only released the high end expensive parts- parts which not as many people will buy.

-Kevin
 

Bateluer

Lifer
Jun 23, 2001
27,730
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I reserve all judgments of products until final shipping models are released. My X1900XT is plenty fast enough to allow me to wait until both the 8900s and the R600 cards are on the market.

I highly doubt the R600 was respun 15 times, its highly likely that they were working on a 80nm and 65nm designs at the same time.

And it should be noted that the 'Plan B' for the X1800 was a kickass card that handily outperformed the competition.
 

chizow

Diamond Member
Jun 26, 2001
9,537
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A paper launch would've been better than what they're doing now. Hell, anything, even a 3DMark score would be nice. Instead, they're running TeraFLOP demos with Barcelona in CrossFire. :Q

They have working silicon but they're not willing to give any glimpse of what the card is capable of. I doubt anyone at AMD/ATI knows or wants to commit because its such a moving target. Every time they're expected to show us some hardware and numbers, they throw out new paper specs and ambiguous comments instead. All they offer is "you'll be surprised", but at this point, would anyone be surprised if it was a steaming pile or if it absolutely mauled G80?
 

apoppin

Lifer
Mar 9, 2000
34,890
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alienbabeltech.com
Originally posted by: Bateluer
I reserve all judgments of products until final shipping models are released. My X1900XT is plenty fast enough to allow me to wait until both the 8900s and the R600 cards are on the market.

I highly doubt the R600 was respun 15 times, its highly likely that they were working on a 80nm and 65nm designs at the same time.

And it should be noted that the 'Plan B' for the X1800 was a kickass card that handily outperformed the competition.
duly noted

one judgment i will make ... r600 IS Late
AMD's "reasons" not withstanding :p

and it better be a *kickass card*
:Q

:D
 

Chadder007

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
7,560
0
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Originally posted by: Matt2
A reason for this are problems or the bad yield of 80 nm of the process which should not probably have unimportant difficulties with leakage streams.

I still have a hard time believing that yields are better with 65nm than 80nm.

Doesnt TSMC fab Nvidia GPUs as well?

If rumors are true that G81 is 80nm and is done, then I dont see how AMD is having so much trouble with 80nm. One of these rumors is false.

Maybe they used some of the technologies from AMD CPU's to help with a transition of the GPU to go to 65nm?
 

josh6079

Diamond Member
Mar 17, 2006
3,261
0
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Originally posted by: Bateluer
I reserve all judgments of products until final shipping models are released. My X1900XT is plenty fast enough to allow me to wait until both the 8900s and the R600 cards are on the market.

I highly doubt the R600 was respun 15 times, its highly likely that they were working on a 80nm and 65nm designs at the same time.

And it should be noted that the 'Plan B' for the X1800 was a kickass card that handily outperformed the competition.
QFT.

Although I'd have to admit, I bet there were some X1800 buyers who weren't happy to see a new flagship card emerge from ATi 3 months later...

That's what I'm wondering will happen again. Will the R600 do the job but not drop jaws? If that happens, how long before it is replaced with another flagship model?
 

nitromullet

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2004
9,031
36
91
Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
This is getting ridiculous. AMD needs to release a chip and then improve on it. Even if it isn't up to snuff with what Nvidia has, at least they will have SOMETHING. They can't keep delaying it trying to make it better each time without releasing it.

Also, there is no way they just trashed all of the R600's they already produced and flat out switched to 65nm process. Absolutely no way. What the Inquirer is probably saying (Rather misleading tho) is that the R600's derivatives (Low End segment) are being produced on the 65nm process because there is no way AMD and TSMC have the power and money to completely trash a design and redo it.

If I were Nvidia though, I would get off my ass and release the low-mid products. If they would have released those a few months ago, they would REALLY be raking in the cash. But as it stands they have only released the high end expensive parts- parts which not as many people will buy.

-Kevin
I disagree. They did that last year with the X1800 to X1900. Having been one of the people who bought an X1800XT (for $600+), I wasn't entirely pleased to see my new card drop in value that quickly. Don't get me wrong, I get the fact that cards are not an investment, but I think a flagship should stay a flagship for roughly 6 months.

I also think that doing that last year probably hurt them financially, since they ended up having to get rid of the R500 cores that wouldn't sell as a high end chip anymore.
 

nitromullet

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2004
9,031
36
91
Originally posted by: apoppin
that was SO ati :p
Was it? I had mostly bought NV cards prior to that because of my Linux needs at that time, but I didn't recall ATI devaluating their flagship that quickly before. If they are known for doing that, it certainly is a reason to buy ATI with caution. The X1800 dropped about 50% in resale value very quickly.
 

apoppin

Lifer
Mar 9, 2000
34,890
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alienbabeltech.com
Originally posted by: nitromullet
Originally posted by: apoppin
that was SO ati :p
Was it? I had mostly bought NV cards prior to that because of my Linux needs at that time, but I didn't recall ATI devaluating their flagship that quickly before. If they are known for doing that, it certainly is a reason to buy ATI with caution. The X1800 dropped about 50% in resale value very quickly.

you misunderstand me ... my fault for making an unexplained statement
:Q

it was SO ati: 'keeping their promise' - even though it *cost* them big bucks ... like a small 'enthusiast's company' - what is what i liked about them ;)

they also "promised" x800 xfire and delivered it -- way late and at great expense to them ... even though 99.99% of its fans no longer cared ... they got the x1800/1900 xfire a short time later ...

AMD isn't that way:p

 

nitromullet

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2004
9,031
36
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Originally posted by: apoppin
you misunderstand me ... my fault for making an unexplained statement
:Q

it was SO ati: 'keeping their promise' - even though it *cost* them big bucks ... like a small 'enthusiast's company' - what is what i liked about them ;)

they also "promised" x800 xfire and delivered it -- way late and at great expense to them ... even though 99.99% of its fans no longer cared ... they got the x1800/1900 xfire a short time later ...

AMD isn't that way:p
Agrred, I like AMD and ATI both for the fact that their marketing "strategies" and savvy are usually ridiculous, so they really sort of have to make their products good enough to sell themselves. It really hurts them if their product is #2 though, such as right now.
 

apoppin

Lifer
Mar 9, 2000
34,890
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alienbabeltech.com
in this weird business only intel and AMD compete in CPUs ... the rest are minor players

in discreet graphics only AMD and nvidia compete
... what Matrox? ... niche
RotFL

minor players :p

this is about to change in adding a Number 3 as intel gets into discreet gfx and perhaps nvidia into C-GPUs

perhaps there will be less pressure to be no1
:Q

sure



*the sky is falling*
:shocked:
--c. little
 

Matt2

Diamond Member
Jul 28, 2001
4,762
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Originally posted by: RyanVM
I don't find this too hard to believe and here's why. It makes sense to me that a company planning to release a chip roughly around the same time they're preparing to do a die shrink would spend some time doing the designs (80nm and 65nm) concurrently in the event it becomes necessary for whatever reason. I highly doubt the decision was "Hmm, 80nm doesn't work. We need to design a 65nm version quick!" I'm guessing the conversation was more along the lines of "OK, 80nm isn't working well. Let's delay a month and switch to plan B (65nm)."

In other words, I think they planned R600 to be an 80nm chip. I also think they worked on a 65nm design at the same time as a contingency plan. When they saw they weren't going to have an acceptable 80nm chip, they delayed the release to ramp up 65nm production. Finally, many months later they announced the delay under the silly premise of having a coherent product line (as if that's ever stopped them in the past), since there's no way you can switch process technology 6 weeks before release.

Makes sense to me anyway :p

Doesnt make sense to me because it takes a lot more than a "month" to transition from 80nm to 65nm.

Look at how long it took Nvidia to transition from G70 (110nm) to G71 (90nm).

I also find it difficult to believe that ATI had 80nm AND 65nm designs in place at the same time.

They could have increased the clock speed as well for DragonHead2

How much of a clock increase would they need to make to draw only 30w less than DragonHead?

PS.

Does anyone else think "DragonHead" is a pretty lame nick name?
 

Gstanfor

Banned
Oct 19, 1999
3,307
0
0
Originally posted by: RyanVM
I don't find this too hard to believe and here's why. It makes sense to me that a company planning to release a chip roughly around the same time they're preparing to do a die shrink would spend some time doing the designs (80nm and 65nm) concurrently in the event it becomes necessary for whatever reason. I highly doubt the decision was "Hmm, 80nm doesn't work. We need to design a 65nm version quick!" I'm guessing the conversation was more along the lines of "OK, 80nm isn't working well. Let's delay a month and switch to plan B (65nm)."

In other words, I think they planned R600 to be an 80nm chip. I also think they worked on a 65nm design at the same time as a contingency plan. When they saw they weren't going to have an acceptable 80nm chip, they delayed the release to ramp up 65nm production. Finally, many months later they announced the delay under the silly premise of having a coherent product line (as if that's ever stopped them in the past), since there's no way you can switch process technology 6 weeks before release.

Makes sense to me anyway :p

I think its far more likely that what happened was R600 failed to work correctly and AMD moved straight to its refresh version (just like nvidia cancelled nv30 production and moved to nv35) It just so happened that the refresh was on a different process node, thats all.

nvidia was honest about moving to a new chip at the time, I wonder if AMD will be or if they will try to pass it off as R600?