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AMD Radeon 6970 releases on December 7th - Chiphell/Napoleon

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Doesn't really make a difference to me. Chances are 6950 will be $299 and 6970 about $400.

Not interested, but it will be good to see what it does to current cards I guess.

Once Nvidia stikes back with 560s....few months and I might snatch something up assuming 1/2 way decent game come out. I can't see myself spending more than $150-200 though.
 
I agree with requiring decent games to be released that will actually require more power than the current ones (which are locked to current gen console capabilities) to validate a GPU upgrade. I wonder if that won't happen until next gen consoles ~2012.
 
Getting tired of waiting here, at least some sort of comment from AMD on what we should expect performance wise relative to the 580 would help further me waiting another 3 weeks. Gonna be hard with the deals that are sure to be coming up the next week to not just be done with it. I'd take a paper launch at this point even if we couldn't buy it until then if it is indeed something to wait for. Personally I don't think they are handling this release very well at all, put up or shut up.
 
Sind said:
Getting tired of waiting here, at least some sort of comment from AMD on what we should expect performance wise relative to the 580 would help further me waiting another 3 weeks. Gonna be hard with the deals that are sure to be coming up the next week to not just be done with it. I'd take a paper launch at this point even if we couldn't buy it until then if it is indeed something to wait for. Personally I don't think they are handling this release very well at all, put up or shut up.
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Hehehehe, I don't think you can complain about a lack of any word from AMD while at the same time ask them to put up or shut up. They have chosen the later, enough so that you saw need to find a problem with it 😀.

Don't expect the 6970 to beat the gtx580, expect it to compete on price. We will find out when it is released. It is not common for either company to release info before the card is launched so don't expect any performance numbers until that time. Seems that most people are turned off by a paper launch and a company would avoid it at all costs unless they are really so late they have to do it.
 
Not looking for performance numbers, any sort of PR BS would suffice regarding how they see this part performing or commenting on their competitors product would suffice. I believe you're right that they have no answer to NV in a single GPU solution in the 6970. I'm in the market for the best performing single gpu solution, I guess I know where my dollars will be going.
 
Sind said:
Not looking for performance numbers, any sort of PR BS would suffice regarding how they see this part performing or commenting on their competitors product would suffice. I believe you're right that they have no answer to NV in a single GPU solution in the 6970. I'm in the market for the best performing single gpu solution, I guess I know where my dollars will be going.
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Powercolour seem to think that the 69xx cards are 30-50% faster than their 6870 product.

So its likely that the:
6970 is 50% faster than a 6870 on avg.
6950 is 30% faster than a 6870 on avg.

Unless powercolour are blowing smoke.
If the 6970 is 50% faster than a 6870, it ll trade blows with a 580.
 
Grooveriding said:
Looks to be 2 and a half weeks to launch of the new AMD single-gpu leader.
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I'll believe it when i see it. :biggrin:

Vdubchaos said:
Doesn't really make a difference to me. Chances are 6950 will be $299 and 6970 about $400.

Not interested, but it will be good to see what it does to current cards I guess.

Once Nvidia stikes back with 560s....few months and I might snatch something up assuming 1/2 way decent game come out. I can't see myself spending more than $150-200 though.
Click to expand...

My line of thinking is that the 6950 will be 350 dollars and the 6970 will be 450 dollars.

Why would they make the 6950 50 dollars more then the 6870? That's just bad business sense.
 
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Arkadrel said:
Powercolour seem to think that the 69xx cards are 30-50% faster than their 6870 product.

So its likely that the:
6970 is 50% faster than a 6870 on avg.
6950 is 30% faster than a 6870 on avg.

Unless powercolour are blowing smoke.
If the 6970 is 50% faster than a 6870, it ll trade blows with a 580.
Click to expand...

When did powercolour make reference to 6970/6950 speeds ?
 
blastingcap said:
Speculation is half the fun!
Click to expand...

I thought it was "Anticipation is half the fun"

Ballpark estimates:

8500 (August 14, 2001) (new gen)
no refresh

9700 Pro (June 18, 2002) = +70-100% the performance :thumbsup: (new gen)
9800 Pro (April 2, 2003) = +15-20% :thumbsdown: (refresh)
9800 XT (September 30, 2003) = +15-20% :thumbsdown: (refresh)

X800XT (May 4, 2004) = +70-100% the performance :thumbsup: (new gen)
X850XT (Feb 28, 2005) = + 10-15% :thumbsdown: (refresh)

X1800XT (Oct 5, 2005) = +70-100% the performance :thumbsup: (new gen)
X1900XTX (Jan 24, 2006) = +15-25% (refresh)
X1950XTX (August 23, 2006) = +10% :thumbsdown🙁 refresh)

HD2900XT (May 14, 2007) = inconsistent performance all over the place vs. X1950XT from +30% to +80% but still decent (new gen) :thumbsup:
HD3870 (Nov 15, 2007) = +10-15% (refresh) :thumbsdown:

HD4870 (June 25, 2008) = +70-100% the performance (new gen) :thumbsup:
HD4890 (April 1, 2009) = +15% (refresh)

HD5870 (September 23, 2009) = +70-100% the performance (new gen)
HD6970 (December ? 2010) = speculated to be Half-gen (so ~ 35-50%???)

You see a pattern? (the same will apply for NV).

We are always excited about next videocard releases. But when you look back at history, every single refresh sucked! True innovation happens with new generations. You already saw GTX580 only squeeze 15-20% from 480, which is nothing more nothing less than what is expected based on the definition of a "refresh". Sure it fixes a lot of GTX480's flaws, but when we revisit its place in history in 5 years, it will be just another weak "refresh".

Even if HD6970 is 40-50% faster than the 6870, that still only gets us around GTX580's performance. I expect real fireworks when HD7000 and Kepler launch because they will be the real deal new generations on 28nm, not refreshes or half-gen refreshes. I am sure you are also more excited about them.

P.S. A little fairy told me you bought your HD6850 as a 'stop-gap' until 28nm monsters!
 
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OCGuy said:
Ohh...I get it. So AMD is the Imperial navy, about to unleash an attack on a bunch of sleeping and unsuspecting sailors, otherwise known as nVidia.

The problem is that all it may do is awake a sleeping giant. nV will slowly take back every price point from the sneaky AMD, one by one, until they are in striking range of the AMD single-card crown, aka "The Heartland." Instead of storming it directly, nV will use stolen German technology to create a super-GPU, (GTX780GX2FTW3DQUADSLIOMGWTFDOMINATOROFKITTENS) and make AMD surrender unconditionally.



(Am I reading too much into the date?)
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Fixed. ()🙂
 
RussianSensation said:
Even if HD6970 is 40-50% faster than the 6870, that still only gets us around GTX580's performance. I expect real fireworks when HD7000 and Kepler launch because they will be the real deal new generations on 28nm, not refreshes or half-gen refreshes. I am sure you are also more excited about them.

P.S. A little fairy told me you bought your HD6850 as a 'stop-gap' until 28nm monsters!
Click to expand...

Fine, fine, anticipation is half the fun!

Without a die shrink or at least a much larger die, we shouldn't expect miracles. Those huge leaps in performance are more the result of process shrinks and not new architectures, though sometimes there are exceptions (e.g., G80).

That said, the Cayman die size will be ~8-10% bigger than Cypress, according to speculation, and it's 4D instead of 5D so some efficiency will be gained there, plus look what they did with Barts in terms of perf/mm^2. On the downside, I suspect memory bandwidth to be the bottleneck; it could limit performance quite a bit if AMD stuck with a 256-bit bus, as many people are speculating. Faster VRAM/better memory controller only sort of makes up for the narrower bus (relative to GTX580). 4D drivers allegedly have bugs and stuff so there may be lackluster performance at launch, hopefully improving over time with driver updates. If I had to bet, I'd bet that Cayman XT was 40% faster than Barts XT on a wide range of games, including older and newer games. It will probably still suffer in extreme-tessellation scenarios unless AMD has a Polymorph Engine of its own (or better, with true OoO execution), but the gap will narrow somewhat.

Yup, I don't like 40nm and how the last year was basically adding more features (DX11, etc.) and not much more speed. If I spend big money on a card it will be 28nm or beyond. I say "or beyond" because TSMC might struggle as much or even more with 28nm, compared to 40nm. GloFo's 28nm will be in short supply so it can't handle all of the orders... I suspect TSMC will still be the primary fab contractor.

I secretly hope... okay, not-so-secretly hope... that Intel will enter the GPU fray, helped by their process advantage. Even if Intel doesn't succeed, it might scare NV and AMD into progressing faster.

In any case, if Kepler has single-GPU Surround at highly competitive prices, it would take a lot for me NOT to go back to NV. My coworker asked me the other day which I preferred, and I laughed and said I slightly prefer NV (due to past issues with ATI drivers... as time goes on, I have grown used to ATI drivers to the point where I think they are tied in single-GPU... nevertheless I'd like CUDA "just in case" even though I'd likely never use it), but you'd never know it based on what I buy most of the time. I was a raging Thinkpad fan so it was mostly ATI for a long time, then I went NV and was happy, till bumpgate scared me off for a while, then when I was ready for Fermi, Fermi wasn't ready for me so I wound up with ATI again, and then AGAIN with the 6850 mainly due to my missing Eyefinity more than I expected. Sigh. Come on NV, single-GPU Surround, it's not that hard! *prays for single-GPU Surround in Kepler*
 
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