Any update on the 7870?

[Termie]

The HD 7950 will be ~15% faster than the HD 7870, which means the HD 7870 will be roughly 5% faster than the HD 6970. And the way they'll squeeze that much performance is obviously from higher clocks. Look at the HD 6870 and the HD 5850 for your examples, though the difference will be that even though the 7870 will be clocked close to or at 1GHz it'll have good overclocking headroom unlike the HD 6870.

Also, going with GCN was never about getting higher gaming performance (except in titles that require a lot of compute and excessive tesselation) but higher compute performance for GPGPU while not sacrificing performance/watt and die size. From the get go that seemed extremely obvious, so I don't know why you're complaining.

Regardless, as yields improve they can keep raising clocks and they can eventually make a card with more compute units than the HD 7970.

Also, don't the latest rumors have the HD 7870 at $250 or so? Getting 6970 performance doesn't seem bad, though since it's VLIW4 I'm personally not interested because the architecture will be phased out next year.

Source? Because I think it would need 1GHz clocks to hit that, and I highly doubt they'll release a card with clocks that high at that price point, and if they do, I don't think it will have any headroom at all - the 7950 can only hit 1025 at stock volts based on the reviews.

As for the GCN issue, I'm not complaining, I'm just making clear that GCN holds no advantage over previous-gen cards in gaming, and you can basically do a straight stream processor comparison to the last generation.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Source? Because I think it would need 1GHz clocks to hit that, and I highly doubt they'll release a card with clocks that high at that price point, and if they do, I don't think it will have any headroom at all - the 7950 can only hit 1025 at stock volts based on the reviews.

As for the GCN issue, I'm not complaining, I'm just making clear that GCN holds no advantage over previous-gen cards in gaming, and you can basically do a straight stream processor comparison to the last generation.

Don't need one. Look at the market and its positioning and it's obvious. It's also obvious now why they're not making an HD 7890, even if it does have a superior architecture and memory bus. It'd cost more to manufacture while not yielding a benefit in most games at stock.

AMD's Performance architecture always has more overclocking headroom than Enthusiast, even if only by a bit, because of lower power consumption and the fact it's less complex. Look at Barts. I don't know how you find it particularly troubling that a lower-end card will have higher clock speeds when the HD 6950 is clocked at 800MHz and the HD 6870 at 900MHz. The reason it's clocked higher is to make up somewhat for the compute unit deficit.

1GHz or near (950MHz) stock for the HD 7870 is a given.

 

[Termie]

Don't need one. Look at the market and its positioning and it's obvious. It's also obvious now why they're not making an HD 7890, even if it does have a superior architecture and memory bus. It'd cost more to manufacture while not yielding a benefit in most games at stock.

AMD's Performance architecture always has more overclocking headroom than Enthusiast, even if only by a bit, because of lower power consumption and the fact it's less complex. Look at Barts. I don't know how you find it particularly troubling that a lower-end card will have higher clock speeds when the HD 6950 is clocked at 800MHz and the HD 6870 at 900MHz. The reason it's clocked higher is to make up somewhat for the compute unit deficit.

1GHz or near (950MHz) stock for the HD 7870 is a given.

You might be right...we'll find out soon enough. My guess, however, is more in line with the 6870 (900MHz), which would likely put it just below the 6970, not above it. Either way, it will be interesting if AMD actually gives users more performance/dollar in this next round.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

There's no reason for AMD to make the 7870 run at 900MHz stock. The gap between the 7950 and it at stock wouldn't be favorable for market positioning, not to mention the fact that it'd have a smaller die than Tahiti would put it in a favorable position for high clocks. It's still easier to get high clocks from a relatively immature 28nm process than a very mature 40nm process, as the new cards have shown us. The HD 7870 will exist for the reason the 6870 exists, and the only reason the 7950 only clocks to 1GHz on stock clocks is lower stock GPU voltage than 7970. But as it is now I wouldn't go for any VLIW derived GPU if I intended to use it for a long time.

 

[poohbear]

Actually, Tom's reported a bit more info about the 7850/7870:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-Radeon-HD-7000-gpu-video-card,14596.html

Summary:

(1) HD7870 ($299) - 1408 stream processors and 88 texture units, 2GB Vram (and thus 256-bit bus)
(2) HD7850 ($249) - 1280 stream processors and 80 texture units, 2GB Vram (and thus 256-bit bus)

And here's some information on existing cards:
(3) HD7950 ($449) - 1792 stream processors and 112 texture units, 800MHz/1250MHz clocks, 384-bit bus
(4) HD6950 (~$250) - 1408 stream processors and 88 texture units, 800MHz/1250MHz clocks, 256-bit bus


Let's extrapolate performance from the delta between the 7950 and 6950. The 7950, which has 1792 stream processors (27% more than the 6950), the same clock speed, and 50% more memory bandwidth, is approximately 32% faster than the 6950 (using Metro 2033 as a benchmark).

That means that it almost exactly lines up with its theoretical advantage, and the $299 7870 will almost certainly match but not significantly exceed the 6950 unless it's clocked much higher. For all the hoopla about GCN's advantages over VLIW, the performance of the new cards seems to come down almost entirely to compute hardware and clock speeds.

wow, if that's true, then my 5870 (which equals a 6950), will perform on par with a $300 2012 video card (7870)? unbelievable, i'll be keeping my 5870 a lot longer than i thought! best investment ever!

 

[superjim]

We're talking about a $450 card (7950) versus a $300 card (7870). I'll bet my entire rig it will not be $250 at release, especially with AMD's new aggressive pricing. The 7950 had better be at least 15% faster across the board for a whopping $150 difference.

The 5870 with 6950-equivalent performance will live for another generation (good or bad).

 

[Termie]

We're talking about a $450 card (7950) versus a $300 card (7870). I'll bet my entire rig it will not be $250 at release, especially with AMD's new aggressive pricing. The 7950 had better be at least 15% faster across the board for a whopping $150 difference.

The 5870 with 6950-equivalent performance will live for another generation (good or bad).

The 7950 is generally 30-45% faster than the 6950. That means there's plenty of room for AMD to play around with slight improvements in the 7870 without coming close to the 7950.

My bet is that it will be 10-15% faster than the 6950, and therefore 20-25% slower than the 7950. That will put it right at 6970 in both performance and current sales prices. I seriously doubt it will exceed 6970 performance.

 

[3DVagabond]

The 7950 is generally 30-45% faster than the 6950. That means there's plenty of room for AMD to play around with slight improvements in the 7870 without coming close to the 7950.

My bet is that it will be 10-15% faster than the 6950, and therefore 20-25% slower than the 7950. That will put it right at 6970 in both performance and current sales prices. I seriously doubt it will exceed 6970 performance.

Who knows where AMD will set the stock clocks? With both the 6970 and 7870 at max O/C's I think the 7870 will easily beat the 6970. That's if they want to sell any of them at $300. It won't look too good if an unlocked 6950 keeps up with it for a lot less money and year+ old tech.

 

[Termie]

Who knows where AMD will set the stock clocks? With both the 6970 and 7870 at max O/C's I think the 7870 will easily beat the 6970. That's if they want to sell any of them at $300. It won't look too good if an unlocked 6950 keeps up with it for a lot less money and year+ old tech.

Then again, they know there aren't many unlockable 6950s available, and the ones that are available come at a price premium.

Again, my bet - no faster than 6970 at stock for $300, with 900-925MHz clocks, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong. OC headroom is another issue - it will definitely have more headroom than the 6900 series.

 

[superjim]

Who knows where AMD will set the stock clocks? With both the 6970 and 7870 at max O/C's I think the 7870 will easily beat the 6970. That's if they want to sell any of them at $300. It won't look too good if an unlocked 6950 keeps up with it for a lot less money and year+ old tech.

Agreed. If AMD isn't careful with the 7870 positioning, we could see 6970's flying off the shelves for $300. If the performance and price is equal, then the 7870 should get the nod for temps/power/OCing. If the 6970 is 5% or more faster then it will be a hard decision (offset by 7870 OCing potential).

 

[Blastman]

As for the GCN issue, I'm not complaining, I'm just making clear that GCN holds no advantage over previous-gen cards in gaming, and you can basically do a straight stream processor comparison to the last generation.

I don't think this is the case. With all the tweaks to GCN (decoupling ROP's from memory controllers, caches etc.), I'd think GCN has at least a 5-10% advantage over the previous generation given the same specs (stream processors, texture units).

7970 faster over 6970 …

guru3d

Metro 2033 .. 57%
Dirt 2 ……… 36%
BC2 ……….. 34%
Crysis 2 …… 69%
BF3 ………… 42%

computerbase.de

Anno 2070 ….. 61%
Deus Ex HR …. 53%

The 7970 (2048, 128) only has a 33% advantage over a 6970 (1536, 96) as far as stream processors and texture units, yet it is much faster than 33% in many games (esp ones with tessellation). But even with a 33% increase in compute units one wouldn't expect a 1:1 scaling in game performance, so the 7970 shouldn't be able to beat the 6970 by even 33%. And this is with new drivers on a new architecture -- with driver improvements these numbers should increase.

Also, the ROP performance on the GCN has improved 50%, so with 24 ROP's, the 7870 would be faster than the 32 on the 6970. See 3DMark Pixel Fill rate

7870 - 1408, 88 … 925Mhz
6970 - 1536, 96 … 880Mhz

The 7870 gives up 9% stream/TU's to the 6970. With a 5% clock advantage GCN only needs a 5% clock/clock performance advantage to at least match the performance of the 6970. In many games (especially with tessellation) the 7870 will be much faster than the 6970 going by how much the 7970 beats the 6970 in many games. If the 7870 overclocks to the 1200Mhz range, overclocked it should have a big advantage over the 6970.

I'm waiting to see if the 7850 1GB model comes in around $200 or less. At stock speeds it will be faster than a 6970 in some games and overclocked it could offer faster overall performance.

 

[Termie]

I don't think this is the case. With all the tweaks to GCN (decoupling ROP's from memory controllers, caches etc.), I'd think GCN has at least a 5-10% advantage over the previous generation given the same specs (stream processors, texture units).

7970 faster over 6970 …

guru3d

Metro 2033 .. 57%
Dirt 2 ……… 36%
BC2 ……….. 34%
Crysis 2 …… 69%
BF3 ………… 42%

computerbase.de

Anno 2070 ….. 61%
Deus Ex HR …. 53%

The 7970 (2048, 128) only has a 33% advantage over a 6970 (1536, 96) as far as stream processors and texture units, yet it is much faster than 33% in many games (esp ones with tessellation).

....

You haven't included the 7970's faster clocks in this equation. At 925 versus 880, the theoretical advantage of this plus the extra stream processors comes to 40%, which is generally in line with the results you posted. There are certainly outliers (and they mostly include heavy tesselation), but for now, I think comparing stream processors and clocks gives a very close approximation of actual performance between generations. Perhaps we can say that you might add 20% advantage for the 7000 series for heavy tesselation, and this will become more important as time goes on.

 

[Blastman]

You haven't included the 7970's faster clocks in this equation. At 925 versus 880

That's a good point, I left out the clock rate difference. But we still have to consider that an increase of 33% on the shader/TU's on a 6970 wouldn't net a 33% increase in performance (won't scale 1:1).

hexus … ran a 7950 at the same clocks as a 7970 and only saw an increase in performance of about an average of 5% faster. The 7970 has 14% more shaders/TU compute units than the 7950, yet it was only 5% faster. Not even 50% scaling from the increased units.

In the computerbase.de test, they ran a PowerColor 7950+ (880Mhz). That's a 5% clock deficit plus 14% shader/TU, 19% total, yet the 7970 only averaged 8% faster.

I don't see a 6970 with 33% more shader/TU's (2048/128), matching a 7970 even at the same clock speeds. The increased memory speeds to the level of a 7970 will help scaling, but I still can't see a 33% increase in performance.

The 7970 has 45% more shader/TU's than the 7870 (2048/128 vs 1408/88) and should have about that much more memory bandwidth (which will help scaling), but the difference between the two in performance should be less than that. If the difference is in the 30-35% range, the 7870 should be as fast or a little faster than the 6970 depending on where it falls.

After all this speculation it will be interesting to see the tests and where things actually line up once the 7870 comes out.

 

[Soulkeeper]

7750 looks nice

finally breaking past the 32-64GB/s bandwidth barrier
It seems like cards in the $150-$200 range have had the same mem bandwidth for a few years

 

[Arkadrel]

@Soulkeeper

The main thing about the 7750-7770 is *probably* be without a 6-pin power connector.
So it ll just be one of those cards that goes into a pci slot and thats it.

The bad news is the 7770, is probably only gonna end up performing like a 6850 or so.
So its not gonna be anything huge, performance wise.

That said... even 6850 is impressive if you consider its on a 128bit bus.

 

[3DVagabond]

@Soulkeeper

The main thing about the 7750-7770 is *probably* be without a 6-pin power connector.
So it ll just be one of those cards that goes into a pci slot and thats it.

The bad news is the 7770, is probably only gonna end up performing like a 6850 or so.
So its not gonna be anything huge, performance wise.

That said... even 6850 is impressive if you consider its on a 128bit bus.

The 5/6770 is 128bit. The 6800's are 256 like the 5800 was.

 

[Soulkeeper]

@Soulkeeper

The main thing about the 7750-7770 is *probably* be without a 6-pin power connector.
So it ll just be one of those cards that goes into a pci slot and thats it.

The bad news is the 7770, is probably only gonna end up performing like a 6850 or so.
So its not gonna be anything huge, performance wise.

That said... even 6850 is impressive if you consider its on a 128bit bus.

That's fine, but as an upgrade to the 6670/5570 cards it could be nice.
ie: cards in the same price range, size, segment as the last generation
Not everyone aims for the highend cards

 

[deadken]

Ok, so let me get this right....

7870 will be released on March 6th, have a price point of $300, have 2Gb of Vram, and be %85 of a 7950?

7850 will be released after that, have a price point of $250, and have about %5-%10 less performance then a 7870? How much Vram will the 7850's have?

I really wanted to limit my purchase to $250, but if the 7870 is going to be at least %20 faster, then it'll justify spending %20 more money on it. Any opinions?

 

[LgFriess]

That's the beauty of Pc gaming, there is no Microsoft nor Sony nor Nintendo to tell you what you should or shouldn't do. Ps2 with an usb adapter? Sure. Wiimote with custom drivers? No prob. Joysticks, steering wheels, trackballs, horrid monstrosities like Razer's Naga, use what you want.

Also, I won't believe that there actually are Pc gamers that don't have a gamepad.

No gamepad here. One of the major reasons I can't stand playing on a console is because of the gamepads. I hate using them on anything but sports games...which become incredibly boring very quickly. And I love my Naga.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

Also, I won't believe that there actually are Pc gamers that don't have a gamepad.

Better believe it. I don't. There isn't any reason to get a gamepad when you have a mouse and keyboard.

But this thread isn't even about gamepads so I have no idea why you brought it up.

 

[d3fu5i0n]

Better believe it. I don't. There isn't any reason to get a gamepad when you have a mouse and keyboard.

But this thread isn't even about gamepads so I have no idea why you brought it up.

I do.
Just a wireless [black] 360 gamepad - the "for Windows" package.

I only use it for Assassin's Creed games and some racing games. M&K for everything else.


On-topic of the thread though. I'm liking Blastman and Termie's speculations. I can see where both of them are going with this (in their calculations).
I don't see myself upgrading from my 6950 though. I think I'll wait until the more refined 28nm process is out, as well as more performance gains for the money.

 

[superjim]

Is there any indication that we will see non-reference 7870s on March 6th? I'm hoping this will be a repeat of the 7950 launch and I can snag an OC version with dual/triple fans (for the fans more than the OC). With an open air case, this is a preferable setup.

 

[deadken]

Is there any indication that we will see non-reference 7870s on March 6th? I'm hoping this will be a repeat of the 7950 launch and I can snag an OC version with dual/triple fans....

I hope there will be! I bought a 6870 which I ended up returning since it was just too loud. I really will be happy if there are better cooling solutions offered right off the bat. I feel that I've waited long enough!

 

[deadken]

9 days and counting.

Any reviews yet?

 

[lifeblood]

So we're expecting it to launch Tuesday, 6 March? Good. Any word on its competition from NV?