HD6900 series to ship with 2GBs of Ram

[OCGuy]

There are a ton of games that would hit 1GB VRAM limit. Crysis would be one of them, metro is another, AvP is also another game.

At a "mainstream" resolution?

This should easily be proven by benching a 1GB card against the same card with an extra GB added by an AIB, all other settings the same.

Does anyone know of any reviews that have done this?

 

[thilanliyan]

At a "mainstream" resolution?

This should easily be proven by benching a 1GB card against the same card with an extra GB added by an AIB, all other settings the same.

Does anyone know of any reviews that have done this?

Here's a decent review, but they stick to 2560x1600.
http://benchmarkextreme.com/Articles/Radeon%205870 2GB/P1.html

Here's another one:
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...apphire-hd-5870-2gb-toxic-edition-review.html

 

[RussianSensation]

Here's a decent review, but they stick to 2560x1600.
http://benchmarkextreme.com/Articles/Radeon%205870%202GB/P1.html

Here's another one:
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...apphire-hd-5870-2gb-toxic-edition-review.html

Good links. In all fairness to OCGuy's point, he did state "Mainstream resolution". 2560x1600 is a $1000 monitor resolution, not mainstream, yet . And also, even with 2GBs of ram, the HD5870 choked in every game. The benefits came through with 2x the GPU power in CF/Tri-fire. At the very least the 2GB option should be there for the ultra segment who will pair up 2x HD6970s.

P.S. What happened to your 460? I see it has been replaced with the 8800GT.

when is the 6990 supposed to be coming out? Will that trounce the GTX 580?

I don't work for AMD or NV; so I can't accurately answer that. From what I have read, HD6990's launch should occur in December (but again, just based on rumors). 6990 should be faster than the 580 in games if it has 2x Barts chips in it. But again, we don't know the exact specifications of either the GTX580 or the 6990. Based on rumors, 580 may end up about 20% faster than the 480. If so, it may not even beat the 5970. At the same time, GTX580 isn't really meant to compete with the 6990 though. I am not sure the comparison is fair given the expected price differential (i.e., 480 was $499 when it launched vs. $699 market price for most 5970s).

 

[thilanliyan]

P.S. What happened to your 460? I see it has been replaced with the 8800GT.

Yeah I sold it off before the prices tanked lol. I am waiting to see what Cayman, or whatever nVidia has brings to the table. Looking to spend about $350...hopefully there will be something in that range, instead of just extreme high end stuff. I may just end up picking up a used 5870/GTX470 if I can find one for cheap....or maybe a 6870...unfortunately the GTX470s have gone back up in price.

 

[RussianSensation]

Looking to spend about $350...hopefully there will be something in that range, instead of just extreme high end stuff.

Oh nice, shiny new hardware on the horizon for you. :thumbsup: Maybe AMD will have a little surprise in the 6950. The 5850 was a stellar overclocking card. So perhaps the 6950 will repeat its legacy.

 

[OCGuy]

^ It looks like it makes a 3-6 frame difference in 19 x XX and below. My point exactly.

There is just no point for 2GB of VRAM right now for most people. I say the same thing to the people buying 8GB+ of DDR3.

 

[MangoX]

Just stumbled on some leaked 3-way CrossfireX benches of Cayman XT :sneaky:

http://i29.tinypic.com/2zs7inl.jpg

 

[Dark Shroud]

Just stumbled on some leaked 3-way CrossfireX benches of Cayman XT :sneaky:

http://i29.tinypic.com/2zs7inl.jpg

Those are fake, the 6000 series dropped the ATI name in favor of AMD.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Johnny Bench approves of your post. But he needs a new hat.

 

[RussianSensation]

Just stumbled on some leaked 3-way CrossfireX benches of Cayman XT :sneaky:

http://i29.tinypic.com/2zs7inl.jpg

Here is NV's PR spin on HD6990 launch day:

Mike = GTX580
Bravo = HD6990
Tzar = Maxwell

 

[Arkadrel]

Hiroshima fails.. .only 15 kilo ton of tnt in size... meh.

Hiroshima:______15,000,000 kg TNT
Tzar Bomba:_50,000,000,000 kg TNT
= 3334 times more BOOOOM! (if im correct in above)

Wiki'ed that the "Little Boy" killed 90,000 on blast, half a year later due to radiation total deaths 140,000. It also distroyed 69% of the citys buildings and severely damaged another 7% of the buildings. Undoubtly over the years, its probably claimed more lives.

When the russians designed the "Tzar Bomba" they made it *half* the size they where aiming for (100mega ton was the org plan)... they where worried the radiation might get back to them.

Also the 50 mega ton is a round off... apperntly some sources say it was more like 58 mega ton than 50. Its mushroom cloud would reach 62km into the sky (7x higher than Mount Everest) and be around 40km in diameter.
Over 100km away from it the first blast would still give 3rd degree burns,... and over 1000km (621.4 miles) away there would be windows blown out of houses.

Seismic waves could be measured after it passed around the world 3 times... it measured 5.25 on the Richterskala.

= craaaaaazy to build something like that.

 

[SlowSpyder]

At a "mainstream" resolution?

This should easily be proven by benching a 1GB card against the same card with an extra GB added by an AIB, all other settings the same.

Does anyone know of any reviews that have done this?

The 6970 won't be a mainstream card.

I think 1GB will still do fine for a while, but some people who buy a premium $400 card might want to keep it for more than a year. I think 2GB does potentially add some longevity to the card.

I have 8GB of DDR2, I doubt it adds a single FPS to any game I play. But I do notice a benefit over 4GB in other areas. I guess we could look at it the other way too... Could you share with us any performance benefit of this card having 1GB? This will be a really high end part, 2GB makes sense in my opinion.

 

[OCGuy]

The 6970 won't be a mainstream card.

I think 1GB will still do fine for a while, but some people who buy a premium $400 card might want to keep it for more than a year. I think 2GB does potentially add some longevity to the card.

I have 8GB of DDR2, I doubt it adds a single FPS to any game I play. But I do notice a benefit over 4GB in other areas. I guess we could look at it the other way too... Could you share with us any performance benefit of this card having 1GB? This will be a really high end part, 2GB makes sense in my opinion.

Well I know that not having wasted RAM could bring down the MSRP, possibly allow higher memory overclocks, less heat, etc.

I guess I just don't see the problem with the way things are right now. People who want to pay the $$$ for the extra VRAM can do so.

 

[darckhart]

2gb vram is great, especially if they push this "well look you can daisy chain all these displays off our 2x dp v1.2 ports!" not to mention that they already say it can do 4 displays oob. teh vram also comes in handy if i have to crank up SSAA to make up for crap.

i'm hoping the pricing breaks down like so:
6950 289-329
6970 399-429
6990 549+

 

[tweakboy]

That much RAM is a waiste, youll never use all of it until maybe a few years from now where textures get thicker and bigger in size and what not...

 

[blastingcap]

Cayman is a new architecture.

Thanks to ZerazaX at B3D who was then corrected by Alexko: http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1489746&postcount=4436

http://translate.google.com/transla...co.jp/docs/column/kaigai/20101101_403541.html

AMD didn't want to risk using a different architecture on mainstream chips, esp. Barts since it HAD to ship ASAP to counter GTX460. So they reserved the new arch for the high-end (Cayman).

This is consistent with AMD employee David Hoff's September comment about a new-ish architecture coming soon.

 

[RussianSensation]

Hey blasting, from that schematic, it looks like Cayman is ~ 360mm2 chip.

 

[blastingcap]

Hey blasting, from that schematic, it looks like Cayman is ~ 360mm2 chip.

Yeah, someone from B3D commented on that too.

 

[netxzero64]

Hey blasting, from that schematic, it looks like Cayman is ~ 360mm2 chip.

then it is larger than the GTX 460... hmmm interesting..

 

[Arkadrel]

So from that chinese page:

Cayman ~360 mm^2.
support double precision and has +20% on a 5870 pr same amount of processors, in double prescision performance.

The scalar instruction stuff is interresting just from looking at that picture.

Looks like instead of doing every instrution one by one, it ll have a VLIW schedular (compiler) that ll make sure it does a set amount of instructions in one go. So it ll do 5 units of instructions simultanious instead of just 1.

"...snip..Graphics processing is often three to four elements, Vec4 VLIW had developed because it is efficient..snip..."

They believe its more effecient to do it this way. Hmmm.... looking forwards to this card.

If its true they can get a 360mm^2 to beat a 480's 529mm^2 by upwards of 20%.... wow.

480 is like 47% bigger than a 6970 then (die size)... only to be 20% slower in games ect.

 

[BD231]

Hiroshima fails.. .only 15 kilo ton of tnt in size... meh.

Hiroshima:______15,000,000 kg TNT
Tzar Bomba:_50,000,000,000 kg TNT
= 3334 times more BOOOOM! (if im correct in above)

Wiki'ed that the "Little Boy" killed 90,000 on blast, half a year later due to radiation total deaths 140,000. It also distroyed 69% of the citys buildings and severely damaged another 7% of the buildings. Undoubtly over the years, its probably claimed more lives.

When the russians designed the "Tzar Bomba" they made it *half* the size they where aiming for (100mega ton was the org plan)... they where worried the radiation might get back to them.

Also the 50 mega ton is a round off... apperntly some sources say it was more like 58 mega ton than 50. Its mushroom cloud would reach 62km into the sky (7x higher than Mount Everest) and be around 40km in diameter.
Over 100km away from it the first blast would still give 3rd degree burns,... and over 1000km (621.4 miles) away there would be windows blown out of houses.

Seismic waves could be measured after it passed around the world 3 times... it measured 5.25 on the Richterskala.

= craaaaaazy to build something like that.

Yes ..., but what would it take to blow up the moon :hmm:

 

[ArchAngel777]

The 6970 won't be a mainstream card.

I think 1GB will still do fine for a while, but some people who buy a premium $400 card might want to keep it for more than a year. I think 2GB does potentially add some longevity to the card.

I have 8GB of DDR2, I doubt it adds a single FPS to any game I play. But I do notice a benefit over 4GB in other areas. I guess we could look at it the other way too... Could you share with us any performance benefit of this card having 1GB? This will be a really high end part, 2GB makes sense in my opinion.

THIS

If someone is going to buy Cayman (assuming it performs well) and they plan on using it for the next couple of years before they upgrade it, then I would have to suggest going for the 2GB version (if it exists). Right now it doesn't make a difference except in a handful of games and settings, but if you are going to spend $400, why not spend $50 more and ensure that you don't have some silly bottleneck crop up on you in the future.

 

[dangerman1337]

Yes ..., but what would it take to blow up the moon :hmm:

Very, very very powerful, you would probably be looking in the Triple digit exaton range at least to crack the moon which is like around 4.5 OoM. Which would require alot of unrainun/plutonium .

Since cayman is going to likely be 360mm2, i think the 450 USD range seems to be at the most at that size.

 

[Skurge]

So from that chinese page:

Cayman ~360 mm^2.
support double precision and has +20% on a 5870 pr same amount of processors, in double prescision performance.

The scalar instruction stuff is interresting just from looking at that picture.

Looks like instead of doing every instrution one by one, it ll have a VLIW schedular (compiler) that ll make sure it does a set amount of instructions in one go. So it ll do 5 units of instructions simultanious instead of just 1.

"...snip..Graphics processing is often three to four elements, Vec4 VLIW had developed because it is efficient..snip..."

They believe its more effecient to do it this way. Hmmm.... looking forwards to this card.

If its true they can get a 360mm^2 to beat a 480's 529mm^2 by upwards of 20%.... wow.

480 is like 47% bigger than a 6970 then (die size)... only to be 20% slower in games ect.

Hold on there. Are they saying that Cayman is essentialy going to be the same size as Cypress, but 40% faster on the same proccess?

 

[Idontcare]

Hold on there. Are they saying that Cayman is essentialy going to be the same size as Cypress, but 40% faster on the same proccess?

Its possible but the logic involved in getting there may be a bit too narrow to assign it much probability.

Consider the loss in IPC for Evergreen over its predecessor. We never really came to a satisfactory resolution why an HD5870 under-performs an identically clocked xfire HD4870 setup.

So we know there is opportunity for AMD's engineers to "fix" whatever architectural bottleneck was introduced with evergreen that led to that particular decrease in IPC with the Evergreen architecture.

In addition there is the non-zero possibility that they further improved on Cayman's architecture (IPC) above and beyond what they once had with R600.

Obviously there are limitations to the analogy but consider PIII -> P4 -> C2D for Intel...we know IPC can shift drastically with architecture changes so it is not unreasonable to expect cayman to have the potential to boost IPC.

And what we don't know about the 40% is are the clockspeed deltas factored into that number? 40% IPC delta seems unreasonable, but a combination of IPC + clockspeed bumps could bring that kind of end-performance improvement.

I agree it is at the furthest reaches of plausibility...but nothing about the numbers render them entirely implausible. If the claim was 100% improvement or some such then yeah we could wholly write that rumor off as BS.