Next gen AMD/ATi Southern Islands by Christmas? Any guesstimates of performance yet?

[bunit]

The makeup of SI as a 'hybrid' part has mostly been determined actually, at least according to 'rumors'. Rumors should be taken with a grain of salt, but in terms of tech we have to remember that oftentimes they are correct - depending on your sources.

Anyways, SI (via semiaccurate):

-minimal changes in shaders
-brand new NI derivative uncore
-DRAM is known/the same
-Addition of UDV3
-Possible inclusion of GDDR5+ on the high end? But this is unconfirmed and total speculation, probably not completely in ATI's hands.
-increase of clocks all around
-bigger than Cypress, but probably still smaller than 400mm. Will probably run hotter than Cypress if the above is true.
-already taped out in April, if we assume that the overall process will take the same amount of time/less (familiarity) than Evergreen then that brings us to September/October.

I'd say 10% faster than Fermi is a pretty decent guess, seeing as its around 15-20% faster than the 5870 now, and 25% faster in some cases (depends on res though..). 25-30% faster than the 5870 is also reasonable because of the hybrid nature of the part - it's not just reworking some memory and stuff it's actually incorporating parts of a whole brand new architecture, that, unfortunately, is probably held back by the 40nm process we're currently stuck to thanks to silicon fabs..


Anyways...SI will be good for the GPU market in terms of hopefully bringing prices back to 'normal' levels.
NI is where the performance will be though (28nm), and that is something that we can all get excited about.

 

[edplayer]

NV holds one performance slot lead, and that is the multi-card position, 480 SLI is really nice performance.

is 480 SLI usually faster than 5970 in Crossfire?

 

[SolMiester]

I would be amazed if you did think ATi was ahead, in fact I would probably assume your account had been hacked and out of concern contact the mods to rescue you!

Some would argue that having had their pretty much their entire DX11 range out top to bottom for almost six months before your competitor had a DX11 card out, and maybe being in a position to launch your next gen card 6 months after theirs comes out was 'ahead of the game'

As we don't know what the SI 'hybrid' of RV870/NI will look like, it's a bit early to be speculating performance I would agree.

Oh, ho ho ho..really, IMHO, ATI 5xxx has done its dash, SI will have to be more than a respin of the architecture and thats what I meant...having the entire range has nothing to do with the crown....its about the GPU...

 

[Jhon Smitch1]

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[Grooveriding]

is 480 SLI usually faster than 5970 in Crossfire?

It goes back and forth depending on the title. There are few reviews showing comparisons. This one shows comparisons of 5870,480,5970,5870CF,480SLI,5970CF,480TRI-SLI,5870TRI-CF.

http://www.hardware.info/nl-NL/articles/amdnampoZGCa/Clash_of_the_Titans_3way_SLI_GTX_480_test/1

There are times 5970CF or 5870 3way CF outperforms any 480SLI or tri-sli configuration, and times where 480sli on it's own beats 5970CF. From a cost to performance perspective, 480SLI is the best bet if you are going for a multi-card config right now.

I base all my opinions on gaming at 2560x1600 though. With the amount of power these cards have these days, 480SLI or 5870CF is wasted at a lower resolution, one of these cards is enough for 1920x1200 and down.