Semi Accurate: ATi's Southern Islands taped out

[BFG10K]

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/04/21/atis-southern-islands-tapes-out/

The news is straightforward enough. Southern Islands (SI) taped out recently, and is now moving through TSMC. Although the schedule is very tight, if all goes really well we could see a demo or two at Computex in just over a month. This puts SI slightly behind where Evergreen was a year ago, but not by much.

Feel free to ignore the usual anti-nVidia vitriol.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I imagine AMD is in a good position to continue with 40nm if they have to. Nvidia is up against a wall with power and GPU size, AMD can push things a bit if they really have to. Of course I'm assuming SI will be larger, it may not. I guess we'll have to see what they come out with.

 

[Attic]

As long as the damn things run without needing ridiculous amounts of power and do so while remaining fairly quiet at 98-100% load i'm in.

Was tinkering with idea of shipping a 470GTX into my HTPC case for some extra frames in my most demading games (it will just fit my space requirments where a 5850 wont because of power plugs location), but can't make it worth the drawbacks of heat it would introduce and the power strain on my 500W PSU. Southern Islands will hopefully deliver something strong in the < $200 price arena.

But where is ATI going to go with SI release? Could they release a <$200 part to compete with the 470? If they could would they? To me it looks like ATI has the market dominated at all price points, where's the incentive to get something to market soon if nVidia still doesn't have any competing products in any reasonable quantity? Newegg shows 2 of 14 GTX470/480 boards available, no 480 boards available.

Hope to see a Fermi midrange soon and see how that stacks vs the 5770, 5750.

 

[Shilohen]

But where is ATI going to go with SI release? Could they release a <$200 part to compete with the 470? If they could would they? To me it looks like ATI has the market dominated at all price points, where's the incentive to get something to market soon if nVidia still doesn't have any competing products in any reasonable quantity? Newegg shows 2 of 14 GTX470/480 boards available, no 480 boards available.

If we are to believe AT's article, I don't think nVidia status has much to do with it, getting the holidays market potential and not sitting on their laurels is. It's going to be their yearly refresh after all, maybe allowing them to delay NI a bit more until the next process node improves or getting a DX 12 release or whatnot.

Personally, I don't see any reason why not going on with improvements and potentially improve their lead, or counter a strong nVidia come back. After all, Fermi is an awesome architecture imho, it's just the execution that was very bad, it might not be the case with next rounds.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

After all, Fermi is an awesome architecture imho, it's just the execution that was very bad, it might not be the case with next rounds.

Sure, its awesome, but a lot of that awesome is not for gaming, and that's how ATI can separate themselves.

 

[yh125d]

Sadly I think Computex is a bit early to get any good info from ATI about it, unless SI is closer to release than I'm thinking

 

[Daedalus685]

They would have until June to be ready for computex.. Things would have to go great and the info on tap out will have to be a bit old (that is it was taped out a bit before we heard) but there is time to have an engineering sample ready by then. I fully expect these cards to be out by Q4.

 

[MrK6]

This is good news. Let's hope AMD keeps the pedal to the metal and gets their product out there (and that it's worth it). It would be great if they had a working sample for Computex (no wood screws ), I'm interested to see what the new architecture tweaks do for the chip.

 

[Madcatatlas]

hey, wood screws worked for nVidia, why not!