[WccfTech] 16 nm node delayed

[raghu78]

I doubt AMD will use Bermuda XT in mobile at 120W. They will most likely use Fiji, just like Hawaii never came out as a 120W binned laptop version. It also makes little sense to give a 120W 300 series chip 400GB/sec memory bandwith. It won't have the GPU power to take advantage of so much bandwidth.

Are you serious. Bermuda XT is going to be 60 - 65% faster than Hawaii XT. Even allowing for serious clock and voltage reduction this chip in mobile version will still be faster than desktop R9 290X with 320 GB/s bandwidth. so yeah this chip can make good use of 400 GB/s bandwidth.

You say AMD will have an 18 months lead but that would mean 380X > 980 and 390x > GM200. We don't know that. Furthermore, in the deaktop NV can lower 980 to $399 by August 2015, release GM200 780 successor at $499-550 and 780Ti successor at $699. That doesn't even account for 970Ti and a faster closed 980 with 8GB of VRAM.

lower GTX 980 to USD 399 by Aug 2015. dude that price will fall below USD 350 the minute Fiji XT launches. 15% faster than GTX 980 and AMD will price it at USD 400 - 450. AMD has two more SKUs up the stack. As for the real performance we will know by late Q1 2015. This is how I expect it to play out.

Bermuda XT - USD 650 - 700 (4096 sp) 65% faster than R9 290X
Bermuda Pro - USD 500 - 550 (3584 sp) 45% faster than R9 290X
Fiji XT - USD 400 - 450 (3072 sp) 30% faster than R9 290X
Fiji Pro - USD 300 - 350 (2560 sp) 10% faster than R9 290X

So expect AMD to bring down GTX 980 to USD 300 - 350 by late Q1 2015 or early Q2 2015.

On the laptop side, by May-July 2015, NV could introduce 975M and 985M, with more CUDA cores/faster clocks. Using 970M/980M/970/980 as a benchmark for your May 2015 or later 300 series doesn't take into account that NV won't stay still and that prices will remain at today's levels. Remember one year after 680's launch, NV easily bumped performance 7-10% and lowered the price from $499 to $399 at the same time.

NV could refresh GTX 980 by Q3 2015 and introduce 8 Ghz GDDR5 in their GM204 GPUs. It might help in desktop but in notebook the power constraint will be hard to overcome and raising GDDR5 clocks to 6 Ghz won't be easy without significantly increasing power.

Every month AMD is late means more time for NV to prepare refreshes of GM204 and milk existing GM204 so much that the higher profit margins since Sept 2014 to May 2015 will more than allow for NV to drop prices on GM204 to defend market share. For AMD to make major leaps in 2015-2016, R9 300 series has to be spectacular, maybe their best ever product since 9700 Pro.

You brag about 6 months of AMD lagging and ignore the 18 month time to market advantage of HBM which AMD will have. Anyway I believe R9 390X could very well turn out to be one of AMD's best - right up there with the legendary 9700 Pro.

Since AMD don't wait AMD cards 6-9 months late like NV users would, every month there is a major risk of AMD users buying GM204 products and only looking for a new GPU upgrade in early 2017-2018 for the next round. NV is probably getting 90% of $200+ mobile dGPU sales right now and 90% of $400+ desktop sales, if not more. This is going to continue until 300 series launches. Ouch.

90% is an exaggeration and you are good at it. Do you think everybody likes to waste money on GTX 980 and GTX 980 SLI when they know its not providing the big jump especially when R9 295x2 is keeping up with GTX 980 SLI at 70% of the GTX 980 SLI price. Enthusiasts know that GTX 980 is not the real deal. Most GTX 780 Ti owners are waiting for GM200 and given how they have been treated with Kepler perf in recent games being less than expected I wouldn't be surprised to see them jump to AMD R9 390X.