Monday, December 5th 2011
AMD Working On Radeon HD 6930 Graphics Card
AMD is reportedly working on a new Radeon HD 6900 series single-GPU graphics card based on the "Cayman" silicon, the Radeon HD 6930. This SKU will be designed to make things very competitive for the non-Ti GeForce GTX 560 from NVIDIA. In its most recent salvo, NVIDIA launched a limited edition GeForce GTX 560 Ti with 448 CUDA cores, targeting select markets in the winter shopping season. Tests showed it to be very competitive with HD 6950 and HD 6970, and is priced accordingly, at $289. AMD's new SKU will be designed to heat things up in the sub-$200 market where GTX 560 non-Ti and HD 6870 are trading blows.
Carved out of the 40 nm "Cayman" silicon, the GPU in its HD 6930 configuration will carry the codename "Cayman-CE". It will feature 1280 advanced VLIW4 stream processors, 80 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface that will hold 1 GB of memory. The core will be clocked at 750 MHz, and the memory at 1200 MHz (4.80 GHz effective). Most AIBs will reuse their cost-effective HD 6950 1 GB board designs with the new SKUs. The new Radeon HD 6930 is expected to be priced around $180.
Source:
MyDrivers
Carved out of the 40 nm "Cayman" silicon, the GPU in its HD 6930 configuration will carry the codename "Cayman-CE". It will feature 1280 advanced VLIW4 stream processors, 80 TMUs, 32 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface that will hold 1 GB of memory. The core will be clocked at 750 MHz, and the memory at 1200 MHz (4.80 GHz effective). Most AIBs will reuse their cost-effective HD 6950 1 GB board designs with the new SKUs. The new Radeon HD 6930 is expected to be priced around $180.
36 Comments on AMD Working On Radeon HD 6930 Graphics Card
While should make a good OC’r, and buy time till the 78XX are ready, which if the tea leaves are being interpreted correctly this is kind of what they’ll look like but on the 28Nm die.
This should remain in front of the "448-Core" while permits AMD not to erode the price structure. Consider if this has more the normal volume of most binned chip's (not limited like what said about the 448-Core). I could see these at <$160 by February (and on), before the replacement 78XX release. If you get this now for about $170 or <$160 in February, by March a decent bump in performance, while lower power from a 7850 for $190 AMD won’t have stepped on either buyers toes.
Sounds to me as a good solid plan, and a good response to "448-Core" that... thought "garnering a lot of press" while purportedly they'll not be on the market all that long. Heck you might have more luck getting one from the "hundreds" sent out to reviewers, than from your local E-tailer for a decent price. :rolleyes:
Also if these unlock going to sell like hotcakes :laugh:
The market is flooded with options, its only use enthusiasts who are going to really research about the cards before we make a purchase. Other people are likely to ask a shop assistant or a tech minded friend. Now you have 30, 70 and 90 versions, 1gb or 2 gb, factory oc'd and variations of factory oc'd cards. Nvidia are at it too but not as bad as AMD at flooding the market. Maybe its more profitable for them to have 50 different cards on the market but one would think it would be more efficient to have only a few select models at different price ranges.
Going forward also manufacturing/quality issues are seen with Tahiti and said to be why they're pricing out in the stratosphere. Hard to get good chips and no competitor in site... ~$160 for this a 6930 in today’s economy is a good BfB. When you get Lemons you make...
:D
There are over 30 comments and not one has mentioned the most important attribute of this card - something you all overlooked and of critical significant consideration. I don't understand how so many people could be so dumb - there is really only one difference between this card and the 6870 given that performance is nearly identical: Trifire capability.
If you read TomsHardware, you would be aware of their groundbreaking article on microstuttering - www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-geforce-stutter-crossfire,2995.html. They conducted benchmarks with the 6870X2 crossfired with a 6870 and with another 6870X2. Key findings were that the ability to trifire 6870s offered the best value, however due to the increased cost of the 6870, it wasn't worth it. They found tri 6870s outperformed the 6990, and that in particular, eliminated microstutter that many higher powered cards provide when slied or crossfired X2. In short, three 6870s beat many of the top cards crossfired not just in framerate but also in microstutter, and would otherwise cost less. BUT 6870's DO NOT SUPPORT TRIFIRE.
ENTER THE 6930. Three 6930s most probably would allow you to trimonitor game any game or any future game coming out in the next year with ultra settings. In short, tri6930s would offer the least expensive serious entrance into trimonitor gaming at ultra. It would also represent the least expensive venue to tri-fire/sli, which is the most cost effective recommendation by Toms Hardware to get high performance, serious gaming hardware for three monitors without microstutter. Nvidia's least expensive tri-sli options are with the gtx570 (or perhaps their special gtx 560 440 ti). And, they appear to be selling these models with 2GB VRAM. In short, these could be the thing to buy to trifire, especially to hold you over until the 7950s drop in price over a year, or to wait until the next revision of video hardware comes out after kepler/7000 radeons.
Oh, and I'm dumb?
Seriously, you just said it was cheaper to tri-fire these cards, which aren't even out yet nor have any indication of a possible release date, to already available, cheaper HD 6870 in crossfire. Who's being a little ridiculous here? Also, guess what. The majority of people that have triple monitors aren't going to stick with HD 6870s (or these) anyway, they will most likely use the HD 6950 2GB or GTX 570 at least. And stuttering doesn't happen to everybody. I've seen cases where a crossfire setup caused considerable stuttering and at the same on a similar setup, it didn't.