ATI Plans to Take on GeForce 9800 GT, RV770LE in the Works

[btarunr]

Earlier this year, the unthinkable happened when ATI brought in stiff competition with NVIDIA in almost all segments to snatch the performance crown. All NVIDIA could do as a retaliation was to hurry up with a transition to the 55nm silicon fabrication technology and price cuts among all its segments. The latter is of more importance since price cuts for NVIDIA's products have been huge, in many cases, as much as 40%. While Radeon HD 4850 in its 512 MB and 1 GB avatars took on GeForce 9800 GTX/GTX+, the GeForce 9800 GT slipped in from nowhere. Technically at launch the GeForce 9800 GT isn't much more than 8800 GT except a few features that only nForce chipset users could benefit from, among other changes. Indications are that this product isn't faring bad in the market and to retaliate ATI is devising a new graphics core, the RV770LE.

Simply put, the RV770LE is a toned down variant of the RV770 core that will position below the RV770 Pro (Radeon HD 4850). It features lower clock speeds than the RV770 Pro and more importantly, a 192 bit memory bus and 480 Stream Processors. This also affects the TMU and ROP counts with the new core having 12 ROPs and 24 TMUs. Memory configurations would be affected as well. While some sources indicate that it would be branded as Radeon HD 4830, others say it's likely to be branded as the Radeon HD 4750 and is slated for release in October.



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[jbunch07]

4750 sounds about right I think.

 

[Dark_Webster]

But at what price will this new core be launched?? It's a bit tight between the 4850 and the 4670...

 

[$ReaPeR$]

IMO in order to hit the 9800GT this card should be priced at least 20$ below its price point and should offer a 10 to 20 % better performance. very nice move from ATI/AMD if my speculations are correct this should be a killer card.

 

[WarEagleAU]

Anyone notice how ATI is kind of following Nvidia with the odd bus width? 192bit? Very nice. Looks like this card could be a winner.

 

[newtekie1]

I wouldn't say ATi "annihilated NVIDIA" in any segment. They just finally released a competitive product that force nVidia to drop prices back to reasonable levels. Yes, nVidia had to cut prices, because they finally had some competition. It isn't like nVidia is hurting by cutting those prices, they are still making a healthy profit off every card/core they sell.

 

[mitsirfishi]

just a cut down version of the full on 4850 i think it will be called A HD4850/4800 GT like they did with the x1900/x1950 series or call it a SE(shit edition or special edition like in the 9800 and x800 era and probilly come with the same dire cooling and fan profile

 

[springs113]

I wouldn't say ATi "annihilated NVIDIA" in any segment. They just finally released a competitive product that force nVidia to drop prices back to reasonable levels. Yes, nVidia had to cut prices, because they finally had some competition. It isn't like nVidia is hurting by cutting those prices, they are still making a healthy profit off every card/core they sell.

did you read what you wrote, nvidia making money(healthy profit) think about it...the only cards they could be possibly making money on are the g92 cores not the new gt200s...come on now...i dont even think i wanna comment any further.

 

[candle_86]

yes they are, Nvidia won't sell at a loss, thats a fact.

 

[springs113]

yes they are, Nvidia won't sell at a loss, thats a fact.

i dont really mean at a loss...but did you read the previous poster's comments a healthy profit!!!!! the gtx 280@ 649 was a hefty profit the gtx 260 @ 399 was a hefty profit margin....come on now

 

[ShadowFold]

They should call it HD 4050 and be like, our lowest end card beats your mid-high end lolololololol

 

[Hayder_Master]

amd,ati still killing anyone on them way

 

[eidairaman1]

i dont really mean at a loss...but did you read the previous poster's comments a healthy profit!!!!! the gtx 280@ 649 was a hefty profit the gtx 260 @ 399 was a hefty profit margin....come on now

lets not make this into a fanboy argument.

 

[btarunr]

yes they are, Nvidia won't sell at a loss, thats a fact.

Apparently they are. NV is subsidizing the GTX 280 heavily to keep it competitive in the market. These subsidies by those countless partners do seem to be hurting NV and rumors surfacing about laying off some partners. There is a thin line between subsidized sale and selling at a loss though. It takes ~$110 for TSMC to make the GPU alone.

 

[DarkMatter]

lets not make this into a fanboy argument.

i dont really mean at a loss...but did you read the previous poster's comments a healthy profit!!!!! the gtx 280@ 649 was a hefty profit the gtx 260 @ 399 was a hefty profit margin....come on now

As eidaraman1 said, don't make it into a fanboy argument. GT200 cards today have nothing that make them more expensive to produce than Ati's R600 was at the time. Then Ati released the HD2900 cards well below $500 and because of competition with G80 GTS they dropped to below $400 like a lightning. They ended up well below $300 in less than half a year. Was Ati losing money badly with every R600 card they sold? Price was lower and production costs were probably A LOT higher (80nm vs. 65nm fab process, with the time more complex PCB manufacturing goes down, GDDR3 has gone down a lot, etc.)

Think about it twice before falling for Demerjian's ilusions of a no profitable Nvidia. Because you must be influenced by him, otherwise I don't know where you came from to ensure Nvidia has not a healthy profit.

Besides the gross of the market is in the $75-$150 segment (because you don't really need anything faster to play anything out there yet) and Nvidia right now is king there: 9600GT, 9/8800GT, GS variants, etc. That's why Ati is releasing this card.

 

[eidairaman1]

To add another Note, Reason the Companies release these lower end cards is because 1- to sell the stock that couldnt obtain the desired clock speeds/capabilities, 2 to sell all their stock to make way for newer models that are of a different generation, 3 to make money in an untapped market. If i recall you could Unlock a X800 GTO into a X850XT

As eidaraman1 said, don't make it into a fanboy argument. GT200 cards today have nothing that make them more expensive to produce than Ati's R600 was at the time. Then Ati released the HD2900 cards well below $500 and because of competition with G80 GTS they dropped to below $400 like a lightning. They ended up well below $300 in less than half a year. Was Ati losing money badly with every R600 card they sold? Price was lower and production costs were probably A LOT higher (80nm vs. 65nm fab process, with the time more complex PCB manufacturing goes down, GDDR3 has gone down a lot, etc.)

Think about it twice before falling for Demerjian's ilusions of a no profitable Nvidia. Because you must be influenced by him, otherwise I don't know where you came from to ensure Nvidia has not a healthy profit.

Besides the gross of the market is in the $75-$150 segment (because you don't really need anything faster to play anything out there yet) and Nvidia right now is king there: 9600GT, 9/8800GT, GS variants, etc. That's why Ati is releasing this card.

 

[Widjaja]

No way NV are going poor over this come back from ATi.
There's always been a strong fanbase for nVidia.
Even if ATi continue to bring out affordable killer cards many nVidia fans are reluctant to switch.

 

[DarkMatter]

No way NV are going poor over this come back from ATi.
There's always been a strong fanbase for nVidia.
Even if ATi continue to bring out affordable killer cards many nVidia fans are reluctant to switch.

That works for the two companies and I wouldn't say Nvidia has more fans than Ati. G80's era probed that: R600 SOLD!

There's also another reason to consider. People are forgetting that Nvidia's profits went UP A LOT with G92. Nvidia's economical situation went up a lot from the profits that made them Company Of The Year. With all that into account, I would say Nvidia's profits are around the same levels or even better than before G80. They are just not so good as in the past 2 years, that's all.

EDIT: Anyway, back on topic. I'm reluctant to believe those specs. Ati with RV770 uses the same "modular" architecture as Nvidia, meaning that they have TMUs included in the SP arrays now (10 TMU/SP clusters) and 4 ROP clusters with 64bit memory controler each). Unless they have anormally low yields, IMO there's no reason they couldn't make the card with 640 SP and 32 TMUs, two of those 10 clusters dissabled. Two dissabled TMU clusters and one ROP cluster are enough to enconpass most of "defective" chips IMO. It works wonders for Nvidia, I don't see why it wouldn't work for Ati, unless they have very low yields. We don't have words on low yields so I don't understand. Also 24 TMUs seem too low to compete.

 

[newtekie1]

Apparently they are. NV is subsidizing the GTX 280 heavily to keep it competitive in the market. These subsidies by those countless partners do seem to be hurting NV and rumors surfacing about laying off some partners. There is a thin line between subsidized sale and selling at a loss though. It takes ~$110 for TSMC to make the GPU alone.

I don't believe that $110 mark anymore. That was based on the relatively poor yeilds of the first few runs. I'm sure yeilds have improved since the first runs.

 

[mitsirfishi]

To add another Note, Reason the Companies release these lower end cards is because 1- to sell the stock that couldnt obtain the desired clock speeds/capabilities, 2 to sell all their stock to make way for newer models that are of a different generation, 3 to make money in an untapped market. If i recall you could Unlock a X800 GTO into a X850XT

actually it was called the x800 GTO² which did have the potential to unlock to a x850xt from 12 to 16 pipelines althought the stock cooling solution was not brilliant could soon manage a heavy overclock with a zalman v700 or the old skool arctic coolers possibility of doing this with a rv770le who knows maybe you could flash it to a 4850 and it would be good crossfire on the cheap

but i do remember when having a 6800LE and unlocked mine to 16x6 instead of 8x4 in the days of agp with rivatuner good old times... didnt quiet make the mustard of a full 6800gt but hey you get what you pay for and take that chance