AMD "Oland" Radeon HD 8800 Series SKUs Unveiled

[eidairaman1]

Well its just a tradeoff, either improve on the current process, or gain improvement from a new one and focus less on arch and more on the new process.

Apparently untill now the tradeoff was almost always clear: migrating to a new process means more of a performance increase then improving on the arch on the current process.

i think they could improve GCN on the current process node without a shrink and release models with 1, 2, 4 GB Cards.

 

[NeoXF]

Well, I can see me benefitting from a card upgrade as I play BF3 and will be getting Metro:Last Light, which is going to put every system down on their knees. And also, it can't hurt seeing as you have a lot more possibility to max out the AA/AF with SuperSampling which is extremely taxing on just about ALL new games out today.

He's talking about games not really taking advantage of the great hardware both AMD and nVidia have to offer and how developers are incredibly lazy, especially when it comes to porting. I don't know about other people, but sure Metro "2" might look nice, but if it will require another 3 generations of GPUs to be played properly, then I'm seriously not gonna be impressed... or may I remind you that Metro 2033, originally launched durring the 5870 era, still can't be played at over 40fps on a single GPU at 1920x1080? Same can be said about The Witcher 2 and some other games. Also, consider that by the time hardware that will run these games properly comes out, most of the graphical interest will be gone, not to mention the story, the game itself.

 

[nt300]

I think this may be what they want to push gamers away from how good the game looks and to hae us see how fun it is to play instead.
Todays hardware is more than capable of playing games like Metro 2033, Crysis and Witcher 2, the problem is bad coding IMO.

 

[erocker]

the problem is bad coding IMO

Even when a GPU maker has its hands directly in the game's making? Bad coding is not of my opinion.

 

[NeoXF]

Bad coding might be wrong wording... less then optimum sounds about right.

And what do GPU makers have to do with the development of the game, they just pay them to implement their SDKs (3D stereoscopy stuff, nVidia's PhysX, AMD's Global Illumination enhancements and so on...) or render stuff in a certain way as to take advantage of their architecture better, and last, but certainly not least, (which makes up the bulk of it, especially in older TWIMTBP games) pay to have first-hand access to the game's inside, as to optimize their drivers as much as possible for the incoming title. With the shovelware of console ports coming this way, PC has little say in improving how the game looks or runs, GPU makers even less, as they're only a part of PC as a gaming platform.

 

[nt300]

Even when a GPU maker has its hands directly in the game's making? Bad coding is not of my opinion.

Yes wrong choice of words.

 

[jihadjoe]

You missed his point I think. The 7970 was the beginning of a new architecture that will be extended to the 8970. Like a HD 7970 2nd generation. The 1st generation HD 7970 did not gain as much performance versus the 6970 because it's built from the ground up new. Now that AMD is in the 2nd gen faze I can easy see the HD 8970 topping the charts with about 70% performance over the 7900s.

6970 was basically a 2nd generation of the 5870, but performance increase was nowhere near 70%. Unless AMD did something seriously wrong with the 7000 series (and I don't think they did), the 8000 series will be an incremental, rather than revolutionary upgrade.

OTOH, the 7000 series was a complete redesign compared to the 5000/6000 series, and yes there were HUGE gains, but because those gains happened on the compute side, most people don't notice it.

 

[NeoXF]

OTOH, the 7000 series was a complete redesign compared to the 5000/6000 series, and yes there were HUGE gains, but because those gains happened on the compute side, most people don't notice it.

The graphics drivers definitely weren't there at launch, Catalyst 12.7b/12.8WHQL fixed most of that, but still. Not sure how compute stacks up, then and now, tho.

 

[Widjaja]

I hope they don't drop the balls (Support) on their HD 5*** series, My HD 5850 is still fast enough and serving in my secondary system.

5*** series are in the DX11 bracket so highly unlikely AMD will drop support for the series and make it legacy.

 

[NeoXF]

5*** series are in the DX11 bracket so highly unlikely AMD will drop support for the series and make it legacy.

I don't think AMD have dropped support for older generations either anyway (DX10 part at least)... they just release actual updates for them on a much slower (but probably consistent) basis.

 

[revin]

Not sure I understand why they went back to smaller 256 mem buss?

 

[mediasorcerer]

Likely because AMD had performance leads at times, well before nVidia got more of Kepler out. If you are a top dog you don't have much of a reason to lower prices. People will pay for it. If 8000 series is seeing a price drop that big then it makes me suspect performance won't beat nVidia in the end so AMD goes back to competing based on price. Which is good cause maybe it'll get nVidia to lower some as well.

I agree with that, amd did a smart move getting the 7 series out some mnths back, when my card came out, i think it was around 500$-600$ if i remember, 3 weeks ago i paid 320$ 7 odd mnths later etc, nearly half price. I was thinking of nvidia for a change, but the equivelant card[660ti?650ti?], because its just released, was more pricey than the 7950.

Perhaps the memory bus doesnt make a significant enough difference in performance? , i noticed in max payne3, when i pushed the af [or was it aa] up high, it used much more memory, but not the full 3 gb, maybe around half if i remember, yet the game still jagged out on that setting?

 

[Prima.Vera]

I don't think AMD have dropped support for older generations either anyway (DX10 part at least)... they just release actual updates for them on a much slower (but probably consistent) basis.

Already the CrossfireX support for 5xxx is complete crap for newer games, and no signs that they will improve it soon...

 

[eidairaman1]

Already the CrossfireX support for 5xxx is complete crap for newer games, and no signs that they will improve it soon...

your comment is making me fall asleep, Im going to bed good night

 

[Widjaja]

We can only hope AMDs drivers a worked on more due to the extended time gap before each release and not because they have secretly laid off driver developers.

There is always going to be someone worrying about performance loss with older generation cards as AMD releases a new generation on GPUs.

 

[eidairaman1]

We can only hope AMDs drivers a worked on more due to the extended time gap before each release and not because they have secretly laid off driver developers.

There is always going to be someone worrying about performance loss with older generation cards as AMD releases a new generation on GPUs.

users of 12.9 betas are not complaining about crossfire issues at all so...

 

[TRWOV]

6970 was basically a 2nd generation of the 5870, but performance increase was nowhere near 70%. Unless AMD did something seriously wrong with the 7000 series (and I don't think they did), the 8000 series will be an incremental, rather than revolutionary upgrade.

OTOH, the 7000 series was a complete redesign compared to the 5000/6000 series, and yes there were HUGE gains, but because those gains happened on the compute side, most people don't notice it.

HD6950/70 were a new architecture (VLIW4) it wasn't a refined VLIW5. All ATi cards from 9800 to HD6800 were VLIW5.

 

[xorbe]

HD6950/70 were a new architecture (VLIW4) it wasn't a refined VLIW5. All ATi cards from 9800 to HD6800 were VLIW5.

I looked this up the other day. I was left with the impression that vliw4 was basically vliw5 with the 5th pipe cut out, because it was rarely used after they did some game profilings. Most peak usage was 3-4 pipes at a time. Cut 20% per unit, and stamp 20% more units out.

 

[eidairaman1]

I looked this up the other day. I was left with the impression that vliw4 was basically vliw5 with the 5th pipe cut out, because it was rarely used after they did some game profilings. Most peak usage was 3-4 pipes at a time. Cut 20% per unit, and stamp 20% more units out.

yup exactly why they did it, increases profits. when the 4th pipe is loaded 100% of time they will have a VLIW 5/6 design.