1. The core speed of RV770 is higher than RV670(3870), however, it has not reached 1000MHz yet.
2. The memory that this baby gonna use will be GDDR5
3. Die size of RV770 is 250 mm^2
4. Both US Sharders and TMU units will be as twice as RV670's. Perherps even more.
5. It will lanuch in May.
Great news if its true. If this comes in May then its realy great news for AMD. This would put a hudge crunch on Nvidia and create some super great deals for consumers for sure.
The RV670 would compete where it currently competes, the mid range, except it would probably move lower, then the RV770 competes for the higher mid range or low hanging high end GTS-512 fruit, and then a potential R700 would compete with whatever other upper high-end is there.
I don't give creadance to rumours other than for discussion purposes, but the possibility of these products doesn't cause conflict anymore than the G92 eliminated the GF8800Ultra etc. There's room for all of them especially if the RV770 is anywhere near 50+% more powerful.
Personally I'll wait for the real deal, but it would be nice if this were true especially with regards to the TMUs (although I'd like to see improved address ratios too).
Either way, a long way off before anything solid, until then it's interesting to consider the implications of the hardware changes.
Message edited by TheGreatGrapeApe on 03-03-2008 at 07:50:42 PM
--------------- You need a license to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp (or internet account) - REDGREEN. GA to SK HD Freedom: 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
GDDR5? I thought V4 was deemed as a moot difference from 3?
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The computer allows you to make mistakes faster than any other invention, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila- Mitch Ratcliffe
1. The core speed of RV770 is higher than RV670(3870), however, it has not reached 1000MHz yet.
2. The memory that this baby gonna use will be GDDR5
3. Die size of RV770 is 250 mm^2
4. Both US Sharders and TMU units will be as twice as RV670's. Perherps even more.
5. It will lanuch in May.
Well GDDR4's main issue was the cost of getting the high end 1.8V modules, not the slower 1.5V modules.
With GDDR5 you get the benefit of much higher speeds, lower power consumption, and lower heat. They've been sampling it since before December with 1.8(3.6)Ghz modules running at 1.5V. Faster modules means less need for wire traces and transistors required for higher bitwidth support that would be required to equal that overall bandwidth, this reduces the cost of the chip and the cost of the PCB if you can support GDDR5.
Also they are increasing the transfer size and they are moving to larger single chips with 1Mbit at launch and 2Mbit already testing. That would mean less chips required for the same memory size.
Currently GDDR4 needs to be power hungry and fast for the high end, and the extension of GDDR3 meant the minor benefits GDDR4 were outweighed by it's shortage at the higher speeds. That's why it was cheap and plentiful at 1.5V on the lower end cards, but expensive and rare for the higher end cards wanting the 1.8V modules.
The other nice thing about GDDR5 is there isn't much additional tweaking to the hardware required to add GDDR5 support to something that already supports GDDR4 they designed it that way to ease adoption.
So for lower power, lower cost, lower heat, but faster speeds sounds good to me. If nVidia can get over their wire noise issues they'll be happy to skip past GDDR4 and go straight to GDDR5.
--------------- You need a license to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp (or internet account) - REDGREEN. GA to SK HD Freedom: 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Woot! ATI (not AMD, I know....I know...I like ATI but hate AMD right now cause of the Phenoms, ATI on the other hand 3870X2s are good) is back in the game with this and the 780G.
I think that the R700 is going to have a release date much later than May. I am thinking maybe July or August. And I just say that because of the news of AMD doing a revision of the HD38XX series. The current RV670 series is known as A11. The new revamped faster RV670 series will be known as A12 and will be released in April or May.
If the release date of the R700 was in May then why would AMD even bother to do a remake of the 38XX series with in that same time period?
The new RV670 revision A12 will make enough space for a new version of 3870. The new Radeon 3870 with revision A12 chips will work at faster clocks and should score better than existing cards.
The other thing that we can report is that it is expected in April to May time frame, which clearly indicates that the R700 family will launch a bit later than that.
The story behind the RV670 chip is that the current A11 revision that was launch back in November was not supposed to be the launched, but it was the first A11 silicon that ATI managed to ship. Usually by ATI, A12 silicon is the launched one, but for a change something went well in DAAMIT.
So for lower power, lower cost, lower heat, but faster speeds sounds good to me. If nVidia can get over their wire noise issues they'll be happy to skip past GDDR4 and go straight to GDDR5.
So that's it, wire noise issues. What exactly does that mean?