RV870 Codenamed Lil' Dragon

Quote :

It's been known for some time that RV870 would be a shrink of RV770. The node following 65/55nm would be 45/40nm, but we weren't sure if AMD would go to 45nm or directly to half-node 40nm. It's now clear that AMD will go directly to 40nm and aim for a performance per watt ratio twice that of RV770. RV870 has been code-named "Lil Dragon", which does indicate that this will be something small, yet something to fear.

The overall performance has been suggested to be somewhere around 20% better than RV770 with a significant drop in power consumption. This points to 960 shaders (192x5), 48 texture units, 24 ROPs and so forth. If this is the case, TDP of the RV870 should be around 150W at most with today's frequencies. This is just an estimate on our part as technical specifications are still hard to come by. We also presume AMD to stay at DirectX 10.1 for now.

http://www.nordichardware.com/news,7999.html

Sorry if this is a double post, I searched the forums and came up with no results...
Which is also kind of strange, this news is pretty old, but never stumbled onto it on these forums...
What's your take on this, and when do you think it's going to be released?

Reply to eklipz330

i like the name....Lil' Dragon....catchy .

i would like to see more ROPS and TMUs maybe. too early to tell anything.

Reply to godmode

Cute...

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Reply to dagger

little beast eh.
=]

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Reply to invisik

Nice name, catchy, though if it follows suit to the RV770 "lil can of whoop a--" would be more appropriate.

Reply to sdf

That sounds awesome, hopefully they come out around Q1 2009 when I have some money to spend on a GPU. Since I run an HTPC type setup, I usually leave my computer on doing all sorts of things (streaming to Xbox 360 in the other room, downloading, curing cancer, ect.) That will not only save on power, but it should be a bit more inexpensive to produce, so hopefully cheaper prices for us.

Reply to IndigoMoss

wow thats sounds cool. i hope to see what the this lil dragon can do...
=]

^ hehe cheaper prices yeah right

anyway sounds neat

hopefully its not just a die shrink, if its architectural (as in more than the g80 to g92 jump) then it will be nice, and as along as they increase the hardware capabilities

i'm just hoping current after market stuff works on it, so I can use my same heatsink

that is of course, if nvidias TWIMTBP GTX 380 or w/e it's called isn't better

although i might be a fan of AMD/ATI now, this 4870 really is changing my opinion, its image quality is better than that of my old g80 8800 gts, and actually recovers from a driver crash, unlike the GREEN GIANT

Message edited by thogrom on 09-21-2008 at 03:50:45 AM

Reply to thogrom

Yeah I read this article when it came out. I am very interested in this card. I heard it runs about 20 % faster than the RV770s.

However it will probably take until March before they come with aftermarket coolers which is what I am interested in.

So I may just get me an HIS ICEQ4 HD4850 now.

Dunno. The RV870 sounds tempting. Especially with the projected power savings.

Message edited by rwayne on 09-21-2008 at 04:03:17 AM

Reply to rwayne

I almost wish they would just not release the rv870... and wait to the rv970

so then it seems like an EPIC LEAP... and not an EPIC FAIL

but if they did that, economy would suck even more lol

cause then buying patterns for people would be off and what not... it just wouldn't be pretty...

too bad we can't always have a 7 series to 8 series jump... at the same time as the pentium to core 2 jump

Reply to thogrom

well its a die shrink, and more than just a 8series to 9 series name change... cause they're actually chaning things up... its actually more of a hd2000 to hd3000 jump in a way

it'll be a small performance increase, nothing to drastic... but this is also good news, this means this generation won't be too outdated when the new ones come out, and drivers should be tweaked close to perfection... hd4 series should drop in price, which should give some of us the advantage of moving to CF

Reply to eklipz330

I heard a small lil rumor... one thats not been redone as yet, but Ill include it here. Theres a small chance the 5xxx series may include a multi on its shaders. So instead of core speeds, the shaders will run at, and this is the quoted rumor, at 1.2 times core speeds

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Reply to JAYDEEJOHN

i just hope it doesn't blow the 4800's out the water...so when i get it i won't feel like i just got sh|tted on

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to eklipz330

Got any links to that story? That is amazing stuff.

Reply to rwayne

http://en.hardspell.com/doc/showcont.asp?news_id=3768

hmm apparently, it might be the first dual-core gpu...

amd is still afloat, i await the day my computer is amd/ati based. it was always intel/ati for me

Message edited by eklipz330 on 09-22-2008 at 03:26:21 AM

Reply to eklipz330

That's good stuff!

I thought about getting an HIS ICEQ4 HD4850 but I think I might hold off now.

Reply to rwayne

but again, there's not even a release date for this thing yet, this could all be rumors... so maybe the 4850 wouldn't be a bad idea, i still want one.. shudda picke dup that sapphire with the aftermarket when it was 160 = / thats whats i get for being greedy [its 180 now]

Reply to eklipz330

The rumor was early on, when the first rumors of the lil dragon came out. I saw it on 2 sites, tho it quickly died, but so has rumors of the 5xxx series. If ATI can do this, itll put a huge hurting on nVidia once again, cause thats nVidias major advantage over ATI currently. ATIs performance per transistor so far is better than nVidias, causing things like more shaders possible, as well as their memory usage/management and their AA resolve. If they get this going, and activate a side port that works and is applicable, things could get alot better. Both nVidia nad ATI need a small revolution, as Larrabee arrives. If they can make a few small jumps, Larrabee wont be a consideration, which is really to the benefit of nVidia, as it doesnt have alot to offer, and would have to change dramatically if Larrabee brings the changes to the gaming market that it could.

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Reply to JAYDEEJOHN

Re: eklipz330

What goes up must come down.

Often they increase the price before decreasing it.

Therefore it makes the drop in price appear a lot bigger than what it actually is.

Message edited by rwayne on 09-22-2008 at 03:52:32 AM

Reply to rwayne

Thats the problem with getting hardware

Theres always something new and better on the horizon.

but thats what also makes it totally amazing

what an interesting world we live in

Reply to thogrom

Yeah but it was a really long time for about 18 months or more when there was not much improvement.

ATI 2k series to the 3k series.
GeForce G80 chips to the G92 Chips.

Efficiency improved but top end performance did not.

The 48XX series are the first cards I have been excited about in a long time.

I think Nvidia has something big planned for 2009. I heard something about a new chip which they say is 1.5 times faster than anything they have out now.

Hey, BTW...Isn't the 4850x2 set to release on September 25th?

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by rwayne on 09-22-2008 at 05:49:11 AM

Reply to rwayne

rwayne wrote :

Yeah but it was a really long time for about 18 months or more when there was not much improvement.

ATI 2k series to the 3k series.
GeForce G80 chips to the G92 Chips.

Efficiency improved but top end performance did not.

The 48XX series are the first cards I have been excited about in a long time.

I think Nvidia has something big planned for 2009. I heard something about a new chip which they say is 1.5 times faster than anything they have out now.

The amount of performance increase from g80 to g92 is a lot more than from 2900xt to 3870.

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Reply to dagger

The 29XX series are some of the worst cards ever released.

Reply to rwayne

BUT, the increase is alot greater going from the 2900 to the 4870 than the 88gtx to the 280GTX

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Reply to JAYDEEJOHN

eklipz330 wrote :

i just hope it doesn't blow the 4800's out the water...so when i get it i won't feel like i just got sh|tted on

While I wouldn't use those choice of words, I did not expect the 4xxx series to be out in June. I spent $450 for a card the first week of February that's now equaled in performance by a just under $200 card.

That's the last time I spend that much for a card. I'll go back to my old price of $200-250 when there's a generation of ATI cards that's significantly better than the one I have now; probably when the "5880x2" arrives in 2010! :lol:

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Reply to yipsl

@ jaydee:

i didn't hear anything about the shader multiplier, but i've heard things like 1.2 times the performance of the current gen.

maybe it was ati's plan all along....

"lets release some TERRIBLE cards, get ourselves close to becoming bankrupt, than take out some of these [shows 4870x2], EVERYONE WILL BE WOW'D!"

Reply to eklipz330

When Id heard the 1.2 on shaders, it was talking about the shaders. That was ealy on, first reports. They may have mutated to 1.2 times performance, tho was that 480 shaders or 800 shaders? You never know

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Reply to JAYDEEJOHN

What I read from Fudzilla (several weeks ago) said that the 58XX series would have a 20% increase in performance while also being more energy efficient.

So that sounds about right based upon the article you provided.

x1.2 the performance. .2 out of 10 = 20%

Reply to rwayne

Supposedly, theres to be 960 shaders, or 20% more, and a core bump. Dont discount the shader change tho, because I had heard it in two sites, as well as those numbers, tho 1 had it a 2000 for a x2. Who knows? We also have to take into consideration that the GDDR5 will be faster more than likely as well. At this point, lots of opportunities for change

------------------------------ If we lose this freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment, those who had the most to lose, did the least to prevent its happening
Reply to JAYDEEJOHN

I hope they put a better cooler on the 58XX series.

I am still amazed that ATI set the default fan speeds so low on the 48XX series cards.

The silcone that the 48XX series are made from can handle that level of heat however why have a card run hot when it does not have too?

They should of made the default fan speed 30/40% then they would not of had this problem.

Message edited by rwayne on 09-22-2008 at 02:57:14 PM

Reply to rwayne

The later drivers this year will fix this. maybe 9.11 or for sure 9.12

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Reply to JAYDEEJOHN

oooo soo jaydee

you mean 1.2 the shaders of the current gen? cause as of now, 4850/4870 have 800, 1.2 times that and its 160... so 960 sp's makes alotta sense, not 1.2 multi , 1.2 the sp's

Reply to eklipz330

I mean what Id said. Theyd have a multiplyer on the shaders. 1.2 and also have 960 shaders as well. Ive heard both, but the multi was going with a rumor of 1000 shaders ATT. So, I havnt heard more about the multi since then, tho Ive heard like everyone else the 960 shader count. Im saying that both are a possibility here.

------------------------------ If we lose this freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment, those who had the most to lose, did the least to prevent its happening
Reply to JAYDEEJOHN

It's surprising how accurate some of these rumors are when things are so far off. You could find the exact specs for the 280 GTX about half a year before it came out, 3 months before anyone here was talking about how fake they were. In ati's case I read around 2000 shaders for the top end winter season product back before the 4850 came out. This seems to confirm that further. If they do end up separating the shader/core clock I hope its something nice and even like 800/1000. Though they've done pretty well with the linked core speeds.

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Reply to LAN_deRf_HA

If they do this, use the multi, the power would be minimized and still maintain lower core speeds and get the performance

------------------------------ If we lose this freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment, those who had the most to lose, did the least to prevent its happening
Reply to JAYDEEJOHN

gawd i hate when companies keep secrets -_-

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to eklipz330

eklipz330 wrote :

gawd i hate when companies keep secrets -_-

It builds hype, hype is good.

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Reply to dagger