AMD Quietly Reveals Next Radeon Series, Launches Next Week
by Ryan Smith on October 15, 2010 12:29 AM ESTThe cat is out of the bag, so to speak, after today's earnings conference call for AMD. One of the things that ended up being discussed by AMD CEO Dirk Meyer in today's call was the future of AMD's graphics division, where AMD's "second-generation DX11" GPUs were mentioned.
We will be launching our second-generation DX11 graphics offerings next week.
Later on, he also had the following to say about what's launching and what the expected volume is:
We'll be introducing our second-generation of DX11 technology into the market with some launch activities actually next week. We'll be shipping all the family members of that product line I'll call it, by the end of this quarter, and total volume think in terms of several hundred thousand, or hundreds of thousands of units.
No further details were given, so we'll have to see what they're up to next week.
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Mathieu Bourgie - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
I'm actually worried about the value aspect of the new series, in the mainstream ($150-$250) market anywayRemember when the new 5xxx series was introduced, the Radeon HD 5750/5770 replaced the 4850/4870?
It did so while offering slightly faster performance (4850 -> 5750) or actually slower performance (4870 -> 5770) and costing more: 4870 1GB was down to $150 when the 5770 was $170 or $180 was it was introduced, if I remember well. You bought a 5770 because you wanted DirectX11 and/or a lower power consumption.
Mind you, Two of them (5770) in Crossfire are still a great option today, for ~$300 or so, if you get cards with decent coolers. With now mature drivers, scaling and early issues have mostly disappeared.
The Radeon HD 5830 will a letdown as well, just like the GTS 465 was with Nvidia; however Nvidia replaced the GTX 465 with the GTX 460, which is a huge hit.
I'm hoping that AMD releases a card that will have the appeal that the GTX 460 has right now: Great 1080p performance at a sub-$200 cost, with SLI available, which scales very well.
While I have no doubt that the high-end/performance segment performance for the $ will improve, I have my doubts regarding the mainstream ($150-$250) market, which is exactly the range that I'm aiming for my next upgrade.
There won't be any DirectX 12 (AFAIK), improved Eyefinity (looks interesting according to leaks/rumors) and power consumption is definitely going up going by the pictures leaked so far on the web, with two 6-pin power connectors. Not much of a problem for me, as long as the stock cooler (Only one that's usually available at launch) is alright (Temps and noise under control that is)
However, we have absolutely no idea in what ballpark the performance of the Radeon 6xxx will be, since of the major following change, according to Voldenuit's comment above:
"The shader and SIMD units have been completely refurbished, and are now comprised of 4 complex shaders in a SIMD array instead of 4 simple + 1 complex shader as in their oolder designs. In addition, the "uncore" of the chip - the scheduling, branching and cache have been completely rearchitected.
This is the most significant change that AMD has done to their GPUs since R600 (HD 2000)."
Because of that, we can't really predict performance based off stream processors/frequencies numbers vs the current generation of video card.
Until that is confirmed, I'm holding my breath...In any case, I know that there will be a lot going up in the next few weeks in the video cards market, which makes me smile: competition is good for us consumers =D
Voldenuit - Saturday, October 16, 2010 - link
"Because of that, we can't really predict performance based off stream processors/frequencies numbers vs the current generation of video card."We never really could anyway. RV870 had twice as many stream processors as RV770 at a higher clock speed, but was only ~30% faster.
The standing speculation is that Barts will be about the same speed or a bit slower than RV870, and there are leaked 3DMark scores that corroborate this.
It's disappointing that AMD chose to rebrand Barts into the 6800 series and rebadge the old Juniper chips (the already underperforming 5700s) as the 6700 series. nvidia has them soundly beat on performance and value right now, but they seem oblivious to the competition. Fermi may not have been the killer blow nvidia wanted it to be, but the GF100 and GF104 cards are taking no prisoners in the pricing department.
CrystalBay - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
Yeah , whats up with price cuts . Is it true that this 2nd gen part is not faster in DX9 ?flyck - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
we don't know... but should they? current 5850 runs every dx9 game with all settings on high. There is nothing to gain in that area. It is on dx11 that they should increase their performance.MichaelD - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
I'm really stoked for next week! I haven't been this excited about a GPU launch since the 8800GT. I happen to be in the market for a new GPU, either high-end single or a CF setup of midrange cards. Shame that the high-end 6xxx part (Cayman 6970?) won't be released until next month. I'm as curious about what will happen to the price of current cards as I am about the new ATI cards. Hoping to see a price war of decent magnitude.SteelCity1981 - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
The only thing i saw that may stand out especially in the mobile sector is better power consumption over the 5xxx series. Other then that I don't expect anything big. This seems more like a update to the current 5xxx design then anything new much like what Nvidia's 8xxxx series were to the 9xxxx series.Kamen75 - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
As a AMD only kinda guy I have been planning a cpu/gpu upgrade in the late first quarter of 2011 when the new Zambezi core cpu's are released so that means a 6xxx series gpu also. I am expecting the Bart core 6xxx gpu's to be just an update on 5xxx series with a one tier step-up in performance, I.E. a 6770 will be very much the equivalent to a 5870 in muscle and power usage. Bart will be more about bringing AMD's performance per watt down even a little further. When the Cayman core gpu's are released those cards will be targeted at giving AMD the fastest single gpu cards and increasing their lead in the dual gpu card segment.I don't expect big performance increases until GF and TSMC role out 28nm cards. I also don't think either company can bring these next gen parts in quantity till the beginning of 2012 as 28nm has shown itself to be very difficult to implement.
jonup - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
This means you guys have a test sample already. ;) I hope you are hard at work and I expect to see a high quality review (as usual) next week once the NDA is lift off. Please rerun some of the old cards with the new driver. This way we can see the actual performance increase between the to generations. The Catalyst 10.10 seems to give HD58XX some 5-10% performance increase and it won't be fair to compare the HD 68XX w/ Cat. 10.10 to HD 58XX w/ Cat. 10.3 (or whatever version you tested it the last time).Thanks in advance!
samspqr - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
+1killerclick - Friday, October 15, 2010 - link
I got a 460, your stupid Radeons can suck it