AMD's Radeon HD 5870: Bringing About the Next Generation Of GPUs
by Ryan Smith on September 23, 2009 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Meet the Rest of the Evergreen Family
Somewhere on the way to Cypress, AMD’s small die strategy got slightly off-track.
AMD’s small-die strategy for RV770
Cypress is 334mm2, compared to 260mm2 for RV770. In that space they can pack 2.15 billion transistors, versus 956 million on the RV770, and come out at a load power of 188W versus 160W on the RV770. AMD called 256mm2 their sweet spot for the small die strategy, and Cypress missed that sweet spot.
The cost of missing the sweet spot is that by missing the size, they’re missing the price. The Cypress cards are $379 and $259, compared to $299 and $199 that the original small die strategy dictated. This has resulted in a hole in the Evergreen family, which is why we’re going to see one more member than usual.
As Cypress is the base chip, there are 4 designs and 3 different chips that will be derived from it. Above Cypress is Hemlock, which will be the requisite X2 part using a pair of Cypress cores. Hemlock is going to be interesting to watch not just for its performance, but because by missing their sweet spot, AMD is running a bit hot. A literal pair of 5870s is 376W, which is well over the 300W limit of a 6-pin + 8-pin power configuration. AMD saves some power in a single card (which is how they got the 4870 under the limit) but it likely won’t be enough. We’ll be keeping an eye on this matter to see what AMD ends up doing to get Hemlock out the door at the right power load. As scheduled we should see Hemlock before the end of the year, although given the supply problems for Cypress that we mentioned earlier, it’s going to be close.
The “new” member of the Evergreen family is Juniper, a part born out of the fact that Cypress was too big. Juniper is the part that’s going to let AMD compete in the <$200 category that the 4850 was launched in. It’s going to be a cut-down version of Cypress, and we know from AMD’s simulation testing that it’s going to be a 14 SIMD part. We would wager that it’s going to lose some ROPs too. As AMD does not believe they’re particularly bandwidth limited at this time with GDDR5, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a smaller bus too (perhaps 192bit?). Juniper based cards are expected in the November timeframe.
Finally at the bottom we have Redwood and Cedar, the Evergreen family’s compliments to RV710 and RV730. These will be the low-end parts derived from Cypress, and will launch in Q1 of 2010. All told, AMD will be launching 4 chips in less than 6 months, giving them a top-to-bottom range of DX11 parts. The launch of 4 chips in such a short time frame is something their engineering staff is very proud of.
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SiliconDoc - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
LOL - you won't find me arguing, but that performance per dollar here is absolutely FAMOUS for guess whom, ati !Congratulations, for the first time someone other than myself conplained about it, of course, only when ATI has been implicated as a disaster in it.
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PS - I think what the chart is saying is, use some common sense, not go for 9500, but in your range you hope to purchase, the chart can be handy for picking between several.
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Also, the chart tells us, the 5870 is not bang for the buck.
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So, so sorry, it upset you so badly, the tips above for proper useage should be fine.
KaarlisK - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Actually, far more developers care about the next version of DirectX (pc-industry-wide vendor-independent development platform) than about PhysX (single vendor, low uptake currently). Not that PhysX would be unimportant.SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Not quite time yet, you can "pre-order" one of 3 versions at tiger..LOLThis is not a "hard launch", this is a red RUSE !
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http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool...">http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool...
SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Ok, hurry, the paper launch finally "cracked" a bit and there's one card of 4 5870's on newwegg that is suposedly "available for purchase".http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Sub...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi...1&na...
It's 1:33pm on the 23rd, so no guarantees there's more than 0 for actual sale....
Good luck on getting something other than paper. :-)
jabroni619 - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
I'd better not get paper... I was able to place an order at newegg at midnight when they were available and 18 hours later it's showing a status of shipped. ;)SiliconDoc - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
7:08PM CST Wed. Sept 23rd, 2009 -Out of the 9 "reviews" by "customers" on newegg for the 5870 card, only ONE of them has the revealing:
" This user purchased this item from Newegg " in blue by their name on the customer reviews tab.
LOL
So it looks like 8 posers and you. Hope you enjoy the XFX 5870,
"WoostaR"
WoostaR - Friday, October 2, 2009 - link
Thanks man, I actually went with 2 5870's. I know it's bit of overkill, yet future proof is better =)anyways, I have gotten over 17000 of 3dMark06. That's with Cpu.
I am running Core i7 @ 4 ghz
6GB of Gskill ram
Dual 5870 @ CF
750W Corsair.
EVGA 3x SLI
jabroni619 - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
Oh, and I didn't get the XFX, I got HIS. XFX wasn't even showing up when I placed my order. Only Sapphire, ASUS and HIS were, both the Sapphire and ASUS were OOS.jabroni619 - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
I haven't written a review yet as I haven't gotten the card. (hate it when people do that) I was a little worried up until just a few minutes ago when my UPS tracking# actually had some data. Estimated Delivery of 9/24/09. Hopefully it's waiting at the front door when I get home from work. I just spend the last 2 hours moving all the guts of my PC into a larger case to accommodate the card.SiliconDoc - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
Apparently your luck is immaculate.http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15673/1/">http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15673/1/
" We talked to partners and some of them might have a few cards next week and October is the month when things should get better.
The big guys such as Newegg and Tigerdirect don’t have them, and in EU, a hundred plus cards are listed here, but none of them are available.
A launch partner in the UK got 20 cards ...
We hope that Radeon 5870 is not what AMD management calls a hard launch "
ROFL - At least one place doesn't have to censor itself