Better silent than stupid - German proverb
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Hemlock dual-GPU cards launch
AMD'S NEW flagship graphics card, the Radeon HD 5970 launched today. Well, sort of.
The event was celebrated with confetti, origami swans and reviews on the world wide wibble.
Although, the vaunted dual-GPU graphics card was officially launched much to the glee of gaming fans, it confirms what we've been banging on about the last few days.
Boasting two 725MHz Cypress RV870 cores on a single PCB, the Radeon HD 5970 is currently the most powerful graphics card on the market. It inherits most of the HD 5870 architecture's features; that means 2x1600 compute shaders, 2x1GB GDDR5 at 1GHz (4GHz effective speed), HDMI, dual DL-DVI-I, mini DisplayPort and Eyefinity technologies. It is, of course, a DirectX 11 part.
The card will be a challenge for system builders if ever they choose to pop one of these in a case, as it measures an improper 13in in length.
First impressions show some decent overclocking ability, but no power draw readings on these levels. We haven't seen some streaming benchmarks yet, but we're on the look out.
Fun as it may seem to whack one of these in your gaming rig right now, you'll be hard pressed to find one in store. Cards are still few and far between and considering TSMC's much-talked issues, it could be a while before stocks are plentiful.
Current listings for the HD 5970 in North America are almost non-existent while Europe lists but a handful of units at almost €600. UK pricing at Scan Computers is a whopping £550 to £570. µ
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2x1GB @ 1 GHZ = 4 GHZ effective speed???
Most powerful, eh? How's it do at DirectDraw? Oh, that's right. They stopped supporting DirectDraw in cards a while ago. Buggers.
man, how the worm has turned... ATI is the new nVidia and nVidia is the old ATI? Nvidia must be licking their chops right now... Fermi is going to make the people who wait and finally get their 5970s very very sad, indeed.
... but none of them are in stock as yet. They all have auto-notify buttons up. Pricing ranges from USD $599.99 to $624.99 for the five different manufacturers listed. Gigabyte and Diamond come in lowest, with HIS, PowerColor and Sapphire making up the more expensive tier.
Global Foundries is preparing for GPU production. Remember, up until a few months ago, they were AMD's CPU fabs, making chips on a SOI process. Now, they're getting ready to produce GPU's on a bulk silicon process. As soon as they're ready(they're aiming for the 22nm process), you can bet that AMD/ATI will start having their GPU's fabbed there.
And, for all of TSMC's flaws, they do have a 40nm process. Other fabs don't. So, it's either work with TSMC, or be behind on the process with someone else. And, that decision has to be made early on during the design of the chip. You can't just email your TSMC 40nm designs to Chartered, and expect parts to come out.
You should stick to quoting Charlie, you make more sense that way!
Ok I know that AMD's existing fabs, are marked for CPU production and Intel only prodcuse their own stuff. Is TSMC the only other fab ? Surely IBM must have some fabs left or did the divest themselves of those?
All this relying on one company to produce thier products is a disater waiting to happen. I would have thought that AMD would have asked for some production capacity to be set aside at GloFlo for the graphics chips side of the business.
"Also give the fact that the clock speeds are lower on the Radeon 5970 then the 5870 they may be able to use a few more of the rejected dies."
Not so. Actually the Cypress dies in 4970's are the top-binned ones. They had to use top-binned lower voltage dies _and_ reduce the clocks to bring Hemlock into the 300W atx power envelope. Read Anand's article for more info:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3679
Those dies run at voltages even lower than 4850's. Since AMD can't officially sell a 300W part, they're giving consumers overvolting tools to unleash the card's full potential.
Charlie Snorted:
Cypress/HD58xx cards just got a little longer, but not by much. One has to wonder how TSMC can be so bad for so long.
The short story is that the flow of Cypress chips was supposed to uncork on December 1, plus or minus a week or so. ATI just updated AIBs that it is now another week or two on top of that. Instead of December 1, think December 15. Not the end of the world, but it is still annoying.
The blame has to be laid squarely at the feet of TSMC. Yields going from good to awful without any changes to the chip are not a design problem, they are a process problem. How TSMC could backslide like that is beyond me.
Officially, the problem is a 'chamber mismatch'.
Chanmber Mismatch is Size of Vacumn chamber that Applys Metalic Gas to die, then more resist is rolled on. Exposed Removed & in vacumne chamber small bit of transistor material is vaporized & settles upon wafers washed off resit areas..
Many Variables, perhaps need computer monitored setting on equip.Each Use tests ALL calibrations & dial in setting, too. Probaly something Made Up in noodle El Chuckles.
drashek
these new cards ARE More Transistors Than Ever, Just that makes great value plus soooo long, mid/lower case sata, break out acetylene & Sledge Hammer.
Although it is affecting ATI at least they have DX 11 parts sitting on the shelves. Last I heard NVidia has under a 2% yield on their latest GT300 chips. Also give the fact that the clock speeds are lower on the Radeon 5970 then the 5870 they may be able to use a few more of the rejected dies. On a side note this isn't a paper launch as NCIX Canada has a few Powercolor units in stock for $699 CAD!
A pox on TSMC! I wonder how this whole 40nm muck up is affecting ATI's bottom line. It's going to give nvidia more time to get their new cards out, while ATI if they had any chips would basically have the market to themselves for probably the next 4 months or so.
If production issues persist, are both companies going to basically end up with a paper launch of their new cards?
Lastly, where's drashek? I need somebody to get stupid all over my internets. It's good for the lulz.