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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
327 Comments
View All Comments
SiliconDoc - Sunday, September 27, 2009 - link
I'll be watching you for the very same conclusion when NVidia launches soft and paper.I'll bet ten thousand bucks you don't say it.
I'll bet a duplicate amount you're a red rager fan, otherwise YOU'D BE HONEST, NOT HOSTILE !
rennya - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
It may be paper-launch in the US, but here somewhere in South East Asia I can already grab a Powercolor 5870 1GB if I so desire. Powercolor is quite aggresive here promoting their ATI 5xxx wares just like Sapphire does when the 4xxx series comes out.SiliconDoc - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
I believe you. I've also seen various flavors of cards not available here in the USA, banned by the import export deals and global market and manufacturer and vendor controls and the powers that be, and it doesn't surprise me when it goes the other way.Congratulations on actually having a non fake launch.
Spoelie - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
"The engine allows for complete hardware offload of all H.264, MPEG-2 and VC1 decoding".This has afaik never been true for any previous card of ATi, and I doubt it has been tested to be true this time as well.
I have detailed this problem several times before in the comment section and never got a reply, so I'll summarize: ATi's UVD only decodes level 4 AVC (i.e. bluray) streams, if you have a stream with >4 reference frames, you're out of luck. NVIDIA does not have this limitation.
lopri - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Yeah and my GTX 280 has to run full throttle (3D frequency) just to play a 720p content and temp climbs the same as if it were a 3D game. Yeah it can decode some *underground* clips from Japan, big deal. Oh and it does that for only H.264. No VC-1 love there. I am sure you'd think that is not a big deal, but the same applies to those funky clips with 13+ reference frames. Not a big deal. Especially when AMD can decode all 3 major codecs effortlessly (performance 2D frequency instead of 3D frequency)rennya - Thursday, September 24, 2009 - link
G98 GPUs (like 8400GS discrete or 9400 chipset) or GT220/G210 can also do MPEG2/VC-1/AVC video decoding.The GPU doesn't have to run full throttle either, as long as you stick to the 18x.xx drivers.
SJD - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
Ryan,Great article, but there is an inconsistancy. You say that thanks to there only being 2 TDMS controllers, you can't use both DVI connectors at the same time as the HDMI output for three displays, but then go onto say later that you can use the DVI(x2), DP and HDMI in any combination to drive 3 displays. Which is correct?
Also, can you play HDCP protected content (a Blu-Ray disc for example) over a panel connected to a Display Port connector?
Otherwise, thanks for the review!
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
It's the former that is correct: you can only drive two TDMS devices. The article has been corrected.And DP supports HDCP, so yes, protected content will play over DP.
SJD - Friday, September 25, 2009 - link
Thanks for clarifying that Ryan - It confirms what I thought.. :-)chowmanga - Wednesday, September 23, 2009 - link
I'd like to see a benchmark using an amd cpu. I think it was the Athlon II 620 article that pointed out how Nvidia hardware ran better on AMD cpus and AMD/ATI cards ran better on Intel cpus. It would be interesting to see if the 5870 stacks up against Nv's current gen with other setups.