AMD's graphics division ATI has been expected to move to RV870 in a few quarters, and some interesting details on this new GPU have surfaced the Web today. A few weeks ago, ATI already unveiled some details on its objectives for 2009, and we've already learned that the company plans to launch 40nm chips next year. This time, we hear that the RV870 is going to be a 40nm part for sure. Also, the HD 5870 card based on this GPU is reported to come with a 1.5 TFLOPS computational horsepower. The great news about RV870 does not end here. It will feature 25 percent more shader processors compared to RV770. That is why its performance will be highly leveraged from the 1 TFLOP that HD 4870 can reach today. Besides, the dimensions of the GPU will be lower considerably. The die is said to be 205 mm². For the record, RV770 is 256 mm², while NVIDIA's GTX 280 is quite big at 576 mm². As expected, the GPU will feature support for DirectX11. Previous news showed that DirectX11 should surface in mid-2009 and that games based on it would hit the market in the third quarter of the next year. The new standard should mark visible changes in the market, and it will come for Vista as well as for Windows 7. The RV870-based cards that will come to the market will feature GDDR5 memory, plus a 512 bit memory interface. According to hardspell, which cites sources from the manufacturer, the memory will have a 150-160 GB/s bandwidth. The cooling system used on the cards will also be a brand new one. Since RV870 will come with such a small die, the HD 5870 X2 will not feature two separate GPUs, but two RV770 cores stacked on top of each other, the same we've seen on Pentium-D. If things go that way, users will be able to set up three HD 5870 X2 cards on a single motherboard, which would give them an extremely great amount of horsepower. Hopefully, ATI will develop the CrossFireX technology so as to scale up well enough for three or more GPUs on the same system. If the rumors on RV870 and HD 5870 turn to be true, then we'll see a nice looking and great performing card launched by ATI in mid-2009. Article from softpedia Nice eh!?
That's way to early to speculate but I doubt the prices will be very much higher than the current top of the line cards.
I gues 512-bit bus and GDDR5 would be for the top line card (5870 and 5870 x2), but I wonder about the HD5850 and the cheaper HD56x0? Maybe DDR5 and a 256-bus for the -850 and DDR3/256-bit bus for the -600 series? Personally, I hope that AMD can release another series of powerfull, yet affordable mid-range cards (like the 4850), only with newer features and most importaint, better cooling on the reference models. Say (pure speculation) 1.1 TFlops for a mid-rane 5850 would be awsome!
This is impressive. It'll be interesting to see how this stacks up against any die shrunk ddr5 Nvidia GTX series card.
I think 256-bit will stay strong, concidering GDDR5 in the next year will hit 5Ghz+. Why waste die space with more interconnect for 512-bit bus, when GDDR5 can do it for you. Thats my theory. My guess is 2000sp/32rop/100TMUs with a die around the size of G92 (330mm2). Clocks would prob be the same they are now, 625/750. Always fun guessing. But i stongly see only a full 512-bit bus on the X2, hopefully with a shared bus this time around and no need for a CF bridge chip.
a true dual core in essense...... if they can muster it... it will be something to see so long as it's not screwed up
I'm betting they will do it right. Now that they are part of AMD, they have access to the AMD CPU dual core tech, so they wouldn't have had to re-invent the wheel to get a true dual core GPU. It should be a more elegant solution than the X2 series. Looks like I may be upgrading sooner than I thought if they get a true dual core working
If i hadn't sold my last HD3870 i would have held onto it until the first dual core ati video card arrived..... but i'm definitely not touching crossfire for quite some time, not because it sucked, but because it wasn't as fruitful.
it's not like it will suddenly jump to $1,000+, every new gen ends up launching at about similar prices, right? i've been considering selling my now couple months old 4870x2 to my friend & getting the next gen ATI for a while now...
512-bit bus + GDDR5 is going to be mega expensive. I suspect only the topmodels will have this configuration, the midrange (RV870Pro?) could handle itself with 256-bit + a new generation GDDR5 for more bandwidth.
There's already talk of a 40nm 4830 with 128 bit bus and gddr5, so that answers any midrange questions. There's got to be something between that and the 5870 though, so I'm guessing maybe the 4870 will get similar treatment.
