AMD talks Cayman delay, commits to December launch

[Jos]

Our original story has been taken down as requested by AMD due to a conflict with NDA bound information. Moreover, the post indicated that an AMD PR spokesperson had confirmed the release date for the upcoming Cayman-based Radeon HD 6970 and 6950 graphics cards, this according to another tech rumor site. AMD has denied this ever took place so we have removed the allegedly false report.

When launched, the 6900 series should include three models all targeted at high-end desktops: the 6950 should replace the 5850 with a good balance between price and performance, the 6970 debuts as the new single-GPU flagship, while the 6990 will use two Cayman chips and replace the current HD 5970. Hopefully, AMD will be able to make it worth the wait.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/41126-amd-talks-cayman-delay-commits-to-december-launch.html

 

[kevin1212]

Why do people think that the 6970 has to match or surpass the GTX 580? The 5870 was not faster than the GTX 480 but was still considered a better option, because it was more cost effective, power efficient, cooler and more quiet. Lets not forget that there will be a dual gpu 6990 that will certainly be faster than the GTX 580. AMD should not at all be concerned about the GTX 580.

 

[bugejakurt]

Why did they delay the HD 6970 and the HD 6950 with 3 weeks?

"Because we want to bump up Christmas sales with something new and impressive."

 

[Puiu]

it's good that they want to have a good product at lunch and the wait isn't going to that long, just in time for x-mas.
but... what i want from them is adobe cs5 (plus other similar software) hardware accel. this is something important for me and if they don't fix this soon i don't think my next build is going to have an AMD GPU in it although i'm a big fan of them.

 

[Guest]

I for one would love to know where this speculation about them squeezing more power out of the cards is coming from. They can't revamp any hardware architecture in that short of a time frame as far as I know. That only leaves some driver tweaking, and I doubt that'd result in enough gains to make it a competitive choice if it wasn't already competitive to begin with.

Personally, I have no trouble believing TCMS screwed something up, cuz that's all I keep hearing. I hope Global Foundries takes over AMD's GPU production at some point.

 

[vangrat]

kevin1212 said:
Why do people think that the 6970 has to match or surpass the GTX 580? The 5870 was not faster than the GTX 480 but was still considered a better option, because it was more cost effective, power efficient, cooler and more quiet. Lets not forget that there will be a dual gpu 6990 that will certainly be faster than the GTX 580. AMD should not at all be concerned about the GTX 580.

The 5870 was the better option over the 480, however, this was due to heat and power issues. The 580 does not have this issue, and is extremely fast. If AMD want to blow the monkey out of the water, they have to come up with something even better. I do agree that the 6990 will be faster than the 580, but this will probably be in a price range above the average consumer spending range.

 

[Guest]

This is interesting:

PowerColor company representative reported that the video card series radeon HD 69xx will ensure an increase in speed above the recently released radeon HD 68xx by 30-50%.

 

[bioflex]

if thats so then sweet......i just want amd back on top....lets wait and see what happens, and they better not dissappoint me.

 

[red1776]

it's good that they want to have a good product at lunch and the wait isn't going to that long, just in time for x-mas.
but... what i want from them is adobe cs5 (plus other similar software) hardware accel. this is something important for me and if they don't fix this soon i don't think my next build is going to have an AMD GPU in it although i'm a big fan of them.

I believe they do, when I open my new copy of CS5 it says its available and wants to take me to AMD's site for the GPU accel update. If you go to AMD driver section you can download the:

AMD Catalyst™ Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) Technology Edition

 

[kevin1212]

vangrat said:

The 5870 was the better option over the 480, however, this was due to heat and power issues. The 580 does not have this issue, and is extremely fast.

The 580 improved in efficiency but is still quite power hungry, in fact, the 5870 is still more efficient than the gtx 580.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_580/28.html

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...s/37789-nvidia-geforce-gtx-580-review-21.html

Then we still have the 6870/50, which in crossfire surpass the 580 and even the 5970, at a great cost and at acceptable power requirements. Frankly, AMD doesn't even need to drop a 6900 series.

 

[vangrat]

kevin1212 said:

vangrat said:

The 5870 was the better option over the 480, however, this was due to heat and power issues. The 580 does not have this issue, and is extremely fast.

The 580 improved in efficiency but is still quite power hungry, in fact, the 5870 is still more efficient than the gtx 580.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_580/28.html

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...s/37789-nvidia-geforce-gtx-580-review-21.html

Then we still have the 6870/50, which in crossfire surpass the 580 and even the 5970, at a great cost and at acceptable power requirements. Frankly, AMD doesn't even need to drop a 6900 series.

Hey There

I do not disagree with this. But (there is always a but), what you are pushing is a dual GPU setup. Where the 580 is a single slot solution. Yes it is still power hungry compaired to the AMD line up, but the mass anger over the 480s rediculous power usage is not a factor anymore. This means that AMD must up the ante on their next produc (which I belive they can quite easily). The timing is a bit off for this, however. Having it so close to christmas, means that a lot of people will be eyeing the 580 more than the 69xx series. I do not think that AMD are out of the game just yet, but they are late to the LAN...and frankly they are supposed to be brining the keg!

 

[vangrat]

vangrat said:

kevin1212 said:

vangrat said:

The 5870 was the better option over the 480, however, this was due to heat and power issues. The 580 does not have this issue, and is extremely fast.

The 580 improved in efficiency but is still quite power hungry, in fact, the 5870 is still more efficient than the gtx 580.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_580/28.html

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...s/37789-nvidia-geforce-gtx-580-review-21.html

Then we still have the 6870/50, which in crossfire surpass the 580 and even the 5970, at a great cost and at acceptable power requirements. Frankly, AMD doesn't even need to drop a 6900 series.

Hey There

I do not disagree with this. But (there is always a but), what you are pushing is a dual GPU setup. Where the 580 is a single slot solution. Yes it is still power hungry compaired to the AMD line up, but the mass anger over the 480s rediculous power usage is not a factor anymore. This means that AMD must up the ante on their next produc (which I belive they can quite easily). The timing is a bit off for this, however. Having it so close to christmas, means that a lot of people will be eyeing the 580 more than the 69xx series. I do not think that AMD are out of the game just yet, but they are late to the LAN...and frankly they are supposed to be brining the keg!

You know what, ignore me. I just looked at the prices here in Oz for the 5970 compaired to the 580 and the 5970 is cheaper...WTF! So yeah, I guess I will probably be picking up a 5970 here real soon XD.

 

[Mikymjr]

Oh and Vangrat on your subject about "580 being a single slot", I think you meant "single gpu". And your right about them prices. Sweet =D

 

[ET3D]

kevin1212 said:
Why do people think that the 6970 has to match or surpass the GTX 580? The 5870 was not faster than the GTX 480 but was still considered a better option, because it was more cost effective, power efficient, cooler and more quiet. Lets not forget that there will be a dual gpu 6990 that will certainly be faster than the GTX 580. AMD should not at all be concerned about the GTX 580.

The 5870 was such a success because it arrived a lot earlier than the 480. A lot of people bought it because it was the fastest thing around. Sure the 480 has problems, but a lot of people buying high end cards care mainly about performance, plus a lot of people prefer NVIDIA and would buy it unless AMD offers something significantly better. Since the 6870 doesn't have the advantage of being first, it will need to be faster to win the high end crowd. Doesn't mean it won't sell well if it isn't (and is lower priced) but I'm sure all enthusiasts would prefer to have AMD compete in speed and not just in price (like in CPU's).

 

[TeamworkGuy2]

Is there any news on pricing?
I will be quite interesting if the 6970 is equal to the 580, and YES, I read the previous comments about the 6970 not needing to be as fast, and I read other people's counter arguments.
However, I my opinion, the 6970 needs to either be substantially cheaper than the 580, say $480, compared to the current $560 of the 580.
Or the 6970 needs to have better performance.
If someone is going to spend +$500, they are not going to skimp the last $60 or $70. A power user is going to get the best performance they can, so I think that the 6970 will need to out perform the 580 if it wants to take a sizable share of the market.

I am still waiting for TS's Geforce 580 review...

 

[fpsgamerJR62]

I'm inclined to believe that AMD's 6900-series product launch in the middle of December will be more of a face-saving PR event rather than a hard launch given AMD's recent issues with 40-nm yields. Having said that, I'll be happy to be proven wrong if AMD can indeed have the new GPUs available in decent quantities next month. Product competition can only mean more choices and better prices for gamers like myself.

 

[Guest]

Yea, that performance per watt chart looks a little fishy. Listing the HD5450 as the king in ALL resolutions including the ultra high resolutions to which this card could never even play at. Heck the 5450 is listed a whooping 164% over the gtx580 at 2560x1600 which is terribly misleading.

With the words your preaching and charts your slanging an unknowing person who is looking for a GPU could be completely screwed. Now that you have insisted that the performance per watt is something that matters a great deal, this person would be pressed to buy the hd5450 even in the highest resolutions and there is no way that card could even produce playable framerates at all much less be more efficient. At framerates in the low low single digits, a slide show, of course that is gonna use less power than an actual card that is pushing decent frame rates. At best you would get a slide show using the 5450 at such high resolution and for this fact i call the whole chart bogus. No way it right, how ever they got their data is totally questionable. Bogus. The 5450 cannot be there in the charts unless they are cheating and counting sideshow fps when a card cant even function and using this bogus crap to say its more efficient then even the 5870 at 2500x1600.

Some ppl dont know how to put data together. Others purposely use data to mislead others by selective and questionable tactics. I dont know which is responsible for this chart but its more than apparent it is completely unrealistic ,

 

[Guest]

the post above was referring to
keven1212's links

 

[dividebyzero]

Yea, that performance per watt chart looks a little fishy. Listing the HD5450 as the king in ALL resolutions including the ultra high resolutions to which this card could never even play at. Heck the 5450 is listed a whooping 164% over the gtx580 at 2560x1600 which is terribly misleading

The HD 5450 has a TDP of 11 watts (maximum gaming draw 12 watts) The GTX 580 has a TDP of 244 watts (max gaming draw 197 watts) Thats is 16.4 times the HD 5450 so the GTX 580 needs to post 33 fps for every 2 of the 5450...even at 2560x1600 becomes a problem ( 5fps for the HD 5450 would equate to 80+ fps needed by the GTX) but at 1024x768 and 1280x1024 that is a huge differential to make up simply because of PCI bandwidth, CPU speed and in some cases, game fps cap limitations make it impossible to get the full performance of the card...which is why the top spots in perf/watt are usually taken by entry/low level cards. The situation would look even worse if IGP's were included.

So misleading it may be...but consider how many HD 5450 buyers would be looking at gaming charts, and I'd certainly doubt that anyone looking at entry-level HTPC cards is really going to expect the cards to outperform an enthusiast setup in image quality or raw frames per second considering they would already have waded through sixteen or so pages of gaming benchmarks that wouldn't make pretty reading on that score.

The only really noteworthy thing I see here is that AMD reached a pinnacle of performance/watt with the HD5000 series. The HD6000 series look to improve performance/die mm² at the expense of perf/watt (see HD 6870 vs HD 5850)- not an altogether desirable direction imo but probably necessary if shader/tessellation performance needs improvement and the limits of the 40nm process (die space) are being reached.

 

[edison5do]

kevin1212 said:
Why do people think that the 6970 has to match or surpass the GTX 580? The 5870 was not faster than the GTX 480 but was still considered a better option, because it was more cost effective, power efficient, cooler and more quiet. Lets not forget that there will be a dual gpu 6990 that will certainly be faster than the GTX 580. AMD should not at all be concerned about the GTX 580.

Remember last time AMD launch HD 5870 much time before Nvidia launch GTX480, but this time it is backward AMD will try to ensure the single ship leadership, cause dual ship its not considered for comparison with any single ship GTX.

 

[Guest]

Let me get the story straight.AMD HD-6970 was actually only as fast as GTX-480 with a few bucks less than that of the MSRP of the GTX-480, but at the last moment, Nvidia made a good move and launched GTX-580 at the same MSRP as GTX-480 but with a little tweak here and there and also with slight bump in performance( I m saying slight cause for me an increase of 20 to 30% performance of gTX-480 after one and half year of 5870's lauch is indeed slight). This infact placed amd into trouble cause they were planning to bring a product that actually beats GTX480,while being priced cheaply and also lauched ahead of a product that is expected to be faster(ofcourse the GTX-580). So long story short, 6970 was never planned to be faster than GTX-580. I am of the opinion that, 6970 when launched will actually be slower than GTX-580 in many games and will be faster than GTX-480 in a few games. Launch price will indeed be interesting one coz this will be a product in the range of 350 to 400 US $. This is what AMD did earlier when they launched 4870 and 4850.....

 

[red1776]

Let me get the story straight.AMD HD-6970 was actually only as fast as GTX-480 with a few bucks less than that of the MSRP of the GTX-480

Huh? It was? and you know this how?