Radeon HD 7000 Nearing Mass Production

beardawnwood

Limp Gawd
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http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/04/12/report-radeon-7000-series-already-nearing-mass-production/


Tick tock, tick tock. What are we waiting for? No, not for Fernando Torres to finally score for Chelsea (although we are, in fact, waiting for that to happen), but for AMD to release its latest GPU, the Radeon HD 7000. Digi Times, which is about as solid as source as you can get, says mass production will begin in May. That should put retail availability at July 2011 at the earliest.

The bad news is that there’s very little info out there about what to expect from the 7000 series, code named Southern Islands. One report says that they’ll derive from the same 28nm core as the 6950 and 6970.

As with all Radeon cards, the hardware is really quite nifty (and, at least with the current generation), but there’s always something wrong with the drivers. 99 percent GPU use on the desktop? What is that about?



http://techreport.com/discussions.x/20756


AMD might not be finished adding new cards to its Radeon HD 6000 series, but that doesn't mean the next generation is all that far away. The folks at DigiTimes say they've gotten word from sources at graphics card makers that the Radeon HD 7000 series, a.k.a. Southern Islands, will hit mass production next month.

The site doesn't reveal too many details, although an earlier story by SemiAccurate hinted that the first Radeon HD 7000-series cards would have 28-nm GPUs derived from the same architecture as Cayman chips inside current Radeon HD 6950 and 6970 cards. SemiAccurate expressed doubt about TSMC's ability to deliver the 28-nm parts in volume, however, saying retail cards might arrive some time between July 2011 and July 2012.

In other AMD graphics news, DigiTimes says three budget Radeons will hit retail shelves in about a week's time: the Radeon HD 6670, 6570, and 6450. We already reviewed the Radeon HD 6450, but a quick search at Newegg currently shows no matches for that card outside of a pre-built HP system. I haven't heard about the 6670 and 6570 before, though; perhaps those cards are based on the Turks GPU we saw in AMD's 2011 roadmap last year.
 
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Interesting. I hope this will not be a repeat with ATI coming out with their card early and Nvidia being way late to the game again back when the 5800 series came out. Competition is good.
 
I'll be holding out for the 7990, unless the 7980 can beat the performance of my 5870's or match it.
 
So is the 7000 series basically what the 6900 series should have been, but they couldn't manage to push out in time?

OT: Hahaha. Fernando Torres... LFC is laughing now with the money made selling Torres and using the money on Carroll and Suarez.
 
Just get them to work better with the BF series and I will be happy. Well, not happy but better than I am now. Plus I want a 157" wrap around crt with curb feelers.
 
Dam does this mean that I should hold off on getting my 2x 6950 2gb? Dam this tech 6mo turnaround world....
 
Be nifty if they release it the same time bulldozer will be released. It'll give AMD a chance to make some money.
 
So is the 7000 series basically what the 6900 series should have been, but they couldn't manage to push out in time?

OT: Hahaha. Fernando Torres... LFC is laughing now with the money made selling Torres and using the money on Carroll and Suarez.

How 35m seemed like a waste for Carroll but at least he has scored so far!
 
How 35m seemed like a waste for Carroll but at least he has scored so far!

Not too bad if you considered inflated spending from inflated income. Imagine if some fool decided to give you $1000 for an old 5970, and you spent $1200on a couple of 3GB 580s in SLI... Not so bad considering?

Basically LFC got 2 players who are eager to play, at a lessor skill level to one great player broken from injuries, lacking in confidence and motivation.
 
So TSMC 28nm process is ready? Didn't think that was the case.

this.

i'll believe it when it's out. I personally think TSMC 28nm won't be ready for mass production till about september at the earliest so then add 2 or 3 months from that.
 
WOW Great news, can´t wait to see how the 7970 will stack up against 580GTX, provided nvidia is late again. ;) This could very well be my Rage/Skyrim/BF3 card of choice. Especially if ATI keeps improving tessellation performance especially higher order tessellation.
 
Ya, my wife is gonna kill me when I order my new rig... Either BD or 2600k + Ram/MB + 7980 or 7990... Between that and the divorce I'm gonna be broke!
 
I'll be rejoining Team Red when the 7970 is out. Bet it costs less than what I paid for my 580, too. ;)
 
To me, it makes perfect sense to take the new 6950/6970 architecture, which is still a good architecture, and just pour tons more shaders into it that 28nm will allow. I would love to see double the shaders personally, make a 7970 perform as fast as a current 6990 can do, basically dual-gpu perf in one gpu, and I'll be happy.
 
plus the higher clocks. should see some stock 900-1k ranges on this one.
 
plus the higher clocks. should see some stock 900-1k ranges on this one.

Indeed, it has been an ambition of AMD since the 5000 series to get the architecture to 1GHz, AMD has always wanted them to be that fast, and it was intended for them to be so,. Perhaps 28nm will allow them to reach closer to that goal. Since the core and shaders/rops etc... are all bound together, those frequency increases are very important. I would love to see a stock 1GHz card.
 
I really really hope that this is accurate. I was planning to upgrade this summer/fall.
 
YAY I just got my 6950s and these are already "on the way"... well its fine i really dont mine being one series behind :D

haha damn...

If they come out with a Stock E6 cards i will be overly pissed though and will prolly sell the 6950s!!!!!!!!11111111ONEONEone!!111!!
 
At best this will be another 4770 40nm type of release, somewhere in 6850 range of performance at 28nm. You will not see high end 28nm parts till the end of the year.
 
Can't wait. Hopefully they are able to make some changes to the sound output of the 7000 series. 6000 series is quite loud under load.
 
YAY I just got my 6950s and these are already "on the way"... well its fine i really dont mine being one series behind :D

haha damn...

If they come out with a Stock E6 cards i will be overly pissed though and will prolly sell the 6950s!!!!!!!!11111111ONEONEone!!111!!
I would be highly surprised if these are available anytime before August, and that's about 9 months life cycle of the 69xx series, which is about on target for how video cards go.
 
Odd since tsmc said it was shipping 28nm tech to nvidia earlier this year, while nothing with amd. Quite honestly, as long as they come out and perform great I don't care who whips out their cards first :)
 
Meh I won't be upgrading until Skyrim and Battlefield 3. In fact I just downgraded to single 5850.
 
You say that as if 40nm just arrived. We've been stuck with 40nm for what seems like eternity (2 years?). Remember that HD6k and GTX5** were supposed to be 32nm cards.

you make it sound as if you'd upgrade within 2 months if you could... robbed a bank? :rolleyes:
I wouldn't wait for series 7 though, it's very likely they'll be overkill expensive for quite some time.
 
Don't forget this part of the article: "SemiAccurate expressed doubt about TSMC's ability to deliver the 28-nm parts in volume, however, saying retail cards might arrive some time between July 2011 and July 2012."

That is a huge time-span. The end of that time span being 15 months away.
 
you make it sound as if you'd upgrade within 2 months if you could... robbed a bank? :rolleyes:
I wouldn't wait for series 7 though, it's very likely they'll be overkill expensive for quite some time.

Huh?
 
i hope this is true. im in for whatever the midrange card is. this 5770 is working fine for now, but its starting to show its age on some things.
 
I doubt that the marketers would allow for the 7000 series so soon. From my understanding, Southern Islands is just a die shrink of Northern Islands (HD6000 series) with very minor architectural changes. NI was originally slated for 28nm IIRC.
 
So is the 7000 series basically what the 6900 series should have been, but they couldn't manage to push out in time?

OT: Hahaha. Fernando Torres... LFC is laughing now with the money made selling Torres and using the money on Carroll and Suarez.


the 6900 series should of been 32nm(thanks worthless TSMC). so its a yes and no, the 6900 series was suppose to be 32nm and the 7000 series is suppose to be a refresh of that 32nm gpu that never happened but in a 28nm process. there will most likely be a good benefit at the 28nm process since the cayman gpu was never designed to be on a 40nm process. they sort of jerry rigged it at the last minute to work while trying to fill in all the unused space on the process.
 
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