5950 Rumor - Confirmation?

Squalish

Gawd
Joined
Aug 23, 2002
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I just called a well-regarded boutique system builder to ask about 5850 stock, which I hadn't been able to select from their website configurator for a month despite frequent checks. I've called twice before and gotten the same guy in sales, who seemed to be pretty confident/knowledgeable about his shit.

He claimed that they had been posting 5850's when they got shipments, but they kept selling out quickly. He said that they wouldn't be taking any more orders for 5850 cards. The 5950 would "be out in a few days." I tried to correct him about the 5900 series being dual-GPU, and he said he understood that about the 5970, but the 5950's would be single-GPU, and would be replacing 5850's in their systems in "a week or two". It has "a smaller die area, and has different outputs," according to him.

A little googling brings me to this rumor post from three weeks ago, which claims that 5950 is a single-GPU 6-output mini-DP card.

I wasn't sure about the business sense of releasing a DP-only card... but supposedly DP is convertible to single-link DVI(which will work up to 1920x1200x60) with a passive adapter - it was model-specific timing issues (they only installed 2 DVI-ports worth of chips) in the 5850/5870/5970 that prevented triple-monitor passive usage. The crowd who can afford 2560x1600 or 1920x1200x120 can in all likelihood afford $100 active adapters. Also, if they're sneaking the six mini-DP ports in sideways on a single slot cover, there's room on the other slot for both an exhaust grille and some extra ports on the other slot cover, as is done with the current crop of 5870's.

The "die size" is probably more likely to refer to a PCB configuration than an entirely new design from yield-challenged TSMC - we would have heard it leaked by now.

Can anyone else confirm/deny without openly breaking NDA? What are the odds this guy was pulling my chain, keeping in mind this was a sales line with the prospect of me buying his merchandise?

Edit: Denied. Product will be called the "ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 Edition"
 
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I was just thinking the other day that a 5950 dual gpu card doesn't make sense because the 5970 already fills that niche, slotting in perfectly between 5870CF and 5850CF. I think it would be a misnomer to call a 5870 6 dp edition a 5950 though. It would be weird and confusing for the consumer. But that's just my opinion...
 
Agreed on misnomer.

Far-fetched but seductive theory:
Perhaps the reason for some of the oddities in the marketplace (no OEM PCBs, just stickers on the coolers; very little stock; Eyefinity promoted but unfinished; "low yields" without changing fabs) is that AMD made what was basically a half-paper launch to try and manipulate customers into waiting for a full retail & marchitecture roll-out of the enthusiast portion of the Evergreen line by Christmas season rather than choosing between HD4800 and gt200 lines along the normal decision-making process in September, October, and November. Cypress/Hemlock chips are being held back for the 2GB eyefinity versions of each, which will launch in a rainbow of OEM color/port sets now that they've had samples & stock to work with for a while. Early adopters who bought AMD-manufactured cards participated in a 3-month driver beta test at their own expense, which served the dual purpose of proving that Nvidia would not be able to put anything on the market to answer AMD.
 
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Not entirely far-fetched. The truth may be a little less ominous, (or not, who knows?) but either way, it may actually turn out this way, planned or not.
 
Not impossible but I don't see the card fitting in the current range and seeing as they've more demand than they can meet with current cards it makes even less sense.
 
I don't buy the conspiracy. ATI desperately needs marketshare and the TSMC problems keeping up with demand are well documented. The 5970s yesterday got gobbled up despite the price as did all the 5870s and 5850s that became briefly available. The demand for these cards is real and huge, it's just the supplier can't keep up. With every card they sell ATI makes a profit so it would make no sense for them to hold back even one card. Especially since right now it's the video card half that is most profitable for ATI/AMD.
 
AMD were confronted about the existance of a 5950 when hardwarecanucks website showed pictures of 2 distinctly different cards one using dual orb coolers.

They've denied the existance of a 5950 and always have, they also revealed after the 5970 lauch that the cards seen which people though were 5950s were in fact very early engineering samples of the 5970 range which weren't even fully functional yet.

As for a 6 port version of something like the 5850 or 5870 I'm not sure, I know there's one planned and even pictures floating about, as for the planned name im not sure, I doubt they'd run with 5950 somehow, if they have any sense they'll keep the 59xx range for double GPU cards to keep things a little more orderd.
 
As for a 6 port version of something like the 5850 or 5870 I'm not sure, I know there's one planned and even pictures floating about, as for the planned name im not sure, I doubt they'd run with 5950 somehow, if they have any sense they'll keep the 59xx range for double GPU cards to keep things a little more orderd.

Just a thought but why not name them the 5876 and 5856 respectively? The 6 would clearly indicate that they have 6 outputs, no?
 
Whatever they call it in NA, I wonder what the odds are that this thing will see NDA drop on Thanksgiving to kick off the shopping season. Chinese site PCPop has a preview up of the "5870 6DP Special Edition" that I evidently missed. The second 1GB bank is pinned on the back, and there's an extra two pins of power, but otherwise the 6 mDP is the only difference.

If it's not here by Thanksgiving+1 minute, I think I'm gonna pull the trigger elsewhere. Crossfire support has been promised for 2010. Then again, I'd really like to see how important 2GB is...
 
Whatever they call it in NA, I wonder what the odds are that this thing will see NDA drop on Thanksgiving to kick off the shopping season. Chinese site PCPop has a preview up of the "5870 6DP Special Edition" that I evidently missed. The second 1GB bank is pinned on the back, and there's an extra two pins of power, but otherwise the 6 mDP is the only difference.

If it's not here by Thanksgiving+1 minute, I think I'm gonna pull the trigger elsewhere. Crossfire support has been promised for 2010. Then again, I'd really like to see how important 2GB is...

Thanks for the link, I'd sure like to know what thin bezel monitors they were using ?
 
I was just thinking the other day that a 5950 dual gpu card doesn't make sense because the 5970 already fills that niche, slotting in perfectly between 5870CF and 5850CF.

I'd agree, if there hadn't been a 4850x2... And a 3850x2...
 
Seeing how one 5870 costs $400 and one 5970 costs $600, a 5950 for $500 sounds about right.
 
When the market is willing to pay higher prices for the HD5800 series to the point where production can't keep up it seems easy to make a change in the build for improvements and still charge more money for greater profits.

With the way the prices have been on the HD5000 series I could easily see ATI taking advantage of their growing market and build a better video card and sell it for more money.

I wouldn't be surprised to see unexpected 5000 series video card flavors.
 
From Dave Baumann, yesterday:
"The Eyefinity6 Edition is a 5870 - to give it its full name: ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 Edition!

We're not doing 6 outputs on the HD 5970 for a number of reasons. For one, the volumes of the 5970 are lower than the 5870 and we can have fewer board designs so we had to pick a display output that best fits for the user base out there. Another factor is that 6 outputs is not easy from a design perspective - the EMI concerns are already very high for a product such as 5970 and then add 6 displays on that and it gets even more frightening! An additional 3 displays does actually have a reasonably significant power increase as well, so we'd have to further drop the default clocks to enable it to fit within 300W; you'll note that the Eyefinity6 edition power inputs are the same as 5970 even though its a single ASIC."
 
From Dave Baumann, yesterday:
"The Eyefinity6 Edition is a 5870 - to give it its full name: ATI Radeon HD 5870 Eyefinity6 Edition!

We're not doing 6 outputs on the HD 5970 for a number of reasons. For one, the volumes of the 5970 are lower than the 5870 and we can have fewer board designs so we had to pick a display output that best fits for the user base out there. Another factor is that 6 outputs is not easy from a design perspective - the EMI concerns are already very high for a product such as 5970 and then add 6 displays on that and it gets even more frightening! An additional 3 displays does actually have a reasonably significant power increase as well, so we'd have to further drop the default clocks to enable it to fit within 300W; you'll note that the Eyefinity6 edition power inputs are the same as 5970 even though its a single ASIC."

PCI Express 3.0 can't get here fast enough. It is evidently clear that we are being limited by the power limits the 2.0 spec allows. Manufacturers have to compromise or make sacrifices to remain within spec which limits the range of products they are able to design for consumers.
 
re: PCIE - I just think they should focus a hell of a lot less pins on 3/4-channel memory, and more pins on the system bus & PCIE lanes. PCIE 2.0 isn't a bad standard if the chip has enough lanes for 16x quadfire, SATA 6G and USB 3.0.

Running 40 amps of current from one side of the motherboard to the other isn't a particularly elegant solution. There are serious limitations in the capability of the motherboard as a DC power bus bar.

I think if you want to get much more complex, we either need a better place to put these massive graphics computing devices than the PCIE section of the mobo, or find some other paradigm to carry power in and heat out.
 
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