Radeon HD 7870 and HD 7850 launched

"AMD is taking the wraps off the final piece of the Southern Islands puzzle: Pitcairn"
"AMD is formally unveiling the 7800 series today, but it will not go on sale until the 19th, 2 weeks from now"

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5625/amd-radeon-hd-7870-ghz-edition-radeon-hd-7850-review-rounding-out-southern-islands (20 pages)



"AMD has to get several things right about the products it's launching today, because the competitiveness of the entire HD 7000 series hangs on its success. First, it needs to create a sizable performance jump, over the previous-generation Radeon HD 6800 series; second, its new chip has to prove Graphics CoreNext as being a viable investment for AMD by meeting some basic cost/performance, performance/die-area, and performance/Watt figures."

"The two are based on AMD's brand new GPU, codenamed "Pitcairn". Built on the 28 nm fabrication process, this new chip holds 2.8 billion transistors. "Pitcairn" is a 100% upscale of the "Cape Verde" silicon, on which the Radeon HD 7700 series is based. It has 1280 Graphics CoreNext stream processors, arranged in 20 Graphics CoreNext Compute Units (GCN CUs)."

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7850_HD_7870/ (30 pages)



"We have to discuss power consumption, as I'm riddled how AMD pulls that off. If we stay focused on the R7870 for a minute you'll agree with me that it's in the same performance level as a GTX 580 right?
Well, the R7870 used roughly a 100 Watts LESS then that GTX 580. When we reverse calculate and measure the power consumption the R7870 uses roughly 130 Watt where the GTX 580 hovers at a 235~240W, and that's measured in game while it's peaking and stressed. So for the R7850... well we measure roughly 106 Watt. Amazing stuff really."

http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd-radeon-hd-7850-and-7870-review/ (24 pages)

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7870-review-benchmark,3148.html


So that's AMD done for this round. Now let's see if nVidia can launch Kepler next month!
Alex S

I am curious as to when the ATI/AMD Radeon HD7990 dual card GPU is to be launched?

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It's good to be back amongst friends and colleagues

Radeon HD 7870 and HD 7850 launched

Thanks for the info Alex :-)

Happy to be of service Chris!

For the high-rollers like JayCee:)
http://fudzilla.com/graphics/item/25353-radeon-hd-7990-to-cost-$849
I know it was written in December, but so was anything else I could find. Doesn't look like it's gonna be a long wait...

Also, I found some nice tables courtesy of DailyTech

Thanks Alex. That's a good chunk of data and prices.

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It's good to be back amongst friends and colleagues

Grapevine grew quite rapidly overnight! Kepler launch expected March 23rd with official details from nVidia on March 15th. Either 680 or 670...

Edit: Glad they help John! Was a bit worried of all the colour pollution but what can I do? I'm a sucker for stats/numbers:D

Calm before the storm...

GTX 580 gets price cut

If Kepler performs as well as the previews would have us believe, they probably won't be able to give away the rest of their 5xx series cards. I anticipate another major price slash after the 6xx cards are released.

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More news on the 7990 (unfortunately from the same website as before):
Radeon HD 7990 coming in April

Also:
Official GTX 680 specification slide leaks
(note the word "leak") Love the TDP!


An official mobile Kepler teaser:
Acer Aspire TimelineU M3: Life on the Kepler Verge - AnandTech(6 pages)

NVIDIA
(This link is of no interest other than it's official)

Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 brings an NVIDIA Kepler GPU to the ultrabook party - Engadget

Acer's Timeline Ultra M3 ultrabook maxes out Battlefield 3 - Fudzilla
(no source for these claims, though)

________________

LadyL wrote:

And please bear in mind, that until somebody has a Kepler running here, we won't know if any of the apps are compatible...

GeForce Kepler GK110 basic specs leaked

I'm not sure you can use SLI and TFLOPs in the same sentence though:)
Oh! We should have an official Kepler launch in less than 48hrs!



A word from the wise:

LadyL wrote:

And please bear in mind, that until somebody has a Kepler running here, we won't know if any of the apps are compatible...

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=67184&nowrap=true#1205443

Richard Haselgrove wrote:

I would advocate caution until the silicon hits the tarmac.
...
NVidia have, we think, withdrawn from collaboration with SETI now that their initial publicity objectives have been achieved. So we may be in for interesting times, again. I'll be trying to keep an eye on how it develops.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=67339&nowrap=true#1208476

Nvidia I see is going to make installing or removing the pci-e power cables like on the 1st revision GTX295, hard to install or remove as the cables will be facing each other, instead of like on the GTX590...

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Batman: Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb.

Kepler is here!

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5699/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680-review

Edit: It really is a 560Ti die-shrink:(

Official page:
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-680/specifications
http://www.nvidia.com/object/graphics_cards_buy_now.html
http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/graphics_cards_buy_now_uk.html

Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce_600_Series

Well at least it really is rated @3.1TFLOPs
http://techreport.com/articles.x/22653/7 (page 7 of 15)
...which means double the compute power per Watt

More links to multi-page reviews:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_680/
http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-680-review/
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_gtx680/
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/nvidia-geforce-gtx-680.html
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/03/22/nvidia_kepler_gpu_geforce_gtx_680_video_card_review
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1881/1/

Enjoy!

Here's a review of what's important to us: Compute performance. Looks like double-precision has gotten *no* love:

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2012/3/22/nvidia-gtx-680-reviewed-a-new-hope.aspx?pageid=4

Edit: also, newegg appears to be out of stock already.

Here's a review of what's important to us: Compute performance. Looks like double-precision has gotten *no* love

Shhh... don't tell that to my little ION GPU! It doesn't support double-precision but crunches Seti beautifully!:D

Shhh... don't tell that to my little ION GPU! It doesn't support double-precision but crunches Seti beautifully!:D

True, we don't need DP over here, but it might mean a re-shuffling of priorities for some apps that do utilise DP.

Mobile Kepler:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Nvidia-announces-Kepler-architecture-and-new-laptop-graphics-cards.72170.0.html
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5697/nvidias-geforce-600m-series-keplers-and-fermis-and-die-shrinks-oh-my

Careful now, this isn't a straightforward launch. The 600 series for mobile consists of both Fermi & Kepler, both 40nm & 28nm. It's a mess really.

I'm starting to believe the 600 series (both desktop and mobile) is gonna have a very short shelf-life... But then again you know what Inspector Callahan says about opinions!

Guru of 3D posted their review of the GTX680 today:

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-680-review/

EVGA has it listed as:

[url]http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=02G-P4-2680-KR&family=GeForce 600 Series Family&sw=[/url]

There is also a new Precision tool from EVGA called EVGA Precision X that's geared specifically toward the 680 (ver 3.0.1), but is backward compatible thru the 200 series. This will be the new look of tool as there will no be further upgrades to the legacy version of the tool.

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I don't buy computers, I build them!!