ATI's Southern Islands tapes out

ATI is on a roll, having taped out its next generation GPU family called Southern Islands. ATI might call it the HD6xxx series, and it could be out before Nvidia gets its GTX4xx line of GPUs fully fleshed out and to market.

The news is straightforward enough. Southern Islands (SI) taped out recently, and is now moving through TSMC. Although the schedule is very tight, if all goes really well we could see a demo or two at Computex in just over a month. This puts SI slightly behind where Evergreen was a year ago, but not by much.

[Nihilism]

lol semi accurate, you almost got me to click the link, I could smell B.S when I saw the title, it is all clear now though

[KingKiff]

-

[Nihilism]

You must not have been to that website, it is insane, they make console fanboys looks like hippies on prozac, a few years back the guy that owns the site was denied entry to an nvidia event and he took it personal, since then every article has been an anti nvidia rant, he lost his old job with the inquirer as a result of his insanity.

When the ati 3 series came out he said that it smoked the 8 series nvidia cards...then they released and across the board with every chip it was the complete opposite, he also said that the 4 series was "unmanufacturable" about a week before they launched...

Even google news has his site labelled as 'rumours' because he is rarely correct, he is a glorified blogger

[KingKiff]

I'll take your word for it... It did seem a bit suss...

bubbles +

[TheIneffableBob]

He is hit and miss. Mostly miss.

He did get Fermi right, though.

[darkequitus]

Although I would take anything Charlie says with a pinch of salt, other more reputable sites such as Xbitlabs and Fudzila have been talking up SI for some time now.

[evrfighter]

charlie was almost dead on with Fermi. For that he gets a few points. Most Nvidia rants you'd want to take with a pinch of salt though

[Nihilism]

He wasn't right though, he was wrong about the price, the clocks, the temps, the release date, the performance....

he guessed that the shader cores would be reduced, that's 1 out of about 1000 exaggerated estimates that were correct, when you spout a few gallons of sh!t each day, some of it will stick

[atticus14]

actually he is completely right, Nvidia didnt deliver the fermi specs they promised (not to mention the huge delay)- because it was un-manufacturable. And once you factor in costs vs profit its very arguable that the current chips are still un-manfacturable, as in yes we can make it, but at the price its going to cost it may not be relevant, but when your Nvidia and thats all you have to sell, you have to put something on the shelves to promote your brand, and stay on people's minds for their future bucks.

About a year ago, I bought a Core 216 because it was a great card, and I got it about 20 bucks cheaper then a 4870 - Performance was about the same with some wins here and there for both cards - but the core 216 ran at much lower temps, and drew about half the power at idle - I would have still bought it even at the same price - power savings over the life of the card will actually make it a much better deal. I'll still use my core 216 till SWTOR comes out, and depending on what improvements i could have by buying a new card, I'll make my decision then, unfortunately for Nvidia it doesn't look good - and unfortunately for me unless nvidia puts out something competitive ATI will remain overpriced, yet still being the better value.

also funny that you hate on S|A but you mention you like Fudzilla - pot meet kettle. You could really tell when Fuad received his nvidia check - he had some articles that would make n4G readers blush with his sensationalism.

[Nihilism]

quote me where i defend fudzilla.

I'd love for you to quote where nvidia "promised" any specs"

Based on the screwed manufacturing process they did not meet the specs they were aiming for, they never announced these specs, and they never promised anything.

The original gtx 260 has a crap load of shaders disabled, ( like 48??) and the re-release the 216sp gtx 260 still had like 30 shaders disabled, it has also happened historically with many ati cards, it just isn't talked about, sometimes they have to "bin" the top end cards, especially with new architecture.

[MetalFreakMike]

Comment Moved................

[kwyjibo]

Too hot, too late. You can claim that he got the minor details wrong such as the exact clocks, but that's irrelevant.

nVidia have done nothing but produce PR crap for the last 6 months, and Charlie has been constantly calling out their bullsh*t.

[ATi_Elite]

As far as specs those are still up in the air but ATi has been on a serious Nvidia butt kicking rampage and SI or HD6000 is seriously on it's way SOON. Reports have been of a Gpgpu chip that runs DX11 (Tesselation) and Ray Tracing like it was nothing and along with AMD Fusion will make a serious push to dethrone Intel as far as performance King.

a couple of months ago ATI was having manufacturing problems and now that they have gotten that fixed the chip will be tweaked and tested So HD6000 is coming soon and whatever the HD5890 doesn't do to Fermi the HD6000 WILL.

[champ21]

we need games that push current hardware now, before any new hardware is released.

even a 100usd gpu now a days maxxes out most games.

[atticus14]

as soon as people stop buying hardware, they'll be no place for Nvidia or ATI, as soon as profits start slowing down, they can't afford R&D to make next generation cards, that are not just small tweaks.

Things like eyefinity and 3D gaming really need to catch on for them to keep those profits rolling in, because it keeps you on a upgrade path just to be able to use those features.

[Nihilism]

I can't wait until the next series comes out...to drive down the prices of existing cards, to to offer a better replacement for the same price, I have a new policy with PC hardwarwe, i'll never pay more than $300 for any component again.

I was planning to get a gtx480 now and an i7-970x later in the year, but it's not worth the money, i'll get an i5-750 or something similar and i'll get a 470 refresh for $300 as apposed to the 470 now costing $500aus :S

[KingKiff]

I am currently running a HD4890X2 (overclock) and it does just fine, I am tempted buy one of the new the 5xxx series. But I think I will be waiting for the 6xxx series to hit before I upgrade again...

I just can't warrant the purchase for the 5 or 6 DX11 games that are out there... While the card I have runs every game I'v got in DX10 at 60+ FPS...

Next upgrade will be the big Core i7 extreme. 6 gig of 2000mhz DDR3 Ram and a brand spanking new 6xxx series card... Can't wait.

[Nihilism]

don't waste your money, 1156 and 1366 are dead sockets.

Next year the sandy bridge intel CPU's are coming out and they will be on 1155 and another higher socket ( aka you will have to buy yet another motherboard in a few years for your next upgrade )

Same with AMD, the 6 core PII cpu's will support the AM3 motherboards, but they are equivalent to a mid range i7 BUT next year AM3 will be a dead socket too, because their bulldozer cpu's will be on a new socket.

You should either get a cheaper on now ( i5-750, PII 965 ) knowing that it is a short term investement, or wait till next year and get a mid range sandy bridge ( which will support hyperthreading and will be better than the i7's ) and get a platform ( chipset ) that will last for many years.

Ram is a rip off right now too, next year DDR2 will be absolutely dead and DDR3 will likely be 30% cheaper.

It's all well and good buying the latest and greatest but you need to think about value for money somewhere.

You'll get a refresh card + faster cpu + new socket next year for half the price the 5000 series + i7 + ram + x58 will cost you now.

Besides you GPU rapes games still, we graphics whores always want more, but the increase you'll see will be much greater.

it's just a bad time to be upgrading right now, great for mid range pc on the cheap, but not for longevity.

[Cueil]

my X1300 is enough to make me cringe when I look at recs

[MetalFreakMike]

Well, I guess it's time to put some money aside for the new sockets coming next year then. No point trying to upgrade again when something better is coming out.

I think my current build will last me until the new processors come out.

Phenom II X4 955 3.2 Black Editon
4 Gigs of Kingston HyperX 1600 Ram
1 Terabyte SATA II Hard Drive
ATI Radeon HD 5870 1 GB

[KingKiff]

What I am running now...

Amd 6800+ dual core (think its a 3.2)
4 gig DDR2 800mhz
HD4890X2 (2 gig GDDR5 at 1024mhz)
Running on an old AMD board bout 5 years old, it only has PCI express 1.0...

With a bit of overclocking and tuning and some extra heat sinks and fans it still pumps. BFBC2 in DX10 all settings max on 4XAA still sits at 50-60 FPS and that's good enough for me, plus this costs heaps less...

I'm not going buy the parts I mentioned above for at least another year making them cheaper than they are now... Plus here in Australia (sorry not sure where you are) I can get 6gig of 2000mhz DDR3 for $300 and a decent board for bout the same maybe a bit less...

It would already be enough to keep up with the graphics that are coming out, then with overclocking It will keep up for a bit more...

EDIT: Plus what socket isn't a dead socket any way lol, they all die :-P

Long live the ANZAC spirit, lest we forget...

[ATi_Elite]

Yeh it's such a horrible time to upgrade (unless your money grows on trees) as with so much New stuff still priced high and Newer stuff just around the corner.

My XFX HD 4890 crossfire set up is still Boss and so far No DX11 games make me wanna run to the store for upgrades.

The software needs to seriously catch up to the hardware as PC games need to just flat out do more.