Information on ATI 7xxx Series Dec. 5th!

[wndrbr3d]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-Radeon-HD7000-GPU-28nm,14121.html

Interested to hear from the horses mouth. Hope it's more a jump from previous generations GPU than Bulldozer was for their CPU line

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[DeaDTerra]

hmm will be interesting to see how well they do in mineing and how cost efficient they will be

[RaTTuS]

http://videocardz.com/ati/radeon-7000/radeon-7970

[P4man]

http://videocardz.com/ati/radeon-7000/radeon-7970

IF those numbers are correct, it might be a bit underwhelming. 2048 shader processors @190W vs 1600 @188W for a 5870. Clocks are virtually identical. Assuming identical performance per shader per clock (I know, huge assumption) thats a nice improvement but not quite the quantum leap some may have hoped for.

[DeathAndTaxes]

http://videocardz.com/ati/radeon-7000/radeon-7970

IF those numbers are correct, it might be a bit underwhelming. 2048 shader processors @190W vs 1600 @188W for a 5870. Clocks are virtually identical. Assuming identical performance per shader per clock (I know, huge assumption) thats a nice improvement but not quite the quantum leap some may have hoped for.

The 79xx series use a completely different architecture (GCN).  You can't compare them clock to clock and shader to shader.
The bad news is that the new shaders are much more like Nvidia shader (more complex, more capable) which doesn't bode well for mining performance.  Each shader is more powerful but most of that power is wasted for something as simply as computing a hash round.

The 78xx series use the same exact architecture as the 6000 series (VLIW4).  Just smaller, cheaper, faster, cooler.  So IF there is a good mining card is likely will be in the 78xx series.  The 7850 looks like "the card" at least on paper. Still I wonder how popular that will be.  Gamers have been waiting a long time for a die shrink so expect to see a lot of cheap used hardware.  Cheap used hardware plus 2012 being the year of the FPGA I think the 7800 cards won't be adopted heavily.

Now maybe (longshot) AMD new architecture will amaze us but I think the 79xx will be duds for mining, although awesome for gaming (and maybe more complex GPGPU tasks).

[DeathAndTaxes]

As far as the 7850 being "the card".  It is essentially a 6950 which uses half the power in a budget card.

6950
Clock: 800MHz
Shaders: 1408
TDP: 200W
Price: ~$250

7850
Clock: 850MHz
Shaders: 1408
TDP: 95W
Price: ~150 (my guess based on AMD normal price points)

The 7870 doesn't look too bad either.  About 20% higher performance for 20% higher wattage than it's little brother.  However I think (guess) AMD will price it more than 20% higher.  Likely $200 and $150 making the 7850 the better buy.

[Gabi]

The new GCN architecture is very interesting.

It's different from the one of the current cards and the mining performance may sucks, but it will be much more useful for like almost every other GPGPU applications out there

[plastic.elastic]

The new GCN architecture is very interesting.

It's different from the one of the current cards and the mining performance may sucks, but it will be much more useful for like almost every other GPGPU applications out there

True, GPU mining is dead anyway.

[Gabi]

Same!

[Mousepotato]

ATI may intro a new HD 6930 card too (with pricing info about 7950 and 7970 inside article):

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-gpu-hd-6930-graphics-card,14162.html

[Transisto]

Dec 2

7990 6GB ram http://lenzfire.com/2011/12/amd-radeon-hd-7950-7970-dual-gpu-7990-price-specs-89652/

Could this be true ?

[bulanula]

Dec 2

7990 6GB ram http://lenzfire.com/2011/12/amd-radeon-hd-7950-7970-dual-gpu-7990-price-specs-89652/

Could this be true ?

It is probably true and the next generation of the architecture will not be any good for mining.

78xx may be good but don't expect greater performance than VLIW5 and the 5970 and 5870s cards.

VLIW4 still is inferior to VLIW5 when it comes to mining. Wonder if we will ever see another card like the 5970 with 3200 ALUs.

Probably no.

[DeathAndTaxes]

It is probably true and the next generation of the architecture will not be any good for mining.

78xx may be good but don't expect greater performance than VLIW5 and the 5970 and 5870s cards.

VLIW4 still is inferior to VLIW5 when it comes to mining.

While it is inferior clock for clock and ALU for ALU the overhead isn't that bad.  6xxx series don't underperform the 5xxx series by much.

The 7xxx series has the huge advantage of a die shrink and that means (slighly less than) double the performance per $ and per watt.  The performance per $ gain isn't that exciting but imagine all 6000 series GPU suddenly using half the power.  That is pretty cool.

However the 79xx are likely going to be poop.  The architecture is really geared towards large complex interactions that simply don't existing in SHA-256.  The wattage (guestimated by looking at connector types) is also worse.  That likely is from the power hungry and ultra fast XDR ram (which is beyond useless for mining).

http://www.fudzilla.com/graphics/item/25171-amd-tahiti-needs-8-pin-and-6-pin-power-connectors

So I stand by my earlier statement that the 7900 series is going to be poop when it comes to mining.

The 7850 & 7870 "may" be decent miners but given the huge availability of used 5xxx series GPU, the rising performance of FPGA designs, and the fact that mining capacity likely needs to decline not grow makes me think that even the 7850/7870 are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Wonder if we will ever see another card like the 5970 with 3200 ALUs.

Probably no.

Of course will will.  Moore's law marches on.  7990 has less ALU because they are more complex but it is still ~1600 ALU.  AMD won't stop making more powerful cards.  In say 2 years they will have a next-gen card (8000 series?) and the most poweful dual GPU card will likely be ~3200 ALU.  

[DeathAndTaxes]

http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/Some-Details-About-AMD%E2%80%99s-7000-Series-Graphics-Cards-Leak-Internet

Some speculation on pricing.

Looks like 7850 may be $199 at launch (not as attractive as my guesstimate of $150).  7870 might be $299 which would be worthless for mining.  Honestly I don't see that price holding.  Should have ~20% higher performance for 33% higher cost.  Gamers aren't going to like that.

I think the 7850/7870 pricepoints will slip after the launch day demand dies down.

[finway]

Poop for mining, good to hear that. 

[Mousepotato]

Poop for mining, good to hear that. 

Has that been confirmed, or is it still speculation?

[Mousepotato]

$200 card hashing at around 350 is not so bad. Not the best either.

Just going by the $/MH it's not that great, but it's a 95w card, which is pretty good.  That's about half what a 5870 does.

[chungenhung]

Dec 5 came and went... No sign of REAL cards.

[ZPK]

http://www.3dnews.ru/news/621341/
http://www.3dnews.ru/news/621328/
use google translate )

[ZPK]

http://www.3dnews.ru/news/621520/