Radeon 3800 series



Article from Fudzilla


"Radeon HD 3870 and HD 3850



According to the post at Tomshardware.com rumors about RV670 being a Radeon HD 3000 series is correct. Tomshardware even posted a picture and other various web sites reported specifications about the upcoming Radeon HD 3850 and HD 3870 cards, based on RV670Pro and RV670XT GPU's.

According to the info RV670, or HD 3850 will end up clocked at 700MHz for the GPU and 1800MHz for memory. It will support DirectX 10.1 and PCI Express 2.0. High performance HD 3870 based on the RV670XT will end up clocked at 825MHz for the GPU and 2400MHz for the memory. According to the picture, HD 3870 will need a dual slot cooling solution. Same as the HD 3850, it supports DirectX 10.1 and PCI-Express 2.0. Both GPU's are made in 55nm manufacturing process and comes with UVD. "




http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php? [...] 5&Itemid=1

Hopefully manufactorers will come out with a singleslot RV670XT

There is a single slot version of the 670xt, its called the 670pro.

Its just downclocked.

I know that. I was talking about the RV670XT

This card better beat the 8800gt.

Well looking at that I must say I had much higher hopes. 256-bit memory, that's uh, not to good. Only things I like is the Quad GPU option, the physics processing capabilities, and, possibly, the die shrink.

This card, to me, seems more of a target to the HTPC market than anything else. Similar to the HD2400 and HD2600 series of cards. I had higher hopes.

EDIT: I really hope they use the darn GDDR4 as the standard for these cards as well.

I just bought an hd2900 so if this makes the price drop then crossfire will be mine!

The XT will use gddr4 at 2400mhz.

Seriously though.. will 256bit limit it? 512 didn't do it any good. Bet it cost a fortune over 256 aswell...

In return for what will probably be a TINY % decrease at high res that most of us wont notice, it comes like 10 or 20quid cheaper, which is great.

256-bit vs 512-bit is big. It scales with memory and the type, but assumign all things add up, it can make a noticeable difference. The problem is that NVIDIA and ATI aren't really using the full potential of memory bandwidth and GDDR4. Which is very, very sad.

There won't be too much of a difference b/w 256 bit and 512 bit because this is a PCI express 2.0 card which means 2X faster data transport.
Also the 256 bit is a good strategy since having a 512 bit on a 12 pcb costs way more than the 256 bit. Hence one of the reasons why the 2900xt is $400 and this card will be around 200 - 250.
UVD, DX10.1, SH4.1 will help.

aznstriker92, I'm 99% sure your wrong, 90% of us (if not more) will be using these cards on PCIe 1.0, therefor if your right, then 90% of the people that buy the thing will likely have a bottleneck, thus shrinking their possible market for the card. Therefor cutting into their earnings.
On another note, I'm pretty sure the bus bit, has absolutely nothing to do with how fast it can transfer information to the FSB from the GPU. If I have the right understanding regarding how the bus works......don't know how to put this into words so....
Image the data is a water stream, it is very wide, lets say 100 feet, then it shrinks to 10 feet, just to enlarge right back to 100 feet. Were the stream is 10 ft wide there wouldn't be as much water getting through (the current in consistant all the way through), thus preventing water from getting from A to B.
Basically what I'm saying is the even though PCIe 2.0 has a greater badwidth, it will not speed the 256-bit interface up to 512bit speeds.
Meaning it will be saturated and hinder performance.

At this point I'm thinking this is all BS and based on prvious rumours all put into one big one, with modified pictures. While all the money is in the mid range, nothing can define the mid range if there isn't any upper range cards, meaning graphics card will be put to a stand still.
Something doesn't seem right, and I think this is as BS, again.
Can't wait for the next over hyped card.
James

Keep in mind this is a the rv670 and not 600. The reason it probably has a 512 bit bus is they improved the faults in the r600 architecture. Don't get me wrong...The r600 is a great card. But it does have problems. The only reason I can see they went to a smaller bus is because they have solved most the issues. Heck...The 8800 GTX has a 384 bit bus. The bus speed doesn't mean everything.....I'm curious how the r680 will be...That will definitely be intereting in q1 2008.

Well James I understand your explantion but I meant that even though the 512 bit is faster than the 256 bit, The PCI express 2.0 will help speed things up. Not necessarily to the 512 bit speed.
Why is this bs? What do you mean that there arent any upper range cards? There are plenty like the GTX and Ultra. If this card is bs, then is the 8800gt bs?

How could I be 99% wrong? Im just listing information from other sources. PCI express 2.0 is twice the bandwith of PCI express 1.0.

You information is coming from Inquirer and Fudzilla, rumors are exactly that rumors. Remember when we heard the HD2900XT was a GTX killer, after that you should have all learnt you lesson, it's not really worth speculating till the thing is released.
Who knows the 8800GT might be BS as well, but considering we have already need a screen shot from a manufacture of the card, it's probably true.
We only have high end offering from one company we need it from both, we all know this.
If they are midrange cards then yes the 256bit interface won't be a bottleneck, if it's higher end then it could be, but it'd be hard for us to verify.
No it doesn't mean everything, infact the 512bit is more then likely overkill and just another marketing tool, but if it's an upper range card say around GTX performance (I'm not saying that it will be), but if it is, then 256bit could be a potential bottleneck and a 384bit(or greater?) interface may be needed.
Again the bandwidth of PCIe 2.0 or 1.0 is irrelevant to the 256bit bus.
I personally cannot see faults causing a need of a 512bit bus.
James

When I say PCI E 2.0 is 2x 1.0, I mean that it CAN compensate for the performance loss b/w the 256 bit and 512 bit. Im not talking about how relavent they are to each other.
My information can from secondary sources (fudzilla) but they got it from Tomshardware. If you look at websites such as gecube, they already have listed the 3800 in their products list.
Screenshot of the 8800GT dosent really mean we have the exact specs. Unless Nvidia officially released them.
Even if we speculated that the 2900XT was a GTX killer, the price difference that was released a bit earlier confirmed that it wasn't.

These cards right now are know as Performance cards, not mainstream or midrange.
Some benchmarks show that the 8800GT and RV670 are as powerful as the 8800GTS 640 and 2900XT

-But it can't compensate, thats what I'm saying.
-Never said a picture proves specs.
-It was still speculated as a GTX killer, giving just one example of many that rumors are not always true and the GTX killer rumors were released long before the posting of the price. AMD themselves wouldn't have known what to price it till they re-evaluated the market prior to launch.
-The 256bit bus is telling me that this cards are no performance and will not beat the GTX, but it also depends what the term performance means to you. It may mean something totally different from what I view as performance cards.
James

While it is true that PCI-Express 2.0 runs at twice the data transfer rates as PCI-Express; it can be noted that when comparing cards in AGP and PCI-Express bus types, that there was little to no difference in transfer rates. I do recall a Toms Hardware article some time ago on this. The difference between an X800 series card they tested I think at the time showed almost little difference between 2/x/4x/8x AGP and 16x PCI-Express buses.

With that said I don't think PCI-Express 2.0 is going to be that significant in closing the gap between 256 bit and 512 bit memory bandwidths. The change will come rather in a new architecture, not a new bus. At least this is my opinion, which is based on articles about buses and bandwidth.

Completely agreed which is what I'm trying to get across,
James

RV670 to get a name at 11th hour
Marchitecture Wars 007 RV670 late decision to decide R700 fate (name)

By Theo Valich: Thursday, 18 October 2007, 2:35 AM


IT SEEMS THAT AMD is just about to overtake Nvidia in the battle of higher numbers. Since Nvidia is so high on extending the life-line of 8800 brand with the G92_200 series being called 8800GT, AMD saw the golden opportunity.

With G92 supporting DirectX 10.0 and RV670 supporting DirectX 10.1 API, marketing war was set to be quite interesting. From one side, calling a mainstream part that can beat the high-end part 8800GT instead of 8900GT was a safe call for Nvidia, and riding the wave of brilliant success what 8800 is - but it seems that people like Pat, Captain Hook, Jon, and Ian are pulling things in a different direction.

The RV670 is more than a die-shrink of R600. It fixes a lot of inefficiency issues that ATI faced with a long-delayed child named R600, and now with 55nm process, there was enough room on the die to go large, both with precision of units, data formats, cache sizes and of course, API support.

Not a lot of people know that main target of RV670 is to establish CTM as a viable alternative to Nvidia's Tesla, thus GPGPU and professional 3D were very high on priority list. We already know that R600 variants in FireGL versions are demolishing Quadros (for the very first time in history of professional 3D, ATI has a real contender), so FireGL and FireStream guys are awaiting their RV670 chips with great expectations.

Radeon HD3700/3800 gets ready for a launch...

So, what to do with a product that has a huge challenge instead? Not burn it with a brand name that is somewhat tamed, and that was Radeon HD 2900 series. 2950 was a stillborn from day one, and now the marketing team is deciding between Radeon HD 3600, 3700, 3800. Taiwan just got the nod about HD3000 series, and we're just about to see the new chapter in the whole Marchitecture wars.

Greet Radeon HD3000 PCIe series with its member HD3800... or is HD3800 another deliberately leaked name in order to get leaky suspects?

The name is not decided yet, and don't expect it to be announced to partners up till the point of printing retail boxes, which is still some time ahead (but not a whole lot time left).

The move to HD3000 has to leave enough room for upcoming Q1'08 monster called R680 and of course, the mega-daddy MCM chippey named R700. R680 will be branded as Radeon HD3800 or HD3900, thus leaving very little amount of marketing space for the R700.

Realistically speaking, only logic for AMD would be to brand the RV670 " Radeon HD 3700", since this would leave enough room for R680, R700 and of course, R(V)710 and R(V)730, the value variants (they would probably take the usual x400 and x600).

Unless of course, HD3000 series is the final "HDsomething" coming from AMD, with completely new branding that may or may not wait in the halls of Austin and Markham. Radeon 700HD just may not seem all that far fetched, just take a look at the world of AMD chipsets.

One thing is certain: when it comes to number of sudden turns and unexpected situations, Mexican soap operas might want to take a page from the AMD/ATI/Nvidia book. µ