Items tagged with R600
Video game industry analyst Michael Pachter has a reputation for accurate sales forecasts and an ability to predict changes in console pricing. That said, Pachter may have gone a bridge too far with his bifurcated discussion concerning Nintendo's Wii U. While he praised the Wii U as "the most impactful reveal of the show," Pachter has declared the Wii U brand unimaginative and implied it qualified as a "worst ever." The real criticism, however, is reserved for Nintendo's hardware decisions. "We think that Wii U is arriving two years late, given that the other HD consoles already have peripherals for movement," said Pachter, reasoning that since Nintendo didn't get specific about tech specs, the...
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ATI designed the original Wii's 'Hollywood' GPU and is handling the next-generation Wii U's graphics processor as well. AMD made its own announcement in the wake of the Wii U's debut yesterday, claiming that the custom Radeon HD GPU will enable "high-definition graphics support; rich multimedia acceleration and playback; and multiple display support." We suspect the new chip's 'multiple display support' refers to the new controller's 6.2" display rather than any multi-screen co-op gaming experiences. It makes sense for Nintendo to go this route--the less work that happens on the controller, the longer its battery life will be. The move to a "Radeon HD" GPU sheds some light on what we can expect...
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One of the ways that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo gradually reduce the price of consoles is by adopting increasingly advanced manufacturing technologies that reduce the size and power consumption of the console's components. Microsoft has combined both the CPU and GPU inside the XBox 360 S into a single chip configuration; details on the new design are starting to leak. The XBox 360 is an infamous example of the problems manufacturers can encounter when pushing the performance envelope—the initial XBox consoles weren't designed with sufficient thermal tolerances which lead to the infamous RROD (Red Rings of Death). It's been several years since Microsoft patched that particular problem,...
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Take a look at the red-head standing over there. If you're a regular reader here at HotHardware, you know exactly who she is. That's ATI's adventurous and oh-so-curvaceous front-woman, Ruby. And she's holding that 'Perfect 10' sign for a very good reason. It's probably not the reason you're thinking of, however. For a digital personality, she's definitely pretty darn hot; maybe not a 10 in our book, but pretty darn close nonetheless. No, she's holding that sign not as proclamation of her hotness, but rather to give you all a hint as to what ATI has in store for the PC in the coming days, weeks, and months. Today is the day many PC enthusiasts have been waiting for. And we...
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Good Morning all,Today AMD is taking the wraps off their new ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT and we've gota full performance evaluation and showcase for you here: ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT: R600 Has Arrived "On some levels, the R600 borrows technology from the Radeon X1000 series and the Xenos GPU found in the Xbox360, but there is plenty of new technology employed in this GPU as well.? The R600 has a new command processor that processes command streams from the graphics driver and can reduce overhead by as much as 30%.? There is also a new setup engine that more efficiently prepares data for processing by the stream processing units.? Also, there are 320 Stream Processing Units, beefed...
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Vijay Sharma of the combined AMD/ATI companies, is Director of Desktop Discrete Graphics Product Marketing. We've spent time talking with Vijay many times and he always offers an insightful perspective on not only what's going on in 3D Graphics technologies for ATI but also within the industry in general. Our German comrades at PCGamesHardware.de got an earful of good the good stuff from Vijay at a recent meeting with him at Cebit. Though the translation is a bit spotty, there are some juicy bits in here... " I don't want to get too far into the architecture at this stage. But certainly as you increase the compute capabilities of the graphics engine, you'll...
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ExtremeTech has an article posted with information regarding AMD's upcoming "Barcelona" processors and the future R600 family of graphics cards. The information was compiled last week during a briefing in San Francisco and includes quotes taken directly from AMD's Mario Rivas, Henri Richard, and former ATI CEO Dave Orton. "We pushed out the launch of the R600 and people thought is must be a silicon or software problem...it's got to be a bug," said Dave Orton, president and chief executiveof ATI. "In fact, our mainstream chips are in 65nm and are coming out extremely fast. Because of that configuration, we have...
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R600, ATI's high-end upcoming DirectX 10 GPU, has faced a few bumps in the road, as problems have delayed it from its original intended release in late 2006 to perhaps one as late as mid 2007. But does it really matter? According to an article on The Inq, not really. Graphics companies make their major profits off of the mid-range cards because the top dollar products are affordable to only a relatively small group of enthusiasts. Lets look at what was delayed and why. It was R600, the top dog of the bunch, not the lower end RV630 and RV610. If you look at the lust factor, there is R600 and other products, by the time you get to the RV610, you are in the territory of low-end stuff that no...
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According to a story on The Inq, AMD's upcoming R600 will support HDMI output. Not only will the R600 be able to output video via HDMI to two independent displays simultaneously at resolutions up to 1440p, but the card will also add audio output to the mix. By taking advantage of the processing power of the GPU and the bandwidth of a PCI Express x16 connection, the R600 will be able to output both video and digital audio signals together in order to truly take advantage of HDMI technology. As a result, the R600 and its less powerful siblings, the RV630 and RV610, will be the first GPUs to fully utilize HDMI in order to output both video and audio. The GPU techies designed chips with both...
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The Inq has posted a boatload of rumors and speculation regarding AMD/ATI's upcoming R600 GPU. The Inq apparently has information regarding cooling, clock speeds, overdrive modes, PCB length, pricing, a dual-R600 powered card and more. "The current estimate is that the memory will float between 1 and 1.1GHz GDDR-4 memory in DDR mode (2.0-2.2 GHz), while the GPU clock will be set around 800MHz. Some say 826MHz, but we're not sure how far the Overdrive will go. We'd say not beyond 850 MHz, but that is just my personal opinion. Our sources tell us that the clock bump should be around 10 per cent for the GPU and 14 per cent for the memory, bringing...
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For a college student like me who needs a laptop for school, the possibility of being able to plug a external graphics card into my ASUS W3J for playing games is awesome. Graphics power for a long time has been one of the limiting factors when it comes to laptops but AMD may have a new product to remedy the situation. AMD's Lasso, the codename of the external graphics card based on ATI's 600 series, is currently under development and may bring some newfound graphics muscle to the laptop scene. While the card may be primarily intended for use with desktops, it will also be useable with laptops featuring PCIe x8 and x16 connections. Lasso is AMD's codename for external graphics...
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Pictures of R600 have finally hit the net and boy, this card might be a bit on the large side. Supposedly, at launch the R600 will be available in two forms, the XTX and the XT. The XTX version of the card will sport 1GB of GDDR4 RAM and will be nearly 12" long consuming 275 Watts. The XT will have 512MB of GDDR4 RAM measuring in at 9.5" long and consuming 240 Watts. At the moment it looks like R600 is going to be a absolute monster in performance, size, and power consumption but we'll reserve our own commentary until we've actually tested the product. For now, rumors and leaks are always fun to play with. Just take them with a...
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Supposedly AMD/ATI's R600 is slated to be released in March. Also rumor has it that ATI is planning quad setups to be a very real possibility for their new line of Direct X 10 cards. By utilizing four cards in a single setup, ATI's R600 promises to be an amazing graphics processing powerhouse but also promises to consume more power then a graphics solution has ever needed before. If you thought a 1000 watt power supply was going overboard, wait until you see the power requirements for running four R600s in one system -- if in fact the rumors are true... We learned one more critical detail about the R600. The chip can and will support Quad setups. It will work...
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The Inquirer is reporting that AMD/ATI have demoed R600 developer cards to their add in board partners, and that the partners were impressed, despite the fact that card was equipped with GDDR3 memory, and not faster GDDR4 memory launch product is rumored to have... "The AIBs (Add-in Board partners) didn't see the real McCoy as this was a developer's card powered with GDDR3 memory only but it was enough to impress the present lads. The GDDR4 version and the official launch is still scheduled for March time probably shortly before Cebit. The partners are happy with the performance and they are confident that the new baby can make G80 run for its pixels." We're getting closer to the actual launch...
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Some fresh rumors regarding ATI/AMD's upcoming R600 have hit the web. According to this post on VR-Zone, R600 A15 silicon can hit 1GHz, but cards are going to launch with A12 silicon at somewhat lower frequencies. It seems like ATi has successfully taped out a A15 silicon that is able to work at 1GHz probably we can hope to see another series of R600 cards with higher working clocks in the near future. The article suggests ATi's next generation R680 is scheduled for Q3 launch but suggested that NVIDIA will have G81 and the next gen. GPU ready to compete. According to our sources but still a rumor revealed R600 as X2800 series. There are 2 variants for XTX; 1GB and 512MB. X2800XTX runs at...
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The gang over at The Inquirer report that sources are indicating AMD/ATI will be forced to re-spin the company's upcoming R600 GPU, resulting in yet another delay for the flagship graphics chipset. This must be especially painful for ATI as NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 series is enjoying its spot on top of the performance charts and does so without any other challenger. Some "preliminary" benchmarks which were leaked last week suggest some exceptional performance from the R600 GPU and seems to indicate ATI will retain the performance crown. However, with critical issues still plaguing the GPU it is hard to put any faith in the numbers until we can get our own hands on some...
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The Inquirer reports that their sources are indicating that ATI...er...make that AMD...will be strictly offering the next generation R600 GPU with GDDR-4 memory. Initially, two codenames were developed to distinguish between a GDDR-3 variant (UFO) and a GDDR-4 model (Pele). On top of news that the GPU will launch in February instead of January, the latest decision to opt for the latest GDR-4 memory should assure some exceptional performance especially with 1GB's worth of memory. How will this new GPU stack up against a G80-refresh (likely at 80u) with higher frequencies? Per usual, time will tell though we can be sure the Rumor Mill will have some interesting tidbits long before these...
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It looks like some spy photos of ATI's upcoming R600 DX10-class GPU have hit the web. Zol.com has some photos posted of a chip that is allegedly an R600. According to the site the chip is comprised of over 500 million transistors and it's manufactured on TSMC's 80nm half-node. If this information is correct, that would make the R600 about 180 million transistors "smaller" than the G80 and about 116 million transistors "bigger" then R580. This coupled with the news that the chip is built at 80nm, means the R600 should be cheaper to produce than the G80. And it also means that the die is a bit larger than R580's, despite being manufactured on the more advanced...
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The Rumor Mill is working hard over at The Inquirer as they report that ATI's next-generation R600 GPU faced yet another bug which helped attribute to the lengthy delay to market. Aside from the initial bug which locked core frequencies at a ceiling of 500MHz, the second issue found disabled Multi-Sampled Anti-Aliasing (MSAA). Regardless, A1-variants of the core will have at least one of the major bugs ironed-out with a likely A2-stepping being the version which will be released to market and (ideally) bug-free. In either case, some new information is also making itself known with regards to the R600 architecture. Supposedly, the RingBus configuration remains though the external...
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The folks at VR-Zone have posted a rumor that ATI is currently reworking the already delayed R600 GPU in an effort to minimize PCB size and get a better handle on thermals. Supposedly already at a staggering 12" in length, the original PCB layout is easily one of the longest graphics cards in history. The obvious goal here is to design a PCB which will be at least as "short" as the GeForce 8800 GTX, though there are some considerable design hurdles to overcome to do so. In addition, the team will be utilizing this time to further increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the heatsink assembly to keep the hot new GPU running cool. With the GeForce 8800 GTX...
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Fudo over at The Inquirer reports that ATI's next-generation R600 GPU is rumored to have an external 512-bit bus. Should the rumor prove true it might go a long way in explaining why the industry won't see ATI's flagship DX10 GPU until Q1 2007. Here, the use of an external 512-bit memory bus requires a significantly more complicated PCB design as more physical pins are required and appropriate traces need to be made. There is little doubt that once ATI is able to deliver R600, it will be more than enough to give NVIDIA a run for their money. However, with NVIDIA's next generation G80 rumored to be launching within the next few weeks one has to wonder if...
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Fudo over at The Inquirer reports that their sources are indicating ATI's next generation R600 GPU will consume an obscene 250W of power! By comparison, the current flagship GPU's consume less than 150W under the most taxing conditions. Should this figure prove true, it is no wonder we're hearing rumors of factory-watercooled graphics cards and other exotic cooling solutions. With the card now slated for launch sometime in Q1 2007, we have a fair amount of time before ATI shows us what cards they have up their sleeve with this GPU. This means that the R600 will consume twice as much power, and probably will end up close to twice...
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