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AMD Next-Gen Graphics May Slip To End of 2013
MojoKid writes "AMD has yet to make an official statement on this topic, but several unofficial remarks and leaks point in the same direction. Contrary to rumor, there won't be a new GCN 2.0 GPU out this spring to head up the Radeon HD 8000 family. This breaks with a pattern AMD has followed for nearly six years. AMD recently refreshed its mobile product lines with HD 8000M hardware, replacing some old 40nm parts with new 28nm GPUs based on GCN (Graphics Core Next). In desktop, it's a different story. AMD is already shipping 'Radeon HD 8000' cards to OEMs, but these cards are based on HD 7000 cores with new model numbers. RAM, TDP, core counts, and architectural features are all identical to the HD 7000 lineup. GPU rebadges are nothing new, but this is the first time in at least six years that AMD has rebadged the top end of a product line. Obviously any delay in a cutthroat market against Nvidia is a non-optimal situation, but consider the problem from AMD's point of view. We know AMD built the GPU inside Wii U. It's also widely rumored to have designed the CPU and GPU for the Xbox Durango and possibly both of those components for the PS4 as well. It's possible, if not likely, that the company has opted to focus on the technologies most vital to its survival over the next 12 months."
Maybe the Free GNU/Linux drivers will be ready at launch after all.
...if it means those of us with Radeon HD 5000 through 8000 series GPU's get a little more life before AMD arbitrarily labels them "legacy" so that they can stop paying their engineers to develop drivers for them (like they recently did with the HD 2000 through 4000 series)... :p
Whatever happened to the Unlimited Detail guys?
Seem to have bailed on the gaming side of things, the whole concept has problems when you consider doing things like animation, opacity, reflections, multiple varying light sources, shadows, etc... I'm not saying they couldn't solve it but everything they demoed was the sort of stuff we can already do - just look on youtube for voxel renderers - and they omitted all the tricky things, moreover their explanation of how it works means reflections, opacity and shadows don't even work in their paradigm. Some of those challenges they claim to have solved (animation in particular) but no details or demos, just "we have animation".
I won't say they haven't done it, or say they are definitely snake oil salesmen...but the 'trust us, we've done it.' approach when their explanation suggests otherwise doesn't bode well for them.
AMD announced today that they would have a message clarifying this. Apparently these rumors are not all true.
All generalizations are false, including this one. Mark Twain
What do you mean, "never"? It's already usable for 2d. 3d will probably take a while longer, but it's still a very recent card by open driver development standards. Support will probably only get better with time, and I'm hoping that talk on Phoronix forums about synching the development of open drivers with Catalyst for the 8xxx or 9xxx cards will bring us better support.
While I agree with you that right now Intel is the only way to go if you're dead set on using open drivers, making future purchase plans based on one bad experience will probably only cripple your choice in the future. Remeber that Sandy Bridge failed to deliver drivers in a timely manner too (it took a couple of months, IIRC, for Linux support - if I got mad back then and decided I would never use Intel graphics again, I'd either have to swallow my unlightened words or follow them up with suboptimal behavior).
So, what I'm hearing is that AMD will be releasing its new line of video cards right around Christmas season, when a lot of people get new systems anyway? I've never understood why nVidia and ATI release their first cards around spring. Sure, get the bugs out early I guess, and there's got to be a bunch of young kids who have summer jobs willing to put all their profit towards a new gaming rig, but I still find it hard to believe that it isn't more profitable to just release the cards around October-ish, maybe even in September so you can still cash in on all the kids who just finished up their summer jobs.
If they really do get that boost in sales from the new console generation, and take this extra time to put forth more powerful competition towards nVidia, this may actually turn things around for AMD. Now, if they would finally release some decent Linux drivers, I may be sold
Personally i like both more polygons and good art direction. Maybe some talented artists as well.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Personally i like both more polygons and good art direction. Maybe some talented artists as well.
Are you willing to pay two or three times more per copy for such a game?
AMD has definitively said that they will not be releasing 8000 series GPUs this quarter, or possibly not even this year.... No need for "several unofficial remarks"....
Are you willing to pay two or three times more per copy for such a game?
Yes. I'll even pony up for a new video card if I like the game enough.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Performance? You sure you didnt mean nvidia? ;)
I have been looking to get a second hand graphics card (either a 7970 or a gtx 680) on ebay and I can tell you that cards with waterblocks typically sell for less than the ones with stock air cooling. There is not a whole lot of people with full loop watercooling in the first place and they are a bunch that typically wants the latest and greatest in hardware. The only ones that would be interested in your card are a handfull of people looking to add a second 6990 and already have one with the same waterblock. There is one with a xspc block on ebay at $400 with less than a day to go. It has no bids.
I live in Austin. The only thing that AMD is know for around here is layoffs. I'm surprised they have any engineers left to work on their products. Why anyone would work for them is a mystery to me.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
I have 2 rigs, one with a oc 7870 and one with a oc 6970 and neither one of them can run the newest games with full AA at 30+ fps. Unless you are gaming at 800x600 or consider 10fps a playable frame rate there is no way your 5770 can run "pretty much every game on maximum settings".
Do we really need more powerful GPUs? What we need is a better way of displaying graphics and a better toolkit to do it.
Whatever happened to the Unlimited Detail guys?
In a way, we do need a more powerful GPU, but not the way they are doing it.
Simply by adding shader units, or by ramping up the GHz no longer do the job.
A total overhauling of the GPU mindset must take place, but it takes much more than the hardware guys (AMD/nVidia), it also takes a paradigm change on the graphic programmers to push for a real change
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
AMD uses TSMC for its stand-alone GPUs, as does Nvidia. TSMC has been having the greatest difficulty making these very complex chips. Meanwhile, other foundries, like GF, are making great strides in chip technology.
Nvidia and AMD have the choice of going for another round of parts on the same process at TSMC, with only modest improvements at best, or waiting for a 'shrink'. Neither AMD or Nvidia feel much market pressure at this time, since their high-end parts are already way too powerful for all the current computer games. Both companies also harvest semi-working dies, and use them for graphics cards of lower performance. These 'harvested' parts are already like new chips in the market.
The new consoles hitting the market from Sony and Microsoft around Autumn time will change the situation. While the consoles have GPU hardware significantly slower than the best PC products from AMD/Nvidia, console game companies will at last unleash a new generation of very advanced games, providing an incentive once again to own a powerful gaming PC.
It should be noted that both new consoles have a massive 8GB of RAM, and the trend for future games is open-world- massive seem-less environments. Open-world games are very amenable to render-quality 'sliders', allowing the owners of the most powerful hardware to view the same game in much improved quality. The new consoles mean the PC will never again have AAA exclusive titles, but the ported games will be from two platforms that are both very PC like in design and ambition.
Powerful PC GPU hardware will set far render distances, high textures, better shadows and lighting, higher framerates, and larger resolutions. These better settings will suck up all the surplus GPU power AMD and Nvidia can offer the games over the next 4+ years, until stagnation hits again.
AA and AF are shit things to concern yourself with.
With those off, every game I play can be maxed out on everything else on my GTX 460, 60+ FPS. Hell, I can almost reach that on my old 9800GTX+
And on a 32" 1080p monitor, sitting 5 feet away, using a GPU with a huge chunk of RAM, you don't need to worry about AA or AF. You're not seeing jaggies unless the models suck.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Performance on Intel video? On Linux??
That approach is old hat now. Modern games don't have far clip planes anymore, but render everything to "infinity". Objects just become less distinct with distance, same as in real life.
Guild Wars 2 is a typical example of an MMO with a modern rendering engine. You can stand on a high mountain pass and see everything to arbitrary distances, and objects don't suddenly "pop" into view as you approach like in the bad old days. The technology doesn't even need hot PC machinery --- even an old Core 2 Duo and a positively antique nVidia 9800GT give you a useable framerate.
Game graphics have really advanced a lot in recent years.
Don't take this as an attack; I'm curious why you actually need an 8000 series card, and why you need water cooling on your present card
I don't take anything as attacks on this site. I really don't care what people think, say, or do :P But the reason I want to sell it is not so much for lack of performance, as it is still a really fast card, but for worth and age. I've had this one for well over a year and a half now and one of the games I play hates it, SWTOR, and by hates it I mean HATES it [oh it still gets 100+ FPS with everything maxed but it is anything BUT stable :(]. I play all games at my primary monitors native resolution [and sometimes I eyefinity the 3 but it kinda makes me sick :(] of 1920x1200 and I still get 100+ FPS in most everything I throw at it. Well Far Cry 3 kind of hurts when I max everything [about 60ish FPS]. It really is a good card for it's age. But that is the thing. I RARELY keep a card for more than a year and have sold my last 5 or 6 on ebay when it was time to buy a new one [and yes I always keep the box/stock cooler, etc]
:)]
:P]
I like the x990 series because it's a dual card on a single board. Takes 1 slot and uses one set of power inputs. I've had them since they came out.
I did dual cards for a while, but prefer a single slot solution
The reason I water cool is three fold.
1. Because I can
2. Because of the racket the dustbuster fans make
3. because under load this sucker will push over 200F EASY on the stock air cooler
On water, under 100% load, it maxes out at about 150F which is about what the stock cooler did idle and at idle it rarely goes about 100F
Pretty much the same reason I water cool my cpus since the days of the AMD MP 1733 [I have water cooled every CPU I have had since then, and I have had quite a few
I just like water cooling and overclocking and fast stuff.
I "used" to keep parts about 6 months then sell them and buy new and back years ago it served me well as the shit was x times faster about every 6 months, now, not so much, so I tend to skip a gen and go with the 2nd release from what I have now. This has been slowing down more and more too and that is fine by me as it costs me much less, and I get much more use out of the parts before they hit ebay lol. I'm still rocking my 1.5 year old i7 2600K @ 5Ghz on a Sabertooth P67. I keep waiting for something to come out so that I can upgrade those TOO but alas, nothing has come out that really smokes what I have now, so no need to upgrade yet. Though I did sell the 16 Gigs of DDR3 1600 ram last month and upgraded to 32 Gigs DDR3 1833 ram and it really helps my virtual machines a lot. Almost as much as tossing them on SSDs [ok not nearly as much, but still it helps
The OP looks for open source drivers.
What do you mean, "never"? It's already usable for 2d. 3d will probably take a while longer,
"Never" means "certainly not while the card still runs modern software".
but it's still a very recent card by open driver development standards.
But not by any reasonable, objective standard.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What do you mean, "never"? It's already usable for 2d. 3d will probably take a while longer, but it's still a very recent card by open driver development standards.
I was under the impression that 3D was required before 2D on the SI cards due to them relying on Glamor
AMD have also recently said they have no ability nor plans to compete with Intel on high end desktop processors either. Their top-of-the-line FX8350 is only modest competition for Intel's midrange.
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Honestly from what I've seen just like with CPUs its now about doing the same that we were doing but with less heat and power usage. look at what an HD4850 used and then compared it to an HD7770 which according to sites like HWCompare is just a little ahead of the HD4850 and you'll see its a pretty big drop in power used to get the same performance.
But as far as graphics goes? i think this is pretty much it guys, its not gonna get much better. Hell it costs nearly 100 million dollars to do a triple A game with today's graphics, more graphics, more physics, all that is more work which will drive the price up and I don't see that happening. THQ is gone, EA is on the selling block, and Activision's parent company is looking at restructuring. It simply costs too much to focus everything on the graphics like we did in the old days folks so I'm betting we have pretty much reached a plateau and new consoles won't change that.
My guess is the future is gonna be a combination of episodic gaming, DLCs, and a mix of big devs and small because graphics won't be the sole selling point anymore. Games like Torchlight II and Legend of Grimrock have shown you can have games without bleeding edge graphics still sell well and I wouldn't be surprised if games like the Borderlands series make nearly as much off the DLC sales as they do the game itself, so to help lower costs I can easily see games changing to more of an episodic and DLC model.
Finally as for AMD if the rumors are true they are looking at 3 out of the 4 consoles using their chips in some manner (the lone holdout being the rumored Steambox but until we get some hard data we can't be sure of that) so I can see them not having the capacity to do a new chip rollout at the same time they are having to supply all these consoles. I'm just glad to see them get the work as we need competition and having 3 out of the 4 consoles ought to give them a regular source of income they can count on while they work on new chips.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
... full AA at 30+ fps
That might be it, I keep AA down a notch since it is the the feature with highest requirements for the smallest effect. I honestly can't tell the difference (in game) between all the new alphabet soup AAs and the bog-standard AA. I've come to the conclusion that they are largely a marketing thing. Though most of the time I can use whatever FXAA DMAA PPAA WTFBBQAA they have. And generally autodetect throws me into max, at least for the games I play. Perhaps I've saved as well because I don't just do "max", I turn off things that I find annoying (Bloom. Oh lord. And in some games post processing, since I hate glowing textures, GW2 is the worst with this).
But I figure, at max settings, with 6x AA, with bloom, or any other horrible lighting effects (not for performance, just because they are hideous), turned off, running at 30-40fps is just fine. Granted, I'm not a big FPS guy, or a competitive gamer, so FPS for me is just aesthetics. I don't care if it is above 30 in most games, and as long as it is around 60 in FPS I'm fine. Anything above 60 is a bit silly on a 60Hz monitor.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Either that's no longer true or they got enough 3d stuff working to support 2d already:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-ati/commit/?id=a60d2152e928a7011fc7c44a885a34c3cdd4f0fe