[HardwareCanucks]AMD Clarifies 2013 Graphics Strategy: New Cards, Same Architecture, Some Surprises - Page 23

its been said time and again that GCN is the architecture for AMD's products for the next few years. AMD has clarified that recently too

http://techreport.com/review/24368/fate-of-amd-sea-islands-obscured-in-the-fog

"TR: Let me ask a question, because you said that there are some late 2013 products coming. Are those part of Sea Islands, or are they something else?

Dave Baumann: [long pause] We cannot really make comments on what exactly the product stack are and what the roadmap names are, etc. etc. You know, there's plenty exciting new products to look at when they come later in the year.

TR: Are they based on GCN architecture or are they something substantially new?

Darren McPhee: Graphics Core Next is the architecture that we're committed to as a company for years to come. So Graphics Core Next will be at the core of all of our products for the next several years."

GCN will have enhancements but the core architecture is the foundation for generations to come. GCN is also the architecture in the PS4 and Xbox Next. GCN will be around for a very long time , in fact more than the previous R520 based architecture which lasted from 2007 - 2011.

As some one said above the fact that AMD does not have anything to even come close to Titan is the reason Nvidia can afford to price the Titan at USD 900. if following the past cadence AMD had a HD 8970 which was 20 - 25% faster than HD 7970 Ghz (30 - 35% faster than GTX 680) and priced it at USD 500 Nvidia would be forced to price Titan at USD 700. Nvidia would also bring another SKU ala GTX 570 at USD 500 - 550. In fact if Nvidia got aggressive and priced Titan at USD 500 - 550 AMD would be forced to price even a HD 8970 at USD 350 - 370 like the GF110 generation.

But now Nvidia knows it can sell Titan at USD 900. there is no single chip GPU which will come anywhere close to Titan. In fact when yields improve we can be sure Nvidia will release a full GK110 based Geforce in H2 2013. It might be the first single chip GPU to sell at USD 1000. well done AMD for screwing the market without competing.
Edited by raghu78 - 2/16/13 at 11:54pm

Was is not said around late November or December that they had the 8970 ready to go but decided to hold off for some reason? Thought i read that somewhere.

isnt it better for devs to catch up and use existing power available rather than lazily code and release stuff that demands too much? taking a break from the upgrade cycle helps towards this much like with a console where they have to start optimizing

the power is still there now. just think how fast a 5850/5870 was not such a long time ago vs the gen before and there are titles that come out looking as good as any other than will run on those at 1080p and a decent frame rate, 6 series was a bit Meh but the 7 series brought good power savings along with a really decent boost in performance (at added cost i may add) and yet devs still manage to get those cards below 60fps at 1080p on games that dont really push the envelope.

imagine if right now the devs were forced to optimize games for a 7xxx / 600 series current gen they would look amazing, consoles are looking really old now but in fairness some games aren't too far behind overall in visual quality through extremely clever coding and they run awful GPU's

The reason why developers did not push for better hardware was because they hit a wall in PS3 and Xbox 360, which both are nearly 9 years old. 9 years is an extremely long time for a computer, even standardized ones.

However, programming three separate versions was more expensive than porting a console one over to the PC. That is why GPUs back in the mid 2000s were still being mentioned in the "recommended" system requirements for many games.

By "waiting for them", there would be less incentive to keep pushing the software envelope.

Software follows hardware, not the other way around.

Ok, I respect your opinion then, since you did, at least, try it.

What I don't like is people with no hands-on experience commenting that it can't be done and can't be working smoothly.

It can be done. And it's working fine. The latest AMD drivers over the last 2 months were tremendous improvement for Tri/Quad-Fire set-ups.

10K only? I'm always working, and don't have the time to refresh a page every 2 seconds at midnight. It will take me weeks to find 4.

I've never gone with more than two cards just for aesthetic purposes. Two has always worked fine for me but if I needed the power I wouldn't hesitate to go with a four-card solution...

Its a marketing / sales question, if you are familiar at all with the history of 3DFX, you would know why you don't release something right away when its done, if there is no market competition for it. NVidia was perfectly fine with the 680 sitting in 2nd place as far as single card goes, because they had the 690 out for the trump card as the "best card available" and simply point, the 7970 reached its max when they released the GE bios. The 680 was still close enough to not merit a newer release in the GeForce 600 series. They don't have the issue marketing a dual GPU card, like AMD does, because in the kepler architecture, they crippled the compute capabilities of the card, so it would not compete with its industrial offerings.

A) GK110 being priced at 900$ is losing them money. They are selling the chips in the Tesla series for $2,500+, the only reason to sell these chips at this lower price point, is they have been binned badly on TDP. The option is to sell off the chips after crippling the compute section, or simply trash the core. 900$ then makes it a viable way to get rid of the excess and still make money.
B) Scarcity drives up price and hype. There is a ton of other reasons, hell maybe they only have a certain limited amount binned they want to sell as a titan, and not a lower clocked tesla.


I might have been a bit off when I said 1080p doesn't look that good. What I meant was 1080p 60hz, doesn't look that good. I've jacked up the view on my 1200p monitor, and was not impressed, so I got my 1440p monitor, and at least now things are looking a bit better. Sure bezels in the way are annoying, but at least you can get more of a view. Just because few people do the setups does not mean, it doesn't look better in higher resolutions.

yep...I'm still jumping for joy.

This might suck for those looking to buy because they were holding out for GK110...but for the current Kepler owners this is good news.

I don't mind a bit of stagnation if it keeps my wallet safe for hopefully another 3 years when next-gen console games are in full force and they introduce DX12

Selfish right?

I totally agree...let software catch up a bit first before we advance hardware efficiency.

current gen consoles are no where near 9 years...but they are ancient alright.