Opinions - What would make a good AMD ATI Radeon HD 5770 GPU?

[HEXUS]

Let's get out the crystal ball and conjecture away.

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[R3MF]

would i buy a 5770?

no, i hate crippled/harvested products.

p.s. if your crystal ball tells you 192bit memory interface then memory will be 768MB rather than 512MB.

[sadbuttrue]

The 5770 would need to have incredibly low idle and load power consumption, and an equivalent bang4buck ratio to the 58xx cards.

The 58xx cards already consume less watts idle than the 4770. Considering those that purchase a 4770 are light gamers (vs how long they use the pc in 2d mode), the higher load power consumption of a 58xx isn't that important.

[kalniel]

I think you're approaching it from the wrong angle. At the moment we have dual slot cards with dual power inputs. A 5770 should simply be a single slot card with a single PCI-E connector. Hardware should be scaled down to fit in with those TDP requirements.

[Arthran]

if a 5770 is to the 5870 what the 4770 was to the 4870 then GIMMI!

[sayer]

I am not sure there is currently much scope for a 5770, as a 4770 was very similar in performance to a 4850 (albeit slightly lower, and had a few other constraints).

But what was awesome about 4770 was that it was incredibly refined, even to the point that it was using the next generation fabrication process.

When the 5xxx series has gotten a little older and more refined, and TSMC have a 32/28nm or whatever the next one will be, it would be really nice to see a 5770 in a similar style to the 4770. Otherwise I think it would miss the mark on getting the awesome price/performance/efficiency level.

Also it would be nice to have 1gb of memory, I really noticed the 512mb limit when I got my two 4770s, as the first game I tried to play was GTA4, and it limited all my settings... nevermind!

[Syllopsium]

if a 5770 is to the 5870 what the 4770 was to the 4870 then GIMMI!

Pretty unlikely I would have thought. The 4770 was ATI's test of the 40nm process before moving towards the 5xxx series and, correct me if I'm wrong, competed favourably with the 4850.

The 5850 is already in production and neither AMD or ATI are moving to 32nm any time soon. They're not going to undercut their own market.

Course, it'll still be pretty good. Unless the 4770/4850/4870/4890 stock disappears soon there's some serious competition.

I'm going to class it as 'the card which costs 50quid less than a 5850 and is equivalent to a 4870'. A couple of weeks after release, I bet the cost of both the 5850 and the 5770 drop by 20-30 quid.

PK

[mercyground]

I love the 4770. For anyone under a 24inch screen size, its perfect power to punch ratio.

I was going to get a 2nd one for my machine but given how things are. I'm just going to wait and go ddr3 and a 5850 or a 5770. DX11 and 40nm and low power? hell yeah. There is no way NV can match that at present. Later in 2010 maybe... IF they execute right.

Sub note. Any of you see the Anandtech report which they got odd results? NV cards running better on AMD systems? (and i think vice versa. Intel and ATI cards) This could mean i get a i750 and a 5xxx range.

[Nick]

You're also forgetting that the 5770 will have the triple monitor support for cross-screen gaming... and at, (guessing) roughly £100, for a card that should be performing in the region of the 47/48 cards, for the lower power draw of the 58xx cards, well, that's a good thing, eh?

Oh, and then there's DX11 (if you're bothered by it)...

[chis]

WHATEVER the card is like, I want a passive 5xx0 that's as powerful as possible. I hope there will be a 5770 or at least a 5750 that's passive, that's all I care about in a GPU upgrade now: how close AMD can get to a 4850's performance (I have an XFX one) without a fan.

[Brewster0101]

£150 for a 5770 is a little steep considering the 4770 was £80... Think the 5770 needs to come in £120 mark, otherwise people will just buy the 5850.

[Syllopsium]

£150 for a 5770 is a little steep considering the 4770 was £80... Think the 5770 needs to come in £120 mark, otherwise people will just buy the 5850.

What's going to come between the 5770 and the 5850 then? It's going to be an interesting positioning strategy, although I'm sure ATI has figured it out.

There has to be something between the 5770 and 5850 as 80 quid is too large a gap and risks being exploited by Nvidia. From benchmarks, though, the 5850 isn't *that* much faster than the 4870 except in more modern games. They're going to have to be pushing DX11/DX10.1 as a reason not to look at a 4xxx series (although, personally, the vastly improved power management and eyefinity is a huge draw for me)

PK

[borandi]

From a HPC standpoint, get the power down to 120W then show how it's better than the current generation.

[mercyground]

What's going to come between the 5770 and the 5850 then? It's going to be an interesting positioning strategy, although I'm sure ATI has figured it out.

There has to be something between the 5770 and 5850 as 80 quid is too large a gap and risks being exploited by Nvidia. From benchmarks, though, the 5850 isn't *that* much faster than the 4870 except in more modern games. They're going to have to be pushing DX11/DX10.1 as a reason not to look at a 4xxx series (although, personally, the vastly improved power management and eyefinity is a huge draw for me)

PK

under the basis NV cant even get working silicon for their convention? I'd say NV isnt going to do much besides bleat the "DX11 isnt needed. Here buy one of our older gen cards cheap (rebadged) while we fix our broken prototypes"

its rather ironic actually. Intel did the same with the p4 but they fired back with the c2d. Does NV have a c2d up the sleeve? or just more broken silicon?

[Syllopsium]

under the basis NV cant even get working silicon for their convention? I'd say NV isnt going to do much besides bleat the "DX11 isnt needed. Here buy one of our older gen cards cheap (rebadged) while we fix our broken prototypes"

its rather ironic actually. Intel did the same with the p4 but they fired back with the c2d. Does NV have a c2d up the sleeve? or just more broken silicon?

They're stuffed for at least three months. The best we'll get in the meantime is a DX10.1 part. Looks like the rumours are true. If they could have shown silicon, they would.

Course, the question is whether when Nvidia ship the GT300 they're doing the equivalent of a Core Duo or a Penryn. Intel got shafted with P4 Prescott, recovered with the interim solutions of Pentium D, Core Duo, hit into a high gear with Core 2 Duo and perfected it with the 45nm Penryn architecture. If the GT300 is as hot and power hungry as some people think, it'll be the equivalent of a Prescott or some of the pentium D chips : hot, power hungry, clocked to hell with a couple of mostly working new features tacked on.

PK

[scaryjim]

The interesting thing to me is how ATI are appearing to squeeze up the range for 5-series cards. The 4 series, of course, was primarily distinguished by memory speed / type: - the 4870 / 4850 by DDR5 / DDR3, the 4670 / 4650, and 4550 / 4350 by DDR3 / DDR2. However, the 5850 has the same 256bit DDR5 memory as the 5870, but sports less cores. This suggests that ATI have changed plans for this new generation of cards, distinguishing cards within a group by reducing the number of cores and the memory speed, but keeping the other features (memory path width, memory type) the same.

On that basis, I wouldn't be surprised to see a 5830 come out with 1120 cores coupled with 256bit DDR5 memory (@ 800MHz perhaps?). Then, I'd expect a 5770 to be basically the same card but with a reduced memory bus: probably right down to 128bit (ATI don't seem to like using "in between" buses like 192bit...). It may seem like madness, but I'd expect it to be running at 1200MHz like the 5870, providing more bandwidth than most DDR3 cards can boast. Then assuming the pattern follows on from 58xx, we'll see a 5750 with 960 cores and 1GHz DDR5 memory, and possibly even a 5730 with 800 cores?

Below that, I'd expect a 5600 series with 800 / 640 (/ 480?) cores, and a 5550 card with 320 (I doubt they'll do more than one sku at that point). Maybe there'll also be an entry level 5450 with 160? They'd all support 128bit DDR3 memory buses.

Of course, moving to 1600 cores means they have a lot more mileage in stripping out cores from this architecture - that kind of makes this level of conjecture tricky...