AMD Readying Two New 20nm Cards To Go against Maxwell, 380X Will Take on 980, 390X Will Take on Titan 2 / 980 Ti

[Jim Dotcom]

If these are 20nm I'll eat my hat.

[patrickjp93]

If these are 20nm I'll eat my hat.

Considering the release is for February and not December, this shouldn't come as a surprise... Of course, Nvidia will also do a Maxwell refresh at that process node, further milking Maxwell's value. Honestly I'm shocked AMD and Nvidia haven't started following Intel's tick-tock cycle. It's just damn intelligent to produce chips that way. Now if only Intel bought out Nvidia...

[dalekphalm]

Considering the release is for February and not December, this shouldn't come as a surprise... Of course, Nvidia will also do a Maxwell refresh at that process node, further milking Maxwell's value. Honestly I'm shocked AMD and Nvidia haven't started following Intel's tick-tock cycle. It's just damn intelligent to produce chips that way. Now if only Intel bought out Nvidia...

Granted, Intel's engineering team is quite awesome, but I can't imagine Intel buying NVidia would be good for consumers at all... We need more competition, not consolidation. Besides, Intel and NVidia directly compete in the mobile sector (even if Intel's presence is still very small).

[murratri]

Lets get gtx 780 or r9 290 performance at below 300usd!

[patrickjp93]

Granted, Intel's engineering team is quite awesome, but I can't imagine Intel buying NVidia would be good for consumers at all... We need more competition, not consolidation. Besides, Intel and NVidia directly compete in the mobile sector (even if Intel's presence is still very small).

They don't really compete in the mobile sector. Intel is nowhere in phones, and the Tegra K1 is so far used in Nvidia proprietary tablets/handhelds. I'm not necessarily saying it would be "good" for consumers, but considering AMD went to Nvidia first instead of ATI, and considering Nvidia got so scared of Intel's Larabe graphics project they yanked their cross-licensing agreements for most of their GPU IP, I can only imagine how powerful computer graphics would become in the span of 2 short years if Intel had all of Nvidia's IP at its disposal.

[patrickjp93]

Lets get gtx 780 or r9 290 performance at below 300usd!

The 970 is pretty close to that price already

[FroggyTaco]

20nm?  Highly unlikely.

I was under the impression that 28nm to 20nm was a full node step-down not a half node step.. no?

[Sakkura]

I was under the impression that 28nm to 20nm was a full node step-down not a half node step.. no?

 

It is. 22nm is in between. I think he's referring to the endless delay of TSMC's 20nm process. However, the first products with TSMC 20nm silicon just shipped, in the form of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, so getting it into GPUs by February seems realistic.

[Admire]

Considering the release is for February and not December, this shouldn't come as a surprise... Of course, Nvidia will also do a Maxwell refresh at that process node, further milking Maxwell's value. Honestly I'm shocked AMD and Nvidia haven't started following Intel's tick-tock cycle. It's just damn intelligent to produce chips that way. Now if only Intel bought out Nvidia...

Why would it be milking Maxwells value if Nvidia makes 20nm maxwell cards ? This is an honest question, because I honestly don't understand GPUs as well as you clearly do..Maxwell was the microarchitecture that Nvidia developed to replace Kepler, and it was meant to be 20nm, so I get that doing those the 970 and 980 on 28nm could be considered milking the value instead of just waiting for 20nm to be ready...But would 20nm card not be what was supposed to happen from the start?

[patrickjp93]

Why would it be milking Maxwells value if Nvidia makes 20nm maxwell cards ? This is an honest question, because I honestly don't understand GPUs as well as you clearly do..Maxwell was the microarchitecture that Nvidia developed to replace Kepler, and it was meant to be 20nm, so I get that doing those the 970 and 980 on 28nm could be considered milking the value instead of just waiting for 20nm to be ready...But would 20nm card not be what was supposed to happen from the start?

It means they don't have to tape out a new architecture for longer, maintain the same designs, cut overall R&D costs, etc.. It helps their bottom line, and we might fit more cores at possibly higher clock rates (though 1.4-1.5GHz is already pretty damn high). 

 

They are making the very best of a bad situation.

[Admire]

It means they don't have to tape out a new architecture for longer, maintain the same designs, cut overall R&D costs, etc.. It helps their bottom line, and we might fit more cores at possibly higher clock rates (though 1.4-1.5GHz is already pretty damn high). 

 

They are making the very best of a bad situation.

The bad situation being the delay of the new nodes? just to be clear

[patrickjp93]

The bad situation being the delay of the new nodes? just to be clear

Yes.

[murratri]

The 970 is pretty close to that price already

Make it lower!

[patrickjp93]

Make it lower!

Have some damn patience.

[Jim Dotcom]

TSMC's 20nm is more like a node for phones and such, not high performance devices like GPUs.  Both AMD and Nvidia will likely hold off until 2016 and 16FF+ http://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/16nm.htm

[Pholostan]

TSMC's 20nm is more like a node for phones and such, not high performance devices like GPUs.  Both AMD and Nvidia will likely hold off until 2016 and 16FF+ http://www.tsmc.com/english/dedicatedFoundry/technology/16nm.htm

Yeah, I would be very impressed if they actually made TSMC 20 nm planar work on a big GPU. Phone SoC and such, sure, high performance big GPUs not so much. I do not believe that AMD will release a high performance card on TSMC 20 nm planar in February.

[SkarKrow]

Take my money nvi...

 

Oh, intriguing -stows wallet-

 

This could be interesting, will wait for these before upgrading, not like my 670 is struggling at present and perhaps I can get that new monitor cheaper in the post xmas sales.

[Techhog]

Considering the release is for February and not December, this shouldn't come as a surprise... Of course, Nvidia will also do a Maxwell refresh at that process node, further milking Maxwell's value. Honestly I'm shocked AMD and Nvidia haven't started following Intel's tick-tock cycle. It's just damn intelligent to produce chips that way. Now if only Intel bought out Nvidia...

Because they don't own fabs.

[Mateyyy]

Come on AMD, beat Nvidia's money-hungry ass!

 

(not an AMD fanboy)

[pdv789]

I used to be a amd fanboy I'll admit. Still rooting for them, love underdogs and competition is great for consumers. But I was about to start oc my monitor for resolution or fps. The gtx 970 card gave me the DSR feature so it was a pretty easy decision. Now to mess with the fps ...

[Khvarrioiren]

I used to be a amd fanboy I'll admit. Still rooting for them, love underdogs and competition is great for consumers. But I was about to start oc my monitor for resolution or fps. The gtx 970 card gave me the DSR feature so it was a pretty easy decision. Now to mess with the fps ...

 

Funny how people miff on about DSR, because we've had GeDoSaTo for a while now. Catalyst and NCP also can inject SSAA on DX11 titles.

[Jacknif]

" AMD has three new graphics cards in the works. The R9 290X successor based on the Bermuda GPU , The R9 380X based on Fiji and the R9 370X based on Treasure Island. "

 

" Bermuda, Fiji, Treasure " Lol those GPU name. Can't wait to see those new AMD GPU tho' !

[patrickjp93]

Because they don't own fabs.

Your point? They can still do the same process/cycle if they convince TSMC that it saves them money in the long run, which is easy to do given Intel's wild success.

[Altecice]

Damn, same reference cooler. I wonder how long befo-

Well, that took no time flat.

 

You all joke but really I don't think people understand why the cards heat up so much. Unlike normal gpu's (which try to actively cool itself down by increasing the fan speed as soon as the temps rise). For some reason AMD have tried out another way of letting the card heat up all the way into the 80-90's before letting the fan speed up to cool it down (sure yes this runs warmer but tbh it doesnt really matter its just we are used to lower is better I never hear people compalin about how hot laptop CPU's get). I think they were going for a quiet but warmer approach but really fudged up the cooler. Personally I run two reference 290x's and I leave everything on default and even when Im pushing them super hard I just dont figure they are loud at all. the 480gtx got louder by default than these.

 

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I always enjoy the retort from one company to another its almost guaranteed that Nvidia will wait for AMD's new cards before releasing the 980ti (so they can OC them just a bit more and beat AMD).... and so it goes on back and fourth. But really it does not matter as the better one company can put pressure on another (especially with prices) it means faster and cheaper hardware for everyone.

[Techhog]

Your point? They can still do the same process/cycle if they convince TSMC that it saves them money in the long run, which is easy to do given Intel's wild success.

Wouldn't that require some form of collusion?