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"Hundreds of thousands" of mainstream cards

ATI, the graphics division of AMD, launched the lowest priced DirectX 11 video card last week. The Radeon HD 5450 using the Cedar chip can be purchased starting at $50, while the Radeon HD 5670 using the Redwood XT chip starts just below $100.

Most of ATI sales by quantity are in the sub-$100 market, so the company has to fill in that gap. Today they are launching the Radeon HD 5570 video card using a Redwood Pro version of the same GPU used in its more powerful sibling. Die size and transistor count are the same at 107mm2 and 627 million respectively. The guts are left the same, but the GPU is clocked 125MHz less at 650MHz.

The GDDR5 graphics memory has been swapped out for much cheaper DDR3 DRAM in order to hit a lower price point. A variant using DDR2 DRAM is also possible, but that decision will be up to Add-In Board partners. Passive cooling similar to the 5450 is also a possibility for AIBs to implement.

Eyefinity multiple monitor support is also present, but the exact configuration will be up to AIBs as well.

"AMD recognizes that small form factor PCs are becoming more popular and low profile graphics upgrade options have been limited to date," said Matt Skynner, Vice President and General Manager for the AMD Graphics Division. "Customers purchasing small form factor PCs are looking for improved performance while gaming, watching HD video or working with the latest productivity applications.  The ATI Radeon HD 5570 graphics card delivers all of this at a price that won't break the bank."

ATI has cleared up its 40nm yield issues at TSMC, which is why they have been launching all of these mass market, high volume cards recently. According to our sources, the designs for Redwood and Cedar were ready for a launch to catch the holiday shopping season, but ATI couldn't get enough wafers or a high enough volume. Rather than do a paper launch, the red team decided to build up an inventory while production ramped up.

There are supposedly "hundreds of thousands" of Redwood and Cedar chips that have been shipped to AIBs, which bodes well for the shift to DirectX 11. ATI has already shipped over two million DirectX 11 cards so far, and we expect that number will increase dramatically. There are now eight DX11 cards in ATI's discrete lineup, and the transition is complete.

Now it's just up to NVIDIA to respond.



 

ATI Radeon HD 5770

ATI Radeon HD 5750

ATI Radeon HD 5670

ATI Radeon HD 5570

ATI Radeon HD 5450

Stream Processors

800

720

400

400

80

Texture Units

40

36

20

20

8

ROPs

16

16

8

8

4

Core Clock

850MHz

700MHz

775MHz

650MHz

650MHz

Memory Clock

1.2GHz (4.8GHz data rate) GDDR5

1.15GHz (4.6GHz data rate) GDDR5

1000MHz (4000MHz data rate) GDDR5

900MHz (1800MHz data rate) DDR3

800MHz (1.6GHz data rate) DDR3

Memory Bus Width

128-bit

128-bit

128-bit

128-bit

64-bit

Frame Buffer

1GB

1GB / 512MB

1GB / 512MB

1GB

1GB / 512MB

Transistor Count

1.04B

1.04B

627M

627M

292M

TDP

108W

86W

61W

42.7W

19.1W

Price Point

$179

$149 / $129

$119 / $99

$79 - $89

$59 / $49

 

Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
Impressive
By Ard on 2/9/2010 9:45:01 AM , Rating: 3
It is truly amazing how dominant AMD has been this GPU cycle. They really caught NVIDIA with their pants down. Hell, by the time Fermi's released, AMD will be talking refresh. It's the FX5800/Radeon 9700 all over again.




RE: Impressive
By Snowy on 2/9/2010 9:56:22 AM , Rating: 3
And they will continue to catch Nvidia with their pants down until Nvidia changes their business model from "one big hot giant gpu" that takes months and months to scale down to something more similar to ATI's, where you have a medium sized GPU that you can scale up or down very quickly.


RE: Impressive
By lukasbradley on 2/9/2010 10:39:27 AM , Rating: 2
When a CEO loves Macs so much, it's hard to assume his company will concentrate on the cutting edge of (what are generally) PC cards.

http://www.dailytech.com/NVIDIAs+CEO+Proclaims+His...


RE: Impressive
By therealnickdanger on 2/10/2010 8:35:13 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
It is truly amazing how dominant AMD has been this GPU cycle.

Now AMD needs to work on their drivers. According to Anandtech's testing, the two would-be-perfect HTPC cards (54xx/55xx) are lacking the shader power (or driver tweaks necessary) to properly post-process video streams, leaving the hotter and larger 56xx as the only viable HTPC card in AMD's current lineup. Once AMD gets its drivers patched up a bit, the 54/55xx series will be "complete" solutions.


RE: Impressive
By aegisofrime on 2/9/2010 10:44:42 AM , Rating: 2
Exactly. I look forward to AMD stealing nVidia's thunder during their Fermi launch, whenever that may be.

How many months has it been since the 5870 launch. 4 months? If we are looking at a very optimistic launch date of March for Fermi, that should be enough time for AMD to launch an overclocked 5870, maybe the 5890? Possibly enough to make up for any performance advantages Fermi had over the 5870 in the first place, if any.

Even with all the GPGPU innovations nVidia has been touting for Fermi, the applications to use them aren't here yet, and so gamers will still be buying it purely for gaming performance. It ain't over till the fat lady sings, but I can hear her humming already.


RE: Impressive
By cmdrdredd on 2/9/10, Rating: 0
RE: Impressive
By Mitch101 on 2/9/2010 10:44:30 AM , Rating: 3
Were just talking computer GPU's and FERMI missed its product cycle for yield issues and some unknown reason NVIDIA doesnt seem to be discussing.

If I had to guess Tegra 2 & ION2 probably spread engineers thin and caused part of the delay and I would be willing to bet there are driver issues with FERMI.

But Tegra 2 and ION 2 could be bigger cash cows that a giant monolithic GPU like FERMI so I can see them rushing those chips before its computer GPU's. Tegra 2 should dominate the Netbook/PDA market and ION2 could grab another segment. Unfortunately Im in the market for a computer GPU right now and need them to get FERMI out the door.


RE: Impressive
By aegisofrime on 2/9/2010 10:50:43 AM , Rating: 2
Unfortunately, both ION and Tegra have very few design wins. I liked the concept as well, but it took more than a year for ION to make it from launch to a product.

Intel could very easily kill off ION, either via their questionable methods that nVidia have been accusing them of, or with a Clarkdale class GPU on the next Pineview.

Tegra's biggest and design win that I can remember is the Zune. The Zune is a good product, but Microsoft don't seem to be marketing it as well as Apple. Last I heard, it wasn't available anywhere in Asia. >.>


RE: Impressive
By Mitch101 on 2/9/2010 12:08:28 PM , Rating: 2
There is a rumor that there will be a Zune HD2 using the Tegra 2 chip. Remember those Microsoft handheld game unit rumors?

Supposedly it looks and feels just like a Zune HD but can be mounted into a controller device giving it button control it also doubles as a battery pack and extra memory.

Something like this but the zune hd2/zune phone part is removable.
http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/210279/rumor-m...


RE: Impressive
By jonmcc33 on 2/9/2010 12:35:48 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Intel could very easily kill off ION, either via their questionable methods that nVidia have been accusing them of, or with a Clarkdale class GPU on the next Pineview.


They can't kill off ION because of lack of hardware GPU acceleration support for H.264 on the Atom chipsets. Those ION systems are selling like crazy for people wanting to run XBMC.


RE: Impressive
By therealnickdanger on 2/10/2010 8:31:05 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
They can't kill off ION because of lack of hardware GPU acceleration support for H.264 on the Atom chipsets.

You assume that they are unable to enable enhanced video features to Atom/GMA rather than unwilling. Once we get Arrandale (specifically, Core i3) CULV CPUs on the market, Atom and Ion will be obsolete, no matter the price.


RE: Impressive
By EasyC on 2/11/2010 12:48:52 PM , Rating: 2
You don't HAVE to wait for Fermi. You can buy a new GPU right now. nVidia is not the end-all-be-all of the graphics market. Not even close.


RE: Impressive
By rainyday on 2/10/2010 1:15:37 AM , Rating: 2
i don't know why so many people keep buying these low end cards when all computers come with built-in graphics these days (most with multiple monitor support too).

sure, built-in graphics sucks big time. but they suck only at gaming and in some very-high-end 3d applications. most people don't play games or run those applications (strategy games like WOW or SIMS works fine on any recent built-in graphics). this is the same case for these so-called graphics cards at low-end.

as for playing HD video and flash content any dual core processor can do the job. the fact is if your are running hd video or flash content in your pc chances are your cpu is doing bulk of the work anyway because almost all the softwares and browsers still use cpu for their work. this is true even if they have capable discrete graphics.

so basically a lot of people are wasting their money on some marketing BS. do yourself a favor, don't buy any cards unless you wanna play demanding 3d games or run applications like industrial light & magic. and if you decide that you need one, go for minimum 5670 or equivalent.


RE: Impressive
By Moishe on 2/10/2010 2:36:57 PM , Rating: 2
You are clearly speaking from a lack of experience.

I have a 2-core ~2ghz Intel/64bit/6GB machine that I use for everything, including HTPC. The ability to output via HDMI would be nice. The ability to output HD audio to my receiver (without an expensive audio card) would be great. The add-on cards that do the processing on their own are very important.

There was a time when I could record a tv show and play BF2142 and the game would affect the recording quality. Upgrading to a better add-on card and now I can record 2 tv shows and play a game, all at the same time without issue.

If you have an HTPC and it only ever does one thing at a time, a decent CPU will do the trick. Otherwise, the add-on cards make a huge difference.


SFF PC's
By HukaShakaHukaHuka on 2/9/2010 4:41:06 PM , Rating: 2
Yes, small form factor PC's are becoming popular but they also come with small power supplies. My Acer Intel I3 pc came with a 220 Watts power supply so I need high performance SFF graphics card they does not consume 108 Watts.




RE: SFF PC's
By Taft12 on 2/9/2010 11:19:45 PM , Rating: 1
This card will be fine in a Core i3 system with a 220W power supply. 65W for the CPU and 47 for the GPU. The rest of the crap in your PC won't put load power requirement higher than ~140W at load.


Come on NVIDIA!
By Mitch101 on 2/9/2010 10:37:51 AM , Rating: 2
Without competition the prices wont drop and I keep holding out for the competition.

This is also a great representation of how I was saying AMD/ATI creates a small core that scales upwards while NVIDIA creates large monolithic cores. Because of this ATI has a whole price range of chips but could sacrifice the top spot. The problem I wonder is how does FERMI create a market for middle to low end or more mainstream without re branding existing chips with some tweeks?

I know FERMI is around the corner but Something smells really bad on NVIDIA's side. NVIDIA doesn't seem to be making any noise at all and if FERMI was the bees knees we should have something from NVIDIA by now getting out trying to prevent people from buying the AMD/ATI cards. Im concerned that the FERMI has some more issues. If not production then performance must not be up to par. The last time ATI was quiet like this is when their video card series wasn't performing as well as they hoped. Now Im sure FERMI will have some serious wins in some areas but Im wondering why there have been no leaks from NVIDIA. They generally dont remain this quiet unless something isn't right. If they use the optimizing driver excuse again I would have to say that performance must not be as good as they were hoping so they are trying to increase performance as much as possible or the drivers are broken and they are trying to fix them after all this is a new design.

There are two interesting rumors floating around that ATI pulled an NVIDIA and that they might be holding some performance back on existing cards via drivers so when NVIDIA releases FERMI ATI will give their existing cards a small bump in performance with a driver release closing the gap. Lets say 2-5% but every bit counts.

Also there is the rumor of a 5890 card with a core clock close to 1ghz that might be able to close the gap. Be it cherry picked supposedly the cards already exist ready to be shipped to review sites the moment FERMI is to be reviewed.

But overall the longer we wait for FERMI the more I am starting to say I am going to wait and see the GPU redesign ATI/AMD is supposed to unveil in October.




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