Our review of the ATI FirePro V8750 workstation GPU showed that the card is blazing fast at DCC. We tested the V8750 against the venerable NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX, and the difference in performance was staggering. But the 8800 GTX is almost four years old, and the question kept pouring in: How would the V8750 fare against the fastest single GPU on earth?

It just so happens that Icrontic recently fitted its test bench with such a GPU, the ATI Radeon HD 5870. And with that, it’s time to finally put the question to rest: How does the best workstation card AMD offers compare to the Radeon HD 5870, a desktop card that’s 100% faster on paper? The results may shock you.

The ATI Radeon HD 5870 is the flagship DirectX 11 GPU. Released on September 23, it is the fastest of the four available GPUs compatible with DirectX 11. As with any new flagship GPU release, gamers and enthusiasts have flocked to NewEgg and other retailers to buy it. It’s fast, it’s efficient, and it answers “yes” to the legendary “Can it play Crysis?” question. But will it blend?

(more…)

Recent reports from unofficial sources contradict official statements from NVIDIA which say that the company’s upcoming Fermi/G300 GPU will be available by the end of the calendar year.

Unnamed board partners cited at DriverHeaven and [H]ard|OCP claim that NVIDIA is working to have “some” Fermi sample boards running at the January, 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The implication here is that NVIDIA may very well miss that window to demonstrate working silicon to the public.

"0935A1" - WW35/09 A1 silicon (Image credit: PC Watch)

Of greater concern is the overall state of the Fermi project. If the company is hoping, rather than guaranteeing, to show the first public demo of Fermi in the second week of January, then the G300 may be further behind than anyone had imagined.

After the project slipped its original September/October launch, many believed that G300 would launch in the November/December time frame. That date was based on a July tape-out of the company’s A1 (first) G300 revision.

A tape-out is the finalization of a PCB/IC design; it is at this point that the schematics for the product are sent for manufacture. It typically takes about five months to translate the specs into a physical product. This is why a year-end G300 launch was expected from a July tape-out.

However, a tape-out is not always the last stage of circuit design. The design could fail viability checks at the foundry, or the production board may fail functionality checks in its shakedown cruise. Should either of these scenarios unfold, the circuit designer must commit itself to a new revision–a respin–which takes about 4-6 weeks from debugging to the very first test boards. Should that revision get a green light, you can add another 6-8 weeks for production boards.

(more…)

Digitimes is reporting that the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC) is once again experiencing yield issues on the 40nm process node.

TSMC said it has seen yield rates for its 40nm node drop to 40% due chamber matching issues. Main customers for TSMC’s 40nm processes are GPU vendors AMD, which recently launched its new 40nm-based Radeon 5870 series, and Nvidia, who is scheduled to launch its 40nm-based GT300 series of chips in December, according to previous reports. TSMC’s recent issues may impact the shipping schedules of the GPU vendors, market watchers commented.

In addition to shipping schedules, the standing MSRPs of 40nm GPUs may also be compromised. Indeed, rumors have already begun to churn that the Radeon HD 5850’s price will soon increase as demand continues to outstrip supply.

AMD has recently released two DirectX 11 technical demos that are designed to run on the firm’s lineup of Radeon HD 5000-series GPUs. The new demos highlight features made possible by the advent of DirectX 11.

Ladybug demo

The Ladybug demo shows how DirectX 11’s Direct Compute architecture, which standardizes and facilitates GPU processing, can be used to simulate lens-accurate depth of field. Depth of field is a cinematography technique used to draw the draw the viewer’s eye, or to enhance emotion, by unfocusing unimportant scene elements. The specific technique used in this demo is called “lens-accurate” because it perfectly imitates the dynamics of a traditional camera lens.

Notice that blur increases as a function of distance from the virtual lens.

If you decide to try either of the two demos, Ladybug is certainly the more impressive of the two. We’ve had some time to play with and observe the demo on a large display, and trust us when we say it looks outstanding.
(more…)

He wasn’t exactly… thrilled that he couldn’t make it.

Noob shoulda gotten his passport! Not my fault!

Fresh out of the oven, ATI has just served up a brand new Catalyst driver for Radeon HD 3000, 4000 and 5000-series GPUs. Weighing in at about 100MB, the WHQL-certified Windows XP/Vista/7 driver delivers the following changes:

• Full GPU support for the Radeon HD 5000-series GPUs.
• Enables Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing (SSAA) in the Radeon HD 5000-series cards.
• Adds support for Ubuntu 9.10.
• Several fixes for CrossFire, HDMI and Avivo configurations.

Downloads

Windows 7 x86-64: Here
Windows 7 x86-32: Here
Windows Vista x86-64: Here
Windows Vista x86-32: Here
Windows XP x86-64: Here
Windows XP x86-32: Here

Despite last week’s grim news, my lapel mic is not actually dead. In fact, it makes a triumphant return this week, as I suffer through the terribly low temperatures of Elkhart, IN!

In this week’s edition of Mind of UPSLynx, I address a burning question: Did I actually chuck a PC off the balcony? More seriously, we learned that if you are a fugitive on the run, do not post messages and pictures on Facebook. Speaking of idiots, how about Pepsi and their new iPhone app?

Want the lowdown on workstation GPUs? Icrontic has you covered with a look at the ATI FirePro V8750. Lastly, the DirectX 11 gaming roadmap has emerged, and it looks like massive amounts of win.

Hollywood is intense. Today, you can go see a film like District 9 or Transformers 2 and be awed by the computer generated visual effects–imagery that mimics the nuances of reality to an unbelievable degree–and not even realize the minute details going in to the production of a shot or, more importantly, the astounding hardware used to create those effects. Animation and VFX studios use impressive machines to bring these films to life. These artists are not relying on Radeon and GeForce GPUs to render their work. No, they pull in the big guns–the workstation boards–to do the heavy lifting.

The workstation GPU market is vastly different than the desktop GPU market, despite radically similar hardware configurations. ATI and NVIDIA both offer workstation solutions, named the FirePro and Quadro lines, respectively. The drivers set these units apart from their desktop gaming-centric cousins. These graphics cards are fine-tuned and optimized to work exceedingly well in 3D and graphics packages, such as Autodesk Maya, Softimage, and 3D Studio Max. They are built with the professional artist in mind, not the high-end gamer and, as a result, the target audience of a workstation board is radically different.

I/O ports on the V8750.

Studios today deal with intense graphics production pipelines. Any and all rendering time is valuable, and costs money. These artists don’t need machines that can render a low polygon scene with pixel shader effects at 60+ frames per second. What they need are machines with hardware that can supplement viewport performance in applications, calculate incredibly complex object physics, and render out an image with thousands of elements, anti-aliasing, shader effects, applied simulations, ray tracing, and whatever else the shot calls for, and it needs to do all of this really, really fast.

(more…)

ATI has just recently published a new beta for their Stream SDK, a package designed to assist developers in creating GPGPU apps for ATI graphics adapters. The new package primarily adds OpenCL 1.0 support and, while all of that is well and good, it has also tipped the firm’s hand by revealing evidence of the Radeon HD 5900 series.

A quick peek at the new INF file for the SDK-compatible GPU driver lists the following entries:

“ATI Radeon HD 5900 Series” = ati2mtag_Evergreen, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_689C
“EG CEDAR” = ati2mtag_Evergreen, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_68E8
“EG CYPRESS” = ati2mtag_EvergreenGL, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6888
“EG JUNIPER” = ati2mtag_EvergreenGL, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_68A8
“EG REDWOOD    ” = ati2mtag_Evergreen, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_68DE

What the 5900 constitutes is anyone’s guess. If history is any indicator, it should be a juiced-up version of the 5870 with higher frequencies as a result of improved yields.

Rounding out the list, we see Cypress (Radeon HD 5870/5850), Juniper (Radeon HD 5770/5750), and Cedar and Redwood which have not yet shown in the market. Those cards are believed to be low-end adapters suitable for the OEM channel.

Last Thursday we caught a glimpse of the Radeon HD 5770, but a few 3DMark runs didn’t really answer any questions. Wonder no more, however, as today is the day when the Radeon 5770 hits the streets.

The first thing that can be noticed is that the 5770’s specifications do not stray far from that of the 4870’s. When translating the paper to testing, the spread still holds true: The 5770 and 4870 trade blows, with the 4870 pulling a touch ahead. The 5770 lags behind when memory bandwidth is at a premium, while it pulls ahead when fill rate is at a premium.

(more…)

Earlier in the month we spied the Radeon HD 5750 at a DX11 event in China, but we were left to speculate over specs and speed. Guesstimating be damned, though, as the 5750 is now on the shelves of etailers everywhere. Let’s take a look at how it stacks up.

The first thing that can be noticed is that the 5750’s specifications fall short of the Radeon HD 4870. When translating the paper to testing, the spread still holds true: The 5750 frequently falls short of the 4870, sometimes by over 20 percent.

From the perspective of competition, the GeForce GTs 250 is the 5750’s main opponent. There are no solid victories here, though. The 5750 and the GTs 250 trade blows every time you change the title or the resolution.

(more…)

Ol’ Fuad Abazovic has been doing some digging and reports that ATI has already put a name to its next generation of GPUs.

According to the report, the next-gen family is collectively known as Hecatonchires, or the fifty-headed, hundred-handed beasts of Grecian myth that managed to best the Titans. The desktop lineup appropriately contains three cards named Briareos, Gyes and Kottos, or one for each of the Hecatonchires proper.

Rumor also has it that the card will be a completely new architecture, rather than a much-improved riff on prior silicon as the 5870 was to the 48xx architecture. A headlining feature is said to be Multiple Instruction/Multiple Data (MIMD) shaders, which should dramatically boost GPU parallelism beyond what is offered by today’s SIMD cores.