ATI Mobility HD 3800, AMD's answer to the 8800m GTX?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/27/toshiba-readying-radeon-hd-3800-equipped-dynabook-txw-69dw/

This actually makes sense since ATI's new series of HD cards use the 55nm process. It shouldnt be that difficult to fit them into a notebook, nevertheless a 15 incher. Thoughts?

 

I doubt they could even compete with the 8800M GTX. No big surprise here, ATi seems to go for the mainstream...sadly no gaming ati system yet for notebooks...

 

I figured the 8800m GTX is based off Nvidia's desktop 8800 GT, so it would make sense that this one would be based off of AMD's Desktop 3800. Considering AMD hasnt entered the hardcore market, this card may be it.

 

They've competed fairly well so far, though they're always late to the market, and unfortunately very few OEM's pick up ATI products, especially in the high end. The X1800XT was a beast, though nearly impossible to find. Same for the HD2600XT, a very good 8700M-GT competitor, but virtually unseen in the mainstream markets.

 

Isn't the HD2600XT only found in that 20" monster of a HP notebook? Considering how 8700GT is a 17" card it's surprising how ATI isn't losing money in the laptop market (or are they making a profit despite this?)

 

They're making a profit despite this, yes, mainly for their low and mid end cards. That's what I was pointing out, the HD2600XT's a great card, but no OEM will adopt it. It could easily fit in the current lineup of 17" MXM-III and MXM-IV notebooks, but no one will offer it.

 

It's a smart marketing strategy for ATI if they can still make a profit going the integrated and budget route but it's bad for gamers with basic knowledge of video cards. Nvidia make decent cards but more competition on the performance end could do wonders for product quality (I'm still happy with my 8600GT though)

 

Now,how many dragons with the HD 2600XT do you think were bought? a hell lot less than toshiba x205 or clevos with the 8700gt... doesn't seem very profitable...nvidia is dominating the gaming market,be it mainstream or high end...that means high prices for nvidia based GPUs
I really wish that ati would enter the high end market and force nvidia to drop prices...or better yet,outperform nvidia through some new found innovations...

 

That's rather skewed logic. If they have a greater market share originally, then that doesn't nessecerily imply monopoly. If they really wanted to screw ATI, they should just reduce their prices a bit more. Ati's lack of sales will mean they have to keep prices high to cover marginal costs and will lose even more market share.

Short version:

Unless the 3800 is wicked sick and picked up by like, alienware (dell) (therefore giving precedent to use it elsewhere), nvidia will reduce prices a little more next quarter (I'd guess), and ATI are going to shít heap rather fast.

 

How much does it cost to make these GPUs? I wonder that since they seem to reduce prices so much.

 

That doesn't sound accurate to me. If the market is broad enough to accommodate two video card suppliers it means the notebook market isn't populated solely by gamers who salivate at the sound of 8800GTX or HD3800. From my perspective ATI outperforms Nvidia in sales of low-end and integrated video cards (notebook models equipped with cards worse than 8400GS, lots of them exist) and uses the profits to produce in small quantities the 3800 which is still priced to give them marginal profit for each sale. Nvidia can only drop prices so far before it realises it can't completely kick out ATI from the extremely high end sector (8800 competitors and up) without its own profit margins getting cut due to the effect of a predatory pricing policy on its own revenues from each card.

The 3800 when released will get picked up by enough OEM producers to ensure production is economically viable. If sales pick up and OEMs get interested then the 3800 will help ATI increase market share in the hard-core enthusiast sector. This is a big if though since the card is not yet in production and no one has actually picked it up yet.

 

ATI is not in a position to complete with nvidia in the high end mobile card department. ATI has been struggling lately and they don't want to shoot themselves in the foot by jumping into a market they aren't prepared to compete in.

They're just trying to stay profitable for the time being before realigning their strategies. I haven't bought an ATI product in about 5 years but I'm rooting that they come back to the top.

 

I'm hoping the MRHD3870 will undercut Nvidia in the same way the Desktop version has. If manufacturers pick it up this could mean cheaper gaming laptops with high end cards for everyone.

 

Some might even speculate that the so called fight between nvidia and ati is rather staged. I mean, let`s face it, there are only 2 major GPU manufacturers,and one seems to sit comfortably in the top obliterating games with high end products while the other is feeding the birds with low end cards ,which,while in smaller prices are enough to make the market seem equally divided.
Also,taking into account that ATI products can boast as many as 320 stream processors,there has to be something that changes the performance of the ati gpus to make them lower than gpus with 128 SPs ...kind`of odd, since Ati has a lot of GPUs with GDDR4 memory,which nvidia does not.
On paper,a lot of ati gpus are beter than nvidia ones. So why the gap of performance? drivers?bad implementation?
No, kind sirs,it`s commerce

 

I tend to disagree. Right now the crossfire hd3870 performs better than the sli 8800gt so the upper-end of the performance is actually with ati right now. The market isn't equally divided either, nvidia has integrated GPUs in many laptops as well. As for SPs, nvidia has done a better job with their architecture and doesn't have the AA problems ati has so looking better on paper isn't everythin.

 

i think there are alot more regular consumers rather than gamers..so ATI has put their foot in the right bucket if you ask me.

and if ATI could sort out their drivers they should atleast be equal to the Nvidia offerings

 

ATI and Nvidia count stream processors differently, so there can be no direct comparison. Nvidia group them together to be counted, while ATI does not. Hence, you see a greater number of individual processors listed under ATI.

I really hope that there is an ATI mobility 3800 series card. My first gaming laptop had an ATI x800m in it, and that little guy kicked butt for over two years. I would love to see some actual competition in this GPU market again. I am so sick of Nvidia doing everything first and faster.

Same goes for you, AMD. Pick up the pace! Intel is annoying me.

 

would be very nice if them could put hd3850 in to 15" laptop. Looks like AMD launch a massive countr attack on all frons, new GPU, new CPU, and now them will come to mobile market as well with new produkts. This year will propoble be a paradase for consumers :>

 

Unfortunately they already launched their CPU counterattack, and it failed miserably. The GPU's were a success, but nothing revolutionary enough to upset Nvidia's dominance in the high-end sector. I can only pray that the AMD mobile Phenoms are competitive enough to almost keep up to Penryn, price-wise.

 

Actually realistically Intel is the biggest in the graphics market if you look at the numbers. Nvidia is gaining on them though. Once intel breaks through into the performance market, get ready for a slug fest.

 

Actually the hd3800 could make a big impact for ATI in the mobile market. The HD2x00 series was a power sucking and heat inducing card

The new HD3800's meanwhile run cooler and and consumes less power than the 8800GT which is unheard of for ATI cards. So hopefully they can translate that into their mobile cards.

In the mobile arena its not just how fast it can run. Even if it runs 20% slower than the 8800M GT but manages to run cool and efficiently I bet it would sell.

 

I would disagree. I readed the test of AMD's new Phenom CPU and HD3800 serie GPU. Phenom is not the fastest CPU out their, but it is the fastest for it price, and was only beater of Intels top which cost alot. On GPU side so HD3870 is much cheaper then geforce 8800GT while it is of about the same speed plus it runs cooler which will propobly mean better overclock possobility. Then you should not forget thats AMD's 790FX chips allow you to run 4 graphic card in crossfire mod which will propobly mean it will beat even 8800Ultra(propobly, but i am not sure) and still cost less because two ATI HD3870 still cost less then one geforce 8800Ultra
If i would buy a new desktop today, a would buy a AMD system

 

Not sure yet I'd go all AMD but if I were building a P35 or X38 or X48 based desktop, I'd more likely be using ATI cards just for the option to go Crossfire. 2xHD3870's and still have $$ left over

 

i've got an HP HDX, so owners of the "Dragon" do exist. I love the HD2600XT so far, its working very nicely. I think AMD/Ati are on the back foot at the moment, with AMD posting losses all year. Hopefully, they're getting their game plan back on track, so it will force Nvidia and Intel to keep innovating. The 8800GTX sounds mind blowingly awesome

 

Nope, Phenom costs more than Conroe, and performs worse. HD3870 is about 15% behind the 8800GT, and it costs about 15% less, so that's alright. Crossfire is plagued by driver problems, if that ever gets fixed it might be a viable alternative to a single enthusiast card, but right now it's not.

 

Phenom costs less than Core 2 Quad, I think this is his point...

I haven't been able to found any benchmarks but I doubt the highest phenom would be below the Q6600

 

The fastest Phenom at launch was the 2.4GHz 9700, which is indeed below the Q6600. Even projecting forwards to the 9900, Anandtech shows that in several instances it still cannot overtake the Q6600, depsite costing more.

 

I had a X800 XT before in my desktop and that card was awesome for it´s time. Now I have bought Nvidia instead and actually like them more. They are faster to release Drivers, the Nvidia cards are very overclocking friendly, which my X800 XT wasn´t.

But I do hope ATI comes back and competes again in the high end market. AMD I care less for, why? Since Intel has a very strong CPU on it´s hand that overclocks like hell and my Core 2 Duo will last me for a long time. Besides the Core 2 Duos are cheap as hell now anyway.

Big mistake of ATI to go together with AMD in the first place. ATI did just fine before and competed and surpassed the Nvidia 7 series in the last gen, what has happened now? It must have to do with AMD, maybe ATI doesn´t get the funding they need to be able to compete in the top end segment. Hope I´m wrong.

 

IMO ATI knew exactly what was going to happen in 2007 performance wise (after all, development planning is years ahead of the actual models), so they took the best way to insure survival. Same thing for AMD, their engineers probably were encountering problems for the 2006-2007 projected models, so they had to diversify in order to stretch the losses to a minimum.

 

Anandtech have some news about upcoming ATI HD3x00 Mobile card

ATI Readies New High-Performance Mobile Graphics Processor – Rumours

 

um..AMD bought ATI...in a few more years they said they gonna drop the ATI name altogether and just be AMD. And Nvidia still controls the high end market, since the 8800GT is not marketed as their high end performance card...the GTX/Ultra still outperforms the 8800GT.

 

I actually hope AMD can put together a solid (and adopted) notebook product.

I have fond memories of my old 9700 and 9800 Pro ATI Desktop cards and would love to see an actual competition.

 

What i am woundering if someone trying to putt better cooling on the desktop Geforce 8800GT and tryed to OC it. As i understand 8800GT is much more power and heat efficent then GTX/Ultra and would be intresting if it can outperform them when OC'ed.

 

We don't have all of the new GPU's available yet in a mobile form yet, so all this is all speculation on who will beat who and pricing and power usage, etc seems pretty premature. Still the mobile parts will have to be based on something so here we go...

This is all stuff mentioned on Anand's article, but it seems to be worth repeating.

The 8800GT is an updated version of Nvidia's high-end GPU core with a 65nm die shrink and GDDR3 memory. There is currently only a 512MB version of the card with limited availablility, but a 256MB version is expected soon.

The 38X0 is a updated version of ATI's high-end GPU core with a 55nm die shrink and GDD4 memory. The 3870 is a 512MB part and the 3850 is a 256MB part.

The 512MB 8800GT does indeed easily beat the 512MB HD3870. But the difference is pretty close, average of about 10-15%. The 256MB HD3850 is pretty close too at about 10-15% behind the 3870 or about 25% behind the 512MB 8800GT. It is not yet known where the 256MB 8800GT part (sometimes called the new 8800GTS), but it is expected to fall in between the 3850 and the 3870.

This sets up a pretty clear 3850 < 3870 < 8800GT in terms of performance. What is worth noting is that they all blow away the current mid-range cards (8600 or 2600) and they generally beat the current high-end cards (8800GTX or 2900), they also nicely beat the previous generation high end cards (7950GT or 1950XTX).

The original MSRP on these GPU's put the 8800 close to the 3870, which made it look like Nvidia was going to have a clear winner again. But Nvidia has had a real tough time with availability. The laws of supply and demand took over and drove the prices of the 8800's up sharply. What was supposed to be avialable for the low $200's quickly became unavailable even at the upper $200's or low $300's. Availability was so bad early on that some even accused Nvidia of putting together a paper launch. That was probably a bit exteme, it was just that Nvidia released a product with huge demand and no immediate competition. As of this afternoon pricing on Newegg puts the 8800GT from an unavailable $270 - $320, but they do have some units available at the $280 - $310 pricing.

With the price demands on the 8800, the 38X0's also went up in price a bit. The 3850's had an original MSRP of $150, and the best price I can find this afternoon is $180 - that was the expected price of the 3870. A quick price check on Newegg finds the 3870 sitting at $250.

So in terms of trying to pick a "winner" from the current round of desktop GPU's, the 8800GT is still a nice buy even at $300. Its only competition is the 8800GTX or the 8800 Ultra which are priced at $500 or $700. But the 3870 is pretty competative for about $50 cheaper ($250). Sure the performance is less, but the price is signifigantly cheaper too. For those that aren't looking to press into higher resolutions the 256MB 3850 for only $180 is probably the "best" buy. We finally have great DX10 performance and good power usage for a reasonable price. After Christmas we'll probably be able to get all of these cards for about 25% less too.

Now that we take that and turn back to mobile parts where are we at?

I don't know - and I'm pretty sure that you don't know either. All we can compare at this point is older mobile parts (8600 vs 2600) or current desktop parts. Their older mobile parts are basically tied for performance. On the current desktop GPU's Nvidia core seems to perform a little better than AMD/ATI's, but ATI has a smaller processing capability and better pricing. Power usage is a little better for ATI at idle, but better for Nvidia at full load. For the lower-middle % utilization (DVD viewing or web browsing) they are pretty close.

I would really welcome the new 3800 series mobile GPU's from ATI and the 8800's from Nvidia. We may finally get some great performance on our laptops. If we end up with a similar mobile situation as desktops, that would be great too. I'd love to have multiple options at the upper end of the spectrum. Something similar to a 3850 with limited memory would be great for those laptops running with lower native resolution.

So after typing for probably two pages all I can really say is "we'll see"