ATi Mobility HD 6000 series Roadmap

Each card will be around 500$, maybe even less. Means that the price of CF HD6970M = the price of a single 485M.

 

So, um *cough* does this mean you've seen the 485M's price?

 

^^ *cough* nope

 

Alienware says the 6970M had 2GB GDDR5 RAM. Now I'm wondering whether it will exceed 75W.

 

If it does and it's still destroyed by the 485M, they are going to be in some deep trouble.

 

If my previous calculations were correct, then the 6970M has to be 100W TDP and the 6950M is 75W.

 

I don't think it will. A GF114 consumes a lot more than a Radeon 6850. But then the GTX 485M has a more severe downclock, so we'll see.

 

2GB modules are all 40nm, while I believe 1GB were 50nm.

DailyTech - Hynix Introduces World's First 7Gbps 40nm 2Gb GDDR5 DRAM

 

^Thanks

AMD is in no trouble, because the 485M's price will guarantee that every manufacturer except Clevo goes with the cheaper 6970M.

While I'm thinking, I wonder if the 6970M's TDP has something to do with Dell not announcing Crossfire for the new M17X.

 

How did you make those calculations? And are they consistent with 5770 -> 5870M?

Last time I checked, Barts beats GF104/114 in performance/watt. If they both have the same TDP, then either the 6970M was given a lot of room for overclocking, or AMD dropped the ball.

 

Dynamic SG does seem to be waiting on drivers.

From Anandtech:

AMD and GlobalFoundries, CES 2011 - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

Definitely a maybe.

 

So I just went to configure a Eurocom Panther 2.0 to find out how much cheaper an ATI 6970M would be vs the nVidia 485M, and it's $417 cheaper going with ATI. It's also only a $66 upgrade from a 460M to a 6970M.

How accurate are Eurocom prices and are they indicative of laptop pricing from sager/clevo?

Edit: Here's a link to the configuration page:

http://web.eurocom.com/EC/ec_model_config1(1,214,0)

 

so essentially you could nearly get two 6970's for one 485? the 6970 is gonna be a 100w card and very quick, we know it will be super fast because by the looks of it their 75w cards arent getting much loving from the last series so they must have been putting effort in the 100w region. if it manages to be as quick or nearly as quick it will be another embarassing blow for nvidia and show what overpriced mercenaries they are over there. even if I had the cash i wouldn't buy a nvidia card with the way things are now.

i can't wait to see this card in action just a shame it will never fit into my m15x!

 

There's no evidence to indicate it will be anything but a 65W to 75W card.

 

There's no evidence either way. What's taking so long for reviews of this thing?

 

To be fair the bits of information that are available point towards a 100 watt card and although we can't be completely sure you only need to substitute a digit and look at the desktop version to see what I mean with the 5970 and its size. Notbookcheck already believe it is a 100w card. For instance why was the 5870m not the 5970m in marketing name when it was their top card for months and months? My guess is power consumption and this planned release.

Yes we can speculate, and the ATI 6970 is clearly not a 75w card unless ATI have pulled a few rabbits out of the hat at once technologically. ATI are good at watt vs performance vs price ratios especially against the stuttering nvidia... but surely not that much! I strongly believe that nvidia would have concentrated more on the 75w region and the 460m instead of releasing the 485m after the 480m (and 470m) if they really believed ATI wasn't going to enter their ultra-performance-price-and-psu-dont-care area. It's just too niche to keep adding these ultra powerful cards into that so few laptops can handle. ATI will hit them where it hurts and with excellent pricing comparison. SLI cards will beat ATI somewhat but you will pay ridiculously for it. Meanwhile an old card like the 5970 can be rebranded and still be the top card in that area two years later

I bet my bank the 6970 is a 100w card

 

The Mob. HD5870 wasn't called the Mob. HD5970 because desktop HD5970 was a dual GPU card. The HD6970M was named the way it was because AMD changed their naming convention and the desktop HD6970 is now their top single GPU card.

The Mob. HD5870 wasn't originally planned to use the GPU it did, there was another GPU called Lexington that was planned for the the original Mob. HD5870. No telling now what the specs of that GPU were or why it was canceled but there's plenty of reasons besides it's TDP.

 

http://web.eurocom.com/EC/ec_model_config1%281,214,0%29
ooops link doesnt work. It is Panther 2.0, 6970 is listed 75-100W

 

As accurate as a blind man who throws darts with his mouth.

 

There's a whole slew of watts between 75w and 100w.

The blind man might be Zatoichi.

 

If it's 75W then I might try to pop it into my M15x... lol jk, I wish though.
I need more computer skills to hack the bios and stuff to get it to work probably.

 

75W+ is overkill for alienware 15...

 

AMD Radeon HD 6970M - Notebookcheck.net Tech
According to the above (scroll down) 6970M is at least on par with 485M, and it is quicker in a couple of games. And that's on clevo W860CU, with i7-740QM processor. Looks promising if you ask me.

 

I have to say, it looks like one awesome video card. Great job ATI !

 

Man, if I could only afford a laptop with that beast. With those numbers, I have to wonder why paying 75% more for a 485M would be worth it.

Also, anybody else find it funny that Notebookcheck puts 470M and 480M SLI above 6970M Crossfire, despite it BARELY trailing in the unreliable 3DMark06 and destroying both of them in Vantage?

 

Tests - Eurocom W860CU Cougar - AMD Radeon HD 6970M im Test auf notebookjournal.de
Clevo with AMD 6970M

There is another review on notebookcheck.com coming up.

 

Still don't know if I buy the benchmarks. How can Eurocom not know the TDP if they supposedly have some on-hand for testing?

 

The biggest thing said in that review, is that the 6970M is coming to Clevo machines in February.

If it's being tested in the W860CU, it's less than 100W.

I'm not really impressed by the bench numbers. It doesn't blow the doors off of the 5870M.

edit: wait, it actually does in a couple games

 

Exactly. Still doesn't add up. I'd love for it to be that close to the 485M given it's likely price, but I'm waiting for a credible source.

 

I dont know if im reading the graphs correctly because im on my phone and the site isnt translated, but it seems like the performance is slightly better than the 5870 and the 480. So its nowhere near the 485m?

 

That looks to be the case, and hopefully answers our question about the TDP.

I'm really hoping AMD stops playing it safe with the 7000 series. They need something totally new to compete.

 

Yeah, I find 5-8fps faster than the 5870 to be quite underwhelming.

But then I see what it did to the 480M in the Stalker benchmark, then its dominance in the CoD:BlOps test, and it seems so inconsiistent. Those numbers are what I expect to see it do in every game.

 

According to notebookcheck, HD 6970M does win in some games. But it's like +2FPS!?

In the other hand, GTX 485M win in some games like 21+FPS? (eg resident evil 5, need for speed shift, dirt 2)

Looks like GTX 485M win this time.
Now I am interested in HD 6970M's price compared to GTX 485M.

 

6970M should come in under or right around $500, while the GTX 485M will be about $775, according to info parsed from a couple resellers.

 

The sad thing is, the top-end 7000M card is only going to be 25% faster, according to AMD (IIRC). At this rate, in two years the discrete market is going to look like the CPU market.

 

So what are the chances of there being a price drop on the 485m? I was hoping that with the release of the 6970, nvidia would price their 485m more reasonably.

 

Look at the ultra quality numbers. On lower quality framerate is more CPU bound, so it would make sense that P150HM beats W860CU.

 

I'll wait for a half-way decent review.

 

Also, notebookjournal.de mentions trhat Fermi architecture offers superior tesselation performance.

 

We've known this since last year.

 

While in the desktop GPU market, nVidia is very competitive in terms of pricing vs. AMD, unfortunately, in the notebook GPU market, nVidia doesn't really change it's pricing since users are extremely limited in their upgrade paths and nVidia will always find users who will pay top dollar to buy the top end GPUs.

 

I remember reading about a test with GTX 485m vs 6975 somewhere. If i remember correctly 6975 was better..

 

I'll assume you mean 6970M, and I have seen no such tests.

 

Okay, I found it.

Notebook Journal did pit the W860CU w/ 6970M against a P150HM w/ GTX 485M.

Looks like a 20% average advantage for the GTX 485M, ignoring the CPU-bound GTA4 test.

EDIT: peculiar that they are dead even in Mafia 2. Makes me wonder whether immature drivers are holding the 6970M back in other games.

 

Well the CPU also helps in boosting the score of the 485M, I am sure of that. We need a comparison using the same CPUs. What I find as particulary interesting is that this 6970M is used in the W860CU... meaning what? It's 75W after all ? Hmm maybe not 75W, but 85-90W somewhere around there. This is so confusing, why doesn't AMD let us know.

 

Yeah it's puzzling, because there obviously isn't an NDA in place, with Eurocom giving out test models this early.

I'm not sure how many of those games are CPU bound, except GTA.

 

I believe they all are CPU restricted to some point.

World in Conflict certainly is CPU dependent.

Far Cry 2 is multi-threaded and should see gains up to ~2.2-2.5Ghz.

CoD:BO is known to have CPU usage problems, and in general favors Nvidia GPU.

Stalker:CoP is probably the only game that's not heavily influenced by the SB CPU. The game mostly makes use of a single CPU core, with a 2nd getting light usage. FPS should still increase a bit with the SB proc but the GTX 485M will likely remain faster.



As for TDP I woudn't be surprised if we stop seeing it publicly advertised by both companies. Neither company measures it the same way and both brands are judged poorly when TDP is used for comparisons.

 

Either way, even the i7-2630QM is more powerful than the current gen i7's so how would it matter? I'll bench mine when I get it. I'll have the i7-2630QM and GTX 485m.

However from those games mentioned, other than GTA 4 I don't see my Core 2 Quad Q9200 at 100%, and the i7-2630 is definitely worlds faster than my C2Q.

 

Translated from the Notebook Journal tests:

Also, the power consumption changes compared to previous models little.

I'll tentatively take that as a confirmation of a 100W power draw.

 

The CPU differences definitely played a factor in some of those tests, especially GTA IV. Dirt 2 is traditionally faster with nVidia cards so it's no surprise the 485M lead there either. We need to see an apples-to-apples comparison but it seems the 6970M is a pretty big jump over the 5870M in some games.