ATi S. Island Rumor, end of 2010, Q1 2011

http://vr-zone.com/articles/-rumour-ati-s-next-generation--southern-islands/8722.html

Seems ATi is getting ready to launch their next generation of GPUs. Originally N. Island to be released on 32nm then 28nm architecture. But as we've seen, TSMC has been disappointing everyone so ATi moved it back to 40nm.

Renamed to S. Island, possibly a hybrid o N. Island and Evergreen.

Semi-Accurate as always expresses their speculation. Speculation is that ATi will release their hybrid of refresh of Evergreen before Nvidia releases the GF100 they had promised gamers a year ago.

 

Other news. Looks like Nvidia may possibly be punishing their largest former partner, XFX for making cards with AMD GPUs. XFX are not making 470 or 480 cards. Instead, XFX will be releasing a HD5970 BEAST with 4GB of Ram for Eyefinity 6.

Could be XFX dropped Nvidia themselves. There is speculation that the overhead costs for 470 and 480 on the partner manufacturers are massive and XFX said no to that.

 

"Hey, you still don't own a Nvidia GPU? What are you waiting for? ATI to make one?"

 

It's "craziness", since we're all analyzing random posts and stuff.

I hope nVidia can do something. ATI doing all kinds of miraculous things is going to hurt pockets if nVidia doesn't get their heads out of whatever it is they shoved them into.

 

Well they have a wonderful architecture with Fermi now. But TSMC just cannot cut it. Fermi should be able to last as long as our gold old G80 so it's not THAT bad now.
ATI sure is winning market right now, just need to go deeper in the mobile category..

 

It's not TSMC's fault that Nvidia FERMI consumes insane power and needs special power plugs on the card and it's temperatures are mind boggling. That's Nvidia architecture not manufacturing.

The overhead costs to use a FERMI is insane for users. If you want one with reasonable noise level, water cooling... For many, you would need an new PSU since a single card pulls almost 300W under load. These will probably take Nvidia a long time to tame until it can be used for mobile platform.

With ATi the difference is manufacturing as their architecture was initially designed for 32nm

 

The issues with FERMI are due to both the architecture and the relatively unstable 40nm process. It's not JUST Nvidia's fault, but it is a penalty they have to face for designing a chip that would inevitably be very expensive with the maturity of the 40nm process as of late.

I'm not really sure TMSC will make it to 32nm or 28nm in time. If Global Foundries beats them to the punch (in 2012), then it is possible that TMSC will cease to exist as a major player in GPU manufacturing. The experience and resources that GF can bring around might make it tempting to even Nvidia!

I agree about the longevity of Fermi though. They built a GRAND chip. It will take 1 or 2 years, but at that point it's derivative lines (maybe Geforce 500 or 600) will probably be really decent cards. That said, I'm still a self-proclaimed ATI fanboy. It's a real shame they didn't sell more chips in the last 7 months. Even though they were first to market, it seems as though the response to their new tech was somewhat muted.

 

I would have to disagree.

Nvidia has been known for this for years now, they are ALWAYS delaying releases because they can't get the manufacturing to work. And yet ATi who outsources to the same company has been able to meet their deadlines.

As for ATi not selling as well as they probably should have. Well you can find that Nvidia has increased their profits during those 7 months, the Nvidia marketing and Meant To Be Played Program is godlike in comparison to ATi's lack of.

But good point on Global Foundries especially considering AMD is one of their largest investors.

 

true. fermi seems to handle tessellation really well compared to evergreen. but it will be a long time until dx11 takes off. we don't know if fermi will be relevant then.

 

But what about HD2900? Remember how that went? It was the opposite of what happened here, except in that case, the then-current 8800 series still stomped the incredibly late, hot, and expensive HD2900. In today's case, while late, hot, and expensive, at least the GTX 480 isn't under performing.

 

LOL didn't NVDIA use wood plugs because they couldn't afford new plugs?
see the below video but whatever the case , ferni is failed due to high power consumption and not to mention high noise IMO.. can't wait for NVDIA to die... and the below video really makes me laugh

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZXhR1ibj8&playnext_from=TL&videos=P8QLauQfu2w

 

Dude, don't say things like that. As much as you might like one company over the other, competition is a good thing. Without Nvidia, ATI would have no pressure to make monster GPUs or to lower prices or power consumption. We'd have nothing but mediocre cards at exorbitant prices (priced *just* low enough to compete with Intel, which is hardly a competition at all).

You *want* Nvidia to come out with beastly, powerful, impressive hardware, so that ATI has a reason to use its R&D department.

 

i concur. fermi's fail hurts you even if you don't buy nvidia.

 

I would love it if Intel with their R&D would come into the scene with something revolutionary, something along the lines of Vox tree, to really put the GPGPU to use and just get rid of Tessellation.

Hmmm, IDTech 6 and Intel GPGPU tech, delicious.
- In my dreams for now.

As long as I'm dreaming, I would love to be able to use an AMD Phenom III Mobile + ATi HD6870 with an AMD Chipset notebook.