Radeon R700

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article contains information about scheduled or expected future computer chips.
It may contain preliminary or speculative information, and may not reflect the final specification of the product.
Radeon R700
Codename(s) Wekiva
Created in year 2007
Entry-level cards RV710
Mid-range cards RV730
High-end cards RV740
Enthusiast cards RV770,R700
Direct3D support 10.1, Shader Model 4.1
This box: view • talk • edit

The Radeon R700 is the engineering codename for an upcoming Graphics Processing Unit series which is in development by AMD Graphics Product Group, to be sold under the ATI brand. The foundation chip is the codenamed RV770 GPU. Products are expected to be released in 2008. [1]

Contents

[edit] Existence

The Radeon R700 has been reported to exist by the tech tabloid The Inquirer[2] and Fudzilla [3], the R700 was reported to be the successor of the R600 GPU series. The R700 is mentioned to be quite heavily based upon the R600's design principles, including the high memory bandwidth and the high scalability; this is rumored to be one of the factors contributing to the delayed release of the R600, as everything would need to be smoothed out before the work went into the R700.[4]

Another possible proof relies in Apple placing RV770 information in their 9C7 graphics drivers. [5]

[edit] Preliminary information

Reportedly, the R700 and its foundation chip, RV770, have been taped out sometime in December 2007, and engineering samples are being sent out. [6][7][8][9]

[edit] Rumored design features

  • The Radeon R700, like the Radeon HD 3870 X2 (codenamed R680), is a set of two RV770s GPUs connected by a PCI Express bridge chip on a single PCB. ATIs Highest end SKUs will comprise of the two RV770s that form the R700 chipset.
  • The R700 products will support HDMI, DisplayPort, and Dual DVI at the same time. The HDMI support will be through the same DVI to HDMI adapter which came with Radeon HD 2000 series products, and DisplayPort will be placed directly on the PCB or on a package backplate to replace the TV-out and the other DVI port [11]. There may also be a possibility that the backplate supports dual DisplayPort with single DVI port same as the reference design of Radeon HD 3670 leaked in early December 2007. [12].
  • The RV770 GPU will be first to support GDDR5 memory [13]
  • RV770 has 480 stream processing units with 256-bit memory controller. RV740 is the mainstream card, and will have a 256-bit memory interface [14], and 240 stream processing units. [15] RV710 is the value product, with 128-bit memory controller and 40 stream processor units. [15]. It is reported that there will also be an RV730 variant. [16]

[edit] New market strategy

  • According to Phil Hester and Dave Orton, the firm has used a new strategy for the graphics market. Future GPU architectures will undergo small updates (presumably a die shrink at half lithographic nodes, minor architectural changes, improvements to performance and power consumption, as well as implementation of newer API support) 6 months after first release, meaning the first GPU cores having only a 6-month product cycle. For mainstream and value segments, the product cycle will instead be 12 months without architectural alterations. The planned successor, presumably codenamed the Radeon R800 , will be targeted to launch on an even smaller fabrication process than the half-generation update (presumably codenamed R780) [17], while expecting that the Radeon R800 will be compatible with the next major version of DirectX API which both are aimed at a 2009 launch.

[edit] Future

The specifications for the architectures of the R800 and R900 families are "closed" (finalized), with the specifications of the R1000 being developed. [18]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Fudzilla report: R700 is 2008 - No delays, retrieved December 20, 2007
  2. ^ Big GPUs are set to die
  3. ^ Fudzilla report, retrieved October 10, 2007
  4. ^ State of the Silicon Union - Q207 (HardOCP)
  5. ^ My OCWorkBench discussion thread, retrieved January 23, 2008
  6. ^ The Inquirer report: R700 has taped out - Weeks ago actually. Retrieved January 3, 2008
  7. ^ Fudzilla report: RV770 taped out - In very good shape. Retrieved January 15, 2007
  8. ^ Fudzilla report: RV770 engineering samples are out - The chip works. Retrieved January 17, 2007
  9. ^ (Chinese) ChipHell world's first leakage: RV770 sample card shots, retrieved January 23, 2008
  10. ^ State of the Silicon Union - Q207 (HardOCP)
  11. ^ The Inquirer report, retrieved August 2, 2007
  12. ^ DailyTech report, retrieved December 7, 2007
  13. ^ Fudzilla report, retrieved January 31, 2008
  14. ^ Fudzilla report
  15. ^ a b (German) Hartware.de report, retrieved February 18, 2008
  16. ^ [http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6017&Itemid=34 Fudzilla report[, retrieved March 17, 2008
  17. ^ (Japanese) PC Watch report
  18. ^ The Inquirer report, retrieved September 12, 2007

[edit] External links

v • d • e
AMD graphics products (ATI)
Languages