Squilliam said:
Realistically however they only need a 230-50mm^2 5780/5790 variant to slot in between Cypress and Juniper. They can premiere the new architecture this year but they don't exactly need to rush out replacements. They could sell the cheap one at $200 and the expensive one at $230 which fills the hole which the GTX 460 is taking adantage of. Then next year they can shrink it down to 28nm and it can become the regular 67xx series of GPU and perhaps even cover the 66xx range as well. |
The GTX 460 is a bigger chip than Cypress and it's yielding worse. They could sell the 5870 at $200 and make more profit than Nvidia. Just putting the 5850 at $250 and 5830 at $180 would depress GTX 460 sales, and I think they'll do that when supply improves.
Southern Islands is going to have a 20-30% boost in IPC and an increase in shader count too.
