AMD Delivers DX11 Graphics Solution For Under $100 133
Vigile points out yesterday's launch of "the new AMD Radeon HD 5670, the first graphics card to bring DirectX 11 support to the sub-$100 market and offer next-generation features to almost any budget. The Redwood part (as it was codenamed) is nearly 3.5x smaller in die size than the first DX11 GPUs from AMD while still offering support for DirectCompute 5.0, Eyefinity multi-monitor gaming and of course DX11 features (like tessellation) in upcoming Windows gaming titles. Unfortunately, performance on the card is not revolutionary even for the $99 graphics market, though power consumption has been noticeably lowered while keeping the card well cooled in a single-slot design."
Re:I don't really keep up with games... (Score:4, Informative)
A lot of games will struggle on this card significantly. It's about as powerful as a 3870 from 2+ years ago.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't get it. Yay, DX11. The biggest new features I could see about it were hardware tessellation and compute shaders.
Compute shaders, or more generally GPGPU (via OpenCL as well as DX11) will open up a huge new market for GPUs. One midrange GPU can replace a small cluster of computers at a fraction of the cost. For example, using 2-3 GPUs in one box, people doing architectural visualization can get their results in minutes instead of days.
Whats the point? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Whats the point? (Score:4, Informative)
Meanwhile, NVidia is renaming cards (Score:4, Informative)
With NVidia unable to release something competitive and therefore creating a "new" 3xx series into being through renaming 2xx series cards [semiaccurate.com], the gts360m as well [semiaccurate.com], those with a clue will be buying ATI for the time being.
Sadly, the average consumer will only look at higher number and is likely to be conned.
Re:State of AMD for HTPC Use? (Score:3, Informative)
From what I understand hardware acceleration is now somewhat usable with the Catalyst drivers (source [phoronix.com]). But for the open source drivers there is nothing, there's no specs for UVD and even though it should be possible to implement a shader-based acceleration and the docs for that is out, no one has done it yet.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:1, Informative)
One of those problems is none other than solving large systems of linear equations, which encompasses a very wide range of specific problems such as 3D visualization (i.e., what the GPU was designed to do) but also solving partial differential equations through techniques such as the finite-element method [wikipedia.org], which encompasses problems such as structural analysis, thermal, fluid dynamics, electromagnetics and even weather prediction and economic models. So, you pretty much can do everything better with a GPGPU.
Re:State of AMD for HTPC Use? (Score:3, Informative)
AFAIK, the open-source drivers are progressing at a breakneck pace, and hardware acceleration is very usable on some cards. One of the more recent kernel releases included a new driver, which is allegedly quite good.
Apologies for being unable to offer more specifics. The current state of affairs is rather confusing, although I'm fairly confident that we're very quickly progressing in the right direction.
Re:I don't really keep up with games... (Score:1, Informative)
Captain Obvious told me that while 3870 cost $200+ on 2+ years ago, this so called "about as powerful as a 3870" card cost around $100, uses less power than 3870, AND is listed on the x6xx line.
Truth be told, you're like comparing apples and oranges here. 2+ years ago, 3870 series might be the fastest card out there and should be compared now to a 5870.