RV740 Quite Likely to Outperform RV770LE
AMD’s first 40nm GPU RV740 was taped out on Dec 18th, but its specs are still under the cover. According to NordicHardware, RV740′s engineering sample has used GDDR5. We thought GDDR5 is only used in the samples to test its memory bandwidth limitations. But surprisingly, it turns out that the final version products will feature GDDR5 to make up for its poor memory interface.
We thought RV740 is just a successor to RV730, but this is not the case. RV740 is very likely to become the most competitive AMD chip in Q2 2009. Its specifications may convince you of this.
Basically, RV740 is 40nm version of RV770LE with 640 stream processors. Its memory interface is reduced to 128bit by 50%, which is the same as that of RV730. But just as RV770XT (Radeon HD4870), RV740 also equips high-performance GDDR5. Because of 128bit memory bandwidth, RV740 only has 8 Render Back-Ends. (Note: there is an error in the chart from VR-Zone and we have corrected it).
Moreover, due to the high cost of GDDR5, hopefully there will be RV740 in GDDR2 or GDDR3 version for your choice.
Based on 40nm processing, RV740′s power consumption is supposed to be lower than RV770LE, but the core clock and TDP are still to be confirmed. The performance of RV740 might be a bit better than RV770LE (depending on core clock mainly), and the price is expected to be less than $100.
December 21st, 2008 at 3:21 am
From VR-Zone:
Update : A typo in the number of render backends of RV730.
It should be 8 instead of 16 but RV740 remains at 16.
December 21st, 2008 at 4:54 am
sue just got pwned
great work kedas
what sue said sounded impossible
higher name(number) normally means faster
December 21st, 2008 at 5:15 am
Wonder if the earlier specs of “rv775″ were for Rv740?
725mhz and 900mhz aren’t insane to think @ 40nm.
725mhz could probably be done at under 75W, and if it uses 2800mhz GDDR3/4,as the rv775 info would suggest, It would be close to 4850 in core logic ability, but held back by bandwidth. I wouldn’t imagine there would be a lot of room to overclock it (to 4850 performance) though. Maybe a TDP right around 4670 (60W?)
If you give a similar part a 6-pin connector, 1ghz isn’t insane to think possible, so 900mhz would make sense, with a tdp around that of 4850 (110W). With GDDR5 @ 4ghz it could fit nicely in-between 4850 and 4870. It’s core logic ability would be close to 4870, with the bandwidth of 4850.
Certainly food for thought!
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:08 pm
“Because of 128bit memory bandwidth, RV740 only has 8 Render Back-Ends.”
ATi don’t seem to abide by that logic – R600 had a 512-bit memory interface and 16 render back-ends, RV670 had a 256-bit interface and the same amount of ROPs.
December 23rd, 2008 at 9:05 pm
GDDR5 Under $100 sounds too good to be true.