The successors to the HD 4650 and faster models will show up soon, according to this site.

RV740 replaces the RV730, which is used in the HD4600 series.

RV790 is the successor for the RV770, used in the HD 4800 series.
The site mentions the model number HD 4900, and I'd guess the RV740 will become the HD 4700.
These are not completely new designs, more like shrinked and improved versions of the current ones.
New GPU designs will show up later this year.

Edit: Just have to say that it will probably show up later than march.

Update: More info here.

EDIT BY ADMIN:
Sorry for the minor hijack, but since this thread is already so well developed, it seemed best to make this the forum discussion thread for SPCR's own review ATI Radeon HD 4770: ATI's First 40nm GPU

I've read the 790 will just use a different 55nm TSMC process, not 40nm. The RV740 will be the only 700 series core on 40nm as per information at XS. I'm just relaying that info here. Basically, it's unclear what the RV790 is really going to be built on. Either way, the 740 sounds like my next video card...

Yeah, I've followed the thread at XS. The RV740 seems to be 40 nm though.

Mats-

Thanks for replying to my other thread quesiton. This looks interesting - I'll wait until March to see what's happening. If you can get 4830/4850 performance on 4700 40nm part, that would be awesome.

Chris

Right behind them

http://vr-zone.com/articles/nvidia-40nm ... l?doc=6359

Guru3D reviewed an early pre-production RV740. Performance is always between the 4830 and the 4850.

One important thing to notice is that the outline print on the PCB for the heatsink is different to the 4850 cooler.
I guess we'll see a new cooler for it, and I really doubt the VF900 is part of the reference design.

No power consumption measured.

We still have to wait till april/may...annoying! Power should be lower than the 4830, maybe the 6-pin was there beacuse it's an ES, or just for OC headroom. Either way, if the power is below 80W, it's mine.

Too bad the reference PCB is so much larger than 4670/4650. I'm considering replacing the X850XT-PE in my HTPC with a 4670, no point in waiting for these new cards I guess.

Interesting article, cheers. I like their summation of the Zalman cooler: "Quite a sight for the eyes, very silent as well."

Exactly what do you mean? The 4670 and RV740 performs quite different.
And what's the problem with the length? It's not that long, and definitely shorter than a ATX board.

Rumors were that the 40 (45) nm process at TSMC was in a sorry state, meaning lots of leakage.
That's why the next generation GPUs from both AMD and nVidia are delayed.
I wished this RV740 to draw as much power as the 4670 and have performance close to the 4850, but I doubt it.
At release we may find out that it uses as much power as the 4830. I still hope I'm wrong!

From the previews linked the HD4750 appears to be significantly longer than the X850XT-PE I now have, and which is the abolute maxium length allowed for in my HTPC... without cutting in the chassis. Within this limitation the best upgrade for now and the near future appears to be a HD4670. That's what i meant with "too bad"... too bad the RV740 VGAs with their improved performance don't come on smaller PCBs.

Yeah, I checked and it looks like it's 20 mm longer than your card.
It's quite possible that smaller cards will show up (especially since it won't need as much power as the 4830), just like it did for the 4850.

Since it has an extra power connector, it's probably going to be power-hungry

I really like my 4670, despite not cooling it passively (yet). There's something strangely pleasing in being able to tuck away the PEG cable along with other unused ones. Would be even better if I had a modular PSU

Even though it's clearly a Zalman heatsink, it isn't the stock fan.
And it's not only the ATI sticker that anyone could've put there, the fan blades looks different and are ATI red.

Now I woudn't think that was strange if was a retail part, but it isn't.


That is not something you can tell from looking at a pre-production card.

I don't care that much about max power draw, because I guess it will be lower than the 4830 anyway.
The important thing is that it will use less power in idle than the 4830, and that it will be much faster than the 4670.

Just curious, but if AMD already has a number of 45nm CPU's out, why didn't they release 45nm GPU's at the same time? Is it because they wanted to do 40nm for the GPU chips? It seems to me that if they'd have had 45nm GPU chips ready to go at the same time Phenom II came out last month, they would have smoked nvidia by at least 6 months, minimum.

Because of what's quoted above

AMD makes its CPUs in its own fabs, whereas the GPUs are all made in TSMC fabs.

Exactly, it's a capacity/convenience thing at the moment. They can't spare manufacturing time, and they can't spare the time/money to make GPUs on the SOI process vs the Bulk that TSMC uses.

Well, it seems March was too optimistic, but read this: Radeon HD 4890 (RV790) & HD 4770 (RV740) Launch On Apr 6th
Link: http://vr-zone.com/articles/radeon-hd-4 ... l?doc=6664

I mentioned it in the first post but I guess most people didin't see it.
Thanks for the link!

Remember, a watched pot never boils.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/new ... m-revealed

They come into joint venture with TSMC on the road to establish The Foundry, so the only reason might be cause they still don't have 45nm bulk process (nor intention to develop one) and SOI is too expensive, too complicated and doesn't provide any gain in GP-GPU world.

I hope you're wrong too but somehow i doubt it

It more and more lookalike r430 @110nm release when they were at the apex of their power-performance ratio on 130nm process. It resembles that they only cutting down expenses cause 256bit PCB and bigger 55nm (250mm2) chip hardly are profitable at sub-100USD price range.

I would be pretty disappointed if rv740 doesn't came out in 1GB flavor and with better memory BW cause from test the only problem lies in poor BW considering scalability of 40nm first chip. And it would be pretty fair if whole card @750Mhz wouldn't suck more than 90W cause usually moderate estimations on new (half-)nodes, if they dont hit the gold mine with minimal leakage thru few nodes, are in 25-30% power reduction at the same clock and with the same functionality. I'm still waiting for 32nm bulk counterpart (rv830?) at the end of the year directly from Dresden.

At the end i'm pretty surprised they came up with 8x (80-4-2) configuration cause that's definitely not something well fitted for the htpc. Even I think x850-x1950pro-hdX6X0-hd47X0 have the same length. And hope that it' wont suck more than 10W in idle mode cause these rv770 with 30-40W in idle mode is more than ridiculous. At least for ATi that still didn't came up with real counterpart to HybridSLI.

I'm looking forward to this card, too.

Fudzilla says the desktop cards have been delayed until May. Apparently ATI wants all of the first RV740 chips to go to the mobile version. Which is great for laptop buyers, I guess, but not for me- I want it!

The 4770 is supposed to be launched May 4, look here.
The picture shows a dual slot cooler with at least one heatpipe. It's a bit surprising to see a the metal frame at the top of the card, it just looks . . expensive. The price should be the same as for the 4830.

I don't know what to expect of the power consumption under load, but I'm pretty sure the idle consumption will drop significantly.

RV790 should show up very soon, probably the next week. Nobody knows if or when it will be manufactured in 40 nm instead, but it could happen quite soon (more rumors!). That doesn't mean that such a product must end up in retail though.
The 40 nm process was bad, it's however hard to tell exactly when and for how long it was bad.

They list GFLOPs and GFLOPs/W, so it's 80 W. No gains from 40nm, as predicted.
Wonder how just 1 heatpipe (bad) / exhausting hot air (good) will balance out.

Yeah it says so in the link I posted, but that doesn't really have to be the truth in real world tests. I suspect it could be higher than 80 W, just look at the cooler.
Or, just like the X3 720 is rated for a quite theoretical 95 W but uses <55 W during Prime95, AMD and I have different ways of measuring power consumption.
That's why I don't know what to expect.

I don't see how 1 heatpipe would be bad, compared to the probably hotter 4850 which have no heatpipe at all.

Great card! Does it have the attachable power connector? 80W is nearly 75W, which is PCI-E supplying power limit.

A theory at a Russian language forum behind a site that produces part of xbitlabs.com transalted content (so, respectable ) is that AMD is overcompensating the inadequate 4850 cooler, possibly due to vendors complaining.


OK.


Yeah, you're right, I was probably thinking of aftermaket coolers and the 8800 GT.


Looking at the posted picture and another one here, I think I can see it.