ATI Radeon “” replacement Evergreen GPU (R800)

• There are no low end cards in this family of GPU yet, but expect AMD/ATI to release Redwood early next year (January possibly). My speculation is, given the performance that we see from this new Evergreen architecture, this would make 9800GT and GTX240 irrelevant as Redwood will be position at that price range. It wouldn’t replace 4650/4670 initially, but expect it to do so by end of next year.
• Juniper is the latest mid range card from AMD/ATI. It is basically half of horse power from Cypress(see below). The 5770 is almost as fast as 4870, but in some cases it was actually slower by few frame rates. Well, that doesn’t concern me with an extra added feature like DirectX 11 and bit streaming. 5770 vs GTX260 vs 4870 at the same price range, I definitely be going for 5770.
• The fastest single chip GPU fall into the hands of Cypress. There are two variant, 5870 and the cut down version 5850. Though 5870′s performance is remarkable, but its price is a bit on the high side no thanks to the non-competition from nvidia and the limited stock available. 5850 on the other hand is really the card to get this year, having performance which is faster than nvidia GTX285 with lower price tag. But it faces the similiar problem with 5870 as well, is very hard to get this card and some shops actually marked up the price above market level.
• ATI/AMD decided to name their dual chip Cypress as Hemlock with their high end named 5970. Boasting two 5870 chip in one card, this is a beast. The 5870 is already insanely fast, having two of them makes nightmare to nvidia. While having the fastest frame rates in all games, this card is not for the faint hearted. Prepare to churn out a big hole in your bank account for this card.

So there you have it, a detailed summary of every discrete graphic families available in the market now. But many of you have guessed, why it isn’t a good time to upgrade your 2-4 years old graphic card now?( thats a different story if you are getting a new PC man )  Well, first of all, availability problem causes some of the most popular graphic card to hike up in price. The Radeon 4850 and nvidia GTX260 is actually pricier than few months back. The new Evergreen graphic from ATI is even in the worst case here, the Radeon 5850, 5870 and 5950 have very little available globablly. Inadvertently causing some stores to mark up their prices. While the cheaper variant of the Evergreen; 5770 and 5750 is just slightly better in the position. The lower end card like the Radeon 4670 and 4650 are still available and getting very affordable these days, but if you are prescription “” online upgrading your graphic card, you won’t get these cards right? My advice, is actually worth to play the wait game just for few more months now. This is what will happen: ATI will ramp up production for their Evergreen graphics family in January, the lower end Redwood will show up Q1, nvidia Fermi will show up by March best case scenario. It’s a very interesting 1st half. If Fermi perform half as good as what nvidia claim, that would be already enough to make ATI lower down their pricey Cypress and Hemlock, and price wars ignite. It’s good for the consumer in the end, you see, im not a fan boy in either side. I’m a fan boy of any side which can produce cheap, efficient, and high performing card, and I believe everyone should.

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