28nm GPUs to be up to 45% faster

Now that the launch of AMD’s Bulldozer has past the hype transfers to the launch of AMD’s 28nm HD 7000 series graphics card line. Nvidia will also be launching theirs too but not until a few months after AMD. TSMC claim that their new 28nm process could deliver up to 45% clock speed improvements over the current 40nm generation of GPUs. We could expect to see similar boosts in performance that we saw between the 65nm HD 4000 series and 40nm HD 5000 series. For a quick point of reference the HD 5850 is about 70% faster than th HD 4850.

However, it must be noted that the point TSMC are stressing here is clock speed improvements, these clock speed improvements could potentially materialise into no performance improvements if the architecture regresses, although that seems very unlikely. If the architecture improves then the performance jump could be greater than 45% and closer to the ~70% improvement between some HD 5000 and HD 4000 series comparisons. But what is yet to be seen is how AMD will strike up the balance between power consumption and performance. The new cards may clock higher but at what cost to the power consumption? We may see AMD tone down performance in order to aid power consumption and as a result leave cards with vast overclocking potential for those less wary of their electricity bill.

Source: DailyTech