Notes

Numbers that jump out at you are obviously the increase in the number of stream processors – up from 320 in R600 to 800 in RV770! This increase (along with several others) bumps the transistor count from 666 million in RV670 up to 965 million transistors in RV770. Illustrating RV770’s efficiency, ATI was able to pull this off with a die that’s only about 30% larger than RV670, despite the fact that both GPUs are made on the same 55-nm manufacturing process. All the key features found in RV670 remain, such as DirectX 10.1 support, the tessellation unit, and PCI Express 2.0, while ATI’s added a tweaked unified video decoding engine that boasts new capabilities while the chip boasts a new microcontroller that constantly monitors thermal and activity usage of various blocks within the GPU. The microcontroller controls clock gating, clock speeds, and voltages to ensure the GPU is running at peak power efficiency.

You also can’t miss ATI’s nod to GPU-based physics in the specs listed above. ATI has partnered with archrival Intel (who owns Havok) to make this possible. While both sides haven’t announced anything specific yet when it comes to implementation, we’ve been told that they’re actively looking into areas where it makes sense for the GPU to handle physics rather than the CPU. In those cases RV770 would presumably be used to handle those specific effects rather than the CPU.

Basically they’re not looking to replace the CPU for handling in-game physics anytime soon, but complement it. We’ll have to wait for more details on which games may potentially take advantage of the technology though.