dec, again I said Tonga with 512b mem bus would be better than Hawaii. Not 1024b, that would be a no go for sure, power issues and cross-talk, too many traces on the PCB, more layers, added cost and complexity, you name it. No, that was not the way. But with the compression feature embedded it would almost be like it was that wide.
They're all derivatives of one another really, Tahiti, Hawaii and Tonga. Tahiti lacks a few good features though.
What I was saying is that since they based Fiji on Tonga, or developed simultaneously which would be more likely, why not use Tonga instead of Hawaii? Since the design of Tonga and Fiji is the same, same people would (were?) working on both, resources would be the same, final product (300 series) would be better and actually new, better for AMD when it comes to image and marketing. OK, Hawaii is an older and possibly more stable design, but it's still "old" by today's standards, and I believe AMD didn't come out of this yet another rebrand with a good or better image, much on the contrary.
And I'm not saying Hawaii is not a good chip, it is, but it shows some weakness from AMD not to be able to innovate much at the time. I know their (little) money must be well spent, and compromises must be made.
All in all, Fiji was a good and safer bet.
koyoot, you still think or feel Fiji will be on nMP? Would it be an option to the "regular" Tonga and Hawaii based cards? Would Apple do that? Nahh
But if the signature is in El Cap, maybe we do get it in the next lineup.
I didn't forget about Tonga and Fiji. In fact, if you read carefully it is exactly what I've been saying all along. What I'd have liked to see was a super-Antigua like Fiji, instead of Hawaii, it would make more sense to me. But that's just me.
I would be like Hawaii but only updated to GCN 1.2, based on 2x Tonga XT but at only 512b mem, instead of 768b which would be too wide. 512b already is... at least borderline.
Aiden, I can't back that up of course, it was just a though. I'd imagine at least with the Alpine Ridge they'd get first silicon since they're the main supporter (almost the only one, in fact). And I'd say Intel wants Apple to keep interested in TB, although Intel seems to gain momentum again with USB. If Intel really wants to keep TB alive (and I'm not sure they do in the long run) they need to care for those who were willing to bet on it in the first place, and that was Apple. If Apple comes out with a new design, that might give it a push. If not Apple, who will battle for it? A couple of Taiwanese PC makers? Just to say they can do it too?
CPUs is a different story and surely there are other bigger players that can get samples in advance and at larger quantities.
Punk, it really was just joking, don't take it personally please. I inserted the
exactly so that you wouldn't take it to heart. My bad, sorry.
I wouldn't count on Apple going the dual CPU route again, unfortunately. I'm all with you when it comes to availability of a beast Mac, that people can customize at will, but you know Apple is not that kind of company. They're control freaks and I understand why, can even agree to some point. Imagine the support nightmare!! Not from some people here that are used to tweaking their systems, but they would open a can of worms really. Compatibility problems, people would ask for their support for the most various configurations, no way that would fit the Apple way.
That's the PC world (OK, some will argue the compatibility problem is no more, but really?).
Nice systems there by the way. I've given up making my rigs already, maybe I'm getting old...
