[erick]

Originally Posted by nutball

If you reduce the price of the high-end card from $600 to $400 (for example), what happens to the price of the card which used to cost $350? $300? $250? $200? And so on. You'd be compressing the entire price range and/or reducing the selling prices of the cards where you really do make most of your money (the mid- and low-end). Hell, you may even end up tempting more people to buy your top-end, loss-making card (losing you more money in the process).

I feel that the current product ranges are overpopulated as it is. Having 8+ cards on your product range is clearly the result of over-the-top pricing for your high-end cards, since you need something to fill the gaps between $75 and $549.

If your top-of-the-range card costs $400 you need much fewer price range fillers, thus making for a more cohesive and compact product line. If you don't want your high-end stuff to cannibalise your lower-performing parts, than make sure there's enough of a price difference between the them. Again, that's not a problem if you've got 4 to 5 cards, but it would be a problem if you had 8 cards for example.

As a personal note - I actually dare not hope for a $400 R600, but I think a $450 part is quite realistic.

[_xxx_]

I'm still leaning towards $599.

[nutball]

Originally Posted by erick

Having 8+ cards on your product range is clearly the result of over-the-top pricing for your high-end cards, since you need something to fill the gaps between $75 and $549.

I'm not sure I agree. I think it's the other way round, I think having a $549 priced top-end card is the result of wanting to have 8+ cards in the range.

[ANova]

Ah the good old days of the Voodoos, Geforce 3s and 4s and 9x00s where there were only 2-4 models.

[Kaotik]

Originally Posted by ANova

Ah the good old days of the Voodoos, Geforce 3s and 4s and 9x00s where there were only 2-4 models.

I'd say nVidia swayed off those "good old days" with GF4's, with the 3 models + 2 MX's (excluding the later released versions, there was in total 5 or 6 GF4Ti's and few more MX's too I think) which had nothing to do with their "bigger brothers" in terms of technology, MXes being GF2's

[ANova]

There were only three models of Geforce 4 Ti's, 4200, 4400 and 4600; later they expanded it to 2 or 3 more models with minor variations in clock/memory or to support AGP 8x. Like you said the MXs were essentially just rebranded GF2s, the performance gap between them and the GF4s were quite large.

[Russell]

Fuad

It looks like AMD will have to skip one more deadline. It is likely that it won't launch the RV630 and RV610 alongside the highly anticipated R600. Radeon X2900 series will officially launch in May and the NDA presentation will take place in Tunisia on the 23rd and 24th of April.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...d=499&Itemid=1

I noticed that Fuad has a trend lately. Instead of saying ridiculous things that he will later get mocked for, his predictions are based on what is likely to happen. In this case, I wouldn't be surprised if he were spot on. I think he mentioned this one a couple weeks ago too, but is "Fuad-confirming" it now.

Yep. If this is true it's pretty shitty.

[Geeforcer]

Originally Posted by Russell

Fuad

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...d=499&Itemid=1

I noticed that Fuad has a trend lately. Instead of saying ridiculous things that he will later get mocked for, his predictions are based on what is likely to happen. In this case, I wouldn't be surprised if he were spot on. I think he mentioned this one a couple weeks ago too, but is "Fuad-confirming" it now.

Yep. If this is true it's pretty shitty.

Of course, if this is true (mammoth-sized "if", source considered), then AMD will without a doubt delay R600 as well, right? I mean, they have been tripping over themselves telling people how R600 has been ready to go for months if not years (decades?) and they only reason it has not seen the light of day yet is due to how orgasmotastic "family launch" is.

[nicolasb]

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect 65nm R650 to be due for September/October

Aren't we expecting R700 to be out before the end of this year? I think the original plan was to launch R600 last November/December, with R700 to follow a year later. That would make the likely original plan for an R650 release Summer rather than Autumn/Fall - presumably hot on the heels of the smaller 65nm chips. If that's correct and R650 is still on schedule then it could quite easily ship in June or July rather than October.

As far as the "high end cards will cost $400" rumour, even AMD isn't stupid enough to sell their high-end chips at a loss. There are therefore only two possibilities:

1) The rumour is false.
2) There will be a huge cost advantage over rival products. (Not sure where this might come from. 65nm vs 80nm, presumably.)

If there is actually a major cost advantage then selling cheap would make sense. If absolutely nobody buys the rival Nvidia product, then sales double at a stroke. And if the price of a high-end card drops from $600 to $400, the number of potential buyers of the high-end card is dramatically increased. It would be quite reasonable to sell the chips at a reduced margin if, by doing so, the cost of the eventual cards can fall by that much. But the suggestion that they could be sold at a loss is preposterous.

[vertex_shader]

Originally Posted by Geeforcer

Of course, if this is true (mammoth-sized "if", source considered), then AMD will without a doubt delay R600 as well, right? I mean, they have been tripping over themselves telling people how R600 has been ready to go for months if not years (decades?) and they only reason it has not seen the light of day yet is due to how orgasmotastic "family launch" is.

OEM has higher priority than retail, OEM's scared about NV vista drivers, so AMD has the chance now for the big "fishes".
OEM release is a launch too, looks like its coming in time, but its will be a dissapointment for the users who are waiting for retail amd dx10 mainstream cards.

[Razor1]

Originally Posted by Jawed

Definitely dirt cheap (PS3 and XB360 both consume a load of these, 256MB and 512MB respectively).

Jawed

Hmm funny price of gddr3 has been pretty much stable for the past few months to a year, you might want to look that info up again Jawed.

[Arun]

Originally Posted by Razor1

Hmm funny price of gddr3 has been pretty much stable for the past few months to a year, you might want to look that info up again Jawed.

Source? Unless you asked Samsung directly, which can definitely work if they're in a good mood, I fail to see how you can say that.

[Razor1]

supply and demand, overall demand has increased with next gen products for GDDR3 memory specially even the lower mid range cards and all the way up are going to be using it plus the two consoles. Unless I'm missing something has Samsung increased production in the past year for GDDR3, maybe openned up a new fab or two we don't know about? Remember the court case about DDR ram and stabilization of prices that was only 6 months ago, and actually prices went up a little after that.

[Unknown Soldier]

Originally Posted by vertex_shader

OEM has higher priority than retail, OEM's scared about NV vista drivers, so AMD has the chance now for the big "fishes".
OEM release is a launch too, looks like its coming in time, but its will be a dissapointment for the users who are waiting for retail amd dx10 mainstream cards.

Ye, i'm beginning to think the real reason why AMD never launched the R600 in March was because Dell(and other OEM's) bought all the chips and placed orders for the first batch of RV610/630's and thus AMD has now supplied them or is still delivering on the 'Million plus chips' that is supposed to be delivered and not the original rumours that floated about saying that the chip/card had problems.

That would make AMD delay the release of the chips to retail and get them working on a power(retail) friendly solution(R650) in the meantime until the actual time as they have stock for retail purposes and a proper launch hence the new delay.

Hmm.. now i'm thinking that AMD might actually have done something right in order to keep the company above the water. For us consumers though it's a bitter pill but I guess that's where the money lies.

Now i'm beginning to think that AMD might actually release the 65nm R650 for retail consumers at release date instead of the 80nm R600 which they'll sell to the OEM's before hand.

US

[trinibwoy]

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...d=506&Itemid=1

ATI won't be using X in its Rx6xx brand names. The new Radeon generation will be branded Radeon HD 2000 series.

The R600XT or Radeon HD 2900HD is actually a 512 MB GDDR 3 card and the XTX will come later.

All the Radeon Rx6xx chips will be known as ATI Radeon HD 2000 Series.

I like it !! I hated that extra X

[IbaneZ]

Hi there

It arrived at 10:30am this morning, had to sign some NDA forms meaning I cannot disclose to much info.

Initial thoughts are it looks good, its very silent. Having issues at the moment with the alpha/beta drivers and no doubt due to the fact the OS had a NVIDIA card previously installed.

But on noise its quiet, pretty much silent. It runs hotter than a GTX but does not burn to the touch like previous ATI cards.

I will report back later in regard to performance once I've got past installation gremlins.

Gibbo got "his" R600.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...&postcount=490

[vertex_shader]

Originally Posted by trinibwoy

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...d=506&Itemid=1



I like it !! I hated that extra X

Very good name choice

[vertex_shader]

Originally Posted by IbaneZ

Gibbo got "his" R600.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...&postcount=490

It has a 8-pin and 6-pin PCI-E connectors but you can plug a 6-pin connector into the 8-pin without issues so you won't need to upgrade your PSU's to the new types.

So the power consuption less than 225watt.

[Kaotik]

Originally Posted by trinibwoy

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...d=506&Itemid=1



I like it !! I hated that extra X

You can be damn 100% sure it won't be called "Radeon HD 2000 HD"
And hasn't AMD itself been already referring to it as X2900?

[Sound_Card]

Power consumption has to be less than 225w if you can use two 6-pin connectors.

[Sound_Card]

Originally Posted by Kaotik

You can be damn 100% sure it won't be called "Radeon HD 2000 HD"
And hasn't AMD itself been already referring to it as X2900?

I actully like the sound of x2900hd

[Razor1]

Hi there

Well got a few things running, though I am not confident at all with the drivers as things do see glitchy, might possibly need a fresh OS installation.

Am impressed though by the fact whilst underload it still remains nice and quiet, the fan control seems to work quite well, certainly a lot better than the old X1950's which seem to be just either on or off with the volume so the improved fan control is an nice improvement as it means now whilst gaming it still remains quiet.

Performance can't really say but at the moment its a mixed bag, some things its very impressive and others am unsure about but the image quality does seem some what better than the GTX with certain settings which could account for the lower FPS on some test, just seems more sharper and more details thrown into the image.

All I can say is wait for official reviews to get the real info on benchmarks and how it performs. For the moment I can not come to a conclusion on the performance until I've had more time with the card.

I feel it will be around GTX performance but has more features, better Vista performance and cost quite a lot less than a GTX.

hmm looks like Gibbo ain't goin give much.

[Evildeus]

cost quite a lot less than a GTX.

hmmm

[Jawed]

Originally Posted by nicolasb

Aren't we expecting R700 to be out before the end of this year? I think the original plan was to launch R600 last November/December, with R700 to follow a year later. That would make the likely original plan for an R650 release Summer rather than Autumn/Fall - presumably hot on the heels of the smaller 65nm chips. If that's correct and R650 is still on schedule then it could quite easily ship in June or July rather than October.

I've always thought that rumour about R700 was rot. A year between major architectural changes doesn't seem reasonable. Unless R700 is much simpler. I admit the rumour about what R700 is (multi-core) seems a bit far-fetched, so it could be simpler.

It's worth pausing on the fact that Orton actually mentioned R700 during that RD690 press event video.

Jawed

[pakotlar]

This doesn't sound too great. While I will conceede that newer, more stable, and better performing drivers may be available on launch, I was hoping that the initial impression Gibbo got would be a bit better. Considering how late it is, I was hoping drivers would be in a less "glitchy" state. I guess corporate restructuring could have affected development. I may still consider it, but my x1900xt will serve me a while longer i think.

Though this may be a similar case to x1800xt, where driver maturity REALLY affected performance. I bet scheduling is a whole lot more complex on this card than in the x1800 and x1900 cases. If we see similar boosts with this card that we saw through the duration of the x1800/x1900 product cycle (up till now), performance may still have headroom. Though I wonder what "similar" performance entails. If it is similar under cpu or fillrate limited scenarios, I won't be dissapointed, as long as the "impressive" scenarios are cases where such bottlenecks go away. I mean I want to see superior math performance, and handling of certain effects due to high bandwith, etc. Utilize your strengths ATI!

edit: As an afterthought, ATI sure has some tough competition. Nvidia has been so on the ball since NV40, that each successive generation improves not only in performance but design principles. I really feel like nvidia delivered the total package with the 8800GTX. Its the first part that I've been really compelled to switch for since NV25. IQ is very important to me, and for a while now, ATI had a major lead. Not the case anymore.