R700 would have been in development long before the merger with AMD. Moreover, I seriously doubt that AMD's inter-processor connects can meet the needs of a high end GPU unless you're doing simple Xfire/SLI type connections that waste RAM.
Which is exactly why they should apply the old 80/20 rule and go for the bottom 80 percent of the customers...
Also, I know it's been said that designing a chip takes *years* that a design can't be tacked onto over night.. But, I do believe I recall reading that AMD had concerns about the texture units well before R600 shipped and were looking to correct that deficency with R700 - hence the roadmap change?
IS it possible that AMD could of changed R700's design to reflect updated/improved texture units or is this simply not possible given the time frame and the architecture design limits?
Thanks