ATi Scoopage: Radeon 8500 MAX

[Guest]

"ATi Scoopage: Radeon 8500 MAX - Tuesday, July 9 | Solomon

I've got in touch with my mice from ATi's cafeteria and found out some pretty interesting information. First off is information regarding the mysterious 8500 MAX that was posted on Tweak Town a week ago. The information I post isn't just "hear say" or to get some noise. I only post information that is sent from high up in the business. You already know my stand on BS rumor slinging from the days of Zoiah and company. So here is the ATi info straight from my mice:

The ATI Radeon 8500 Maxx is for real and the card is already in full production and about to be shipped soon. ATi has finally nailed certain issues with the dual chip. Final testings have been done and you should here noise from ATi regarding this offering."

http://www.3dchipset.com/news.shtml#newsitem1026187840,79899,

 

[Gollum]

Interesting, lets assume this is true. Besides the fact that this would probably be a mofo of a fast card, I'm more intrigued as to what that could mean about the release of the R300! Would ATI release their R300 AND a R200/250 MAXX board at the same time, or could it mean a delayed release of the R300 (maybe waiting for .13 after all)? R300 should be fast, but I can imagine a MAXX product would be almost as fast if not faster in current games, which could cast a bad light on R300 would it be released alongside such a beast. Just curious...

Edit: Hmm, a MAXX card wouldn't really fit well with the spiffy flash animation on ATI's site, its more like a flash from the past than a step into the future, so I have my doubts that this big anouncement coming up would indeed be a R8500 MAXX. So where would it fit in and would it make sense?

 

[Randell]

Wher is the market for the 8500 MAXX if R300 is just around the corner?

 

[horvendile]

Didn't ATI's latest MAXX product leave a somewhat sour taste? It may or may not have been a good product, but isn't driver problems what most people remember?
Were I in charge of ATI marketing, that would make me think both twice and thrice before naming another product "MAXX". Regardless if it's MAX or MAXX.

That, and the ambiguous market niche, makes me doubt the existence of such a product. The existence of a (very likely) false picture doesn't help raising the credibility.

I'd like to be proven wrong though, if only for the apparent absurdity.

Edit: Inevitable spelling error, due to clumsy fingers, corrected. Clumsy fingers still not corrected.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Didn't ATI's latest MAXX product leave a somewhat sour taste? It may or may not have been a good product, bur isn't driver problems what most people remember?

The original had issues because of AGP and having two devices on a board – because they hadn’t really got any support for it and failed to operate in NT machines at all. ATi now at least have the AGP4X bridge chip which is operating correctly (albeit under slightly different conditions) in the 8500 A-I-W DV.

I would agree that this product would be a little odd to come in the retail market at this point (a few months away from R300 and RV250) so I wonder about the validity of this story. It could be a spill over from the faked pictures last week or possibly ATI are just fulfilling the orders from Evans & Sutherland.

 

[Bambers]

Hmm. Either the r300 really is blindingly fast (rumours a while ago said 3x faster than r200) so that a dual chip 8500 wouldn't be competition at only ~2x as fast or there will be no dual chip for the reasons said in previous posts. I really can't see it being the first.

You already know my stand on BS rumor slinging

He'd better hope he doesn't have to eat his words

 

[horvendile]

ATi now at least have the AGP4X bridge chip which is operating correctly

Well, that's great (no sarcasm intended); I'm not in a position to dispute ATI's ability to build a 2-chip product, and I have no wish to do so. I just thought that the inclusion of the word "MAX" made the product less likely to exist, which is a marketing-based guess, not a technical.

Hm... did I just repeat my last post, but with different words?
Oh, well.

 

[NTD]

There's no mention of the actual chips used. If RV250 really has just two pipes maybe this is the version that is supposed to be faster than the old R8500. So two RV250's, not two R200's.

 

[Bambers]

Wouldn't it be easier just to use one full r200 based chip instead?

 

[Nappe1]

Wouldn't it be easier just to use one full r200 based chip instead?

yep and IMO cheaper too.

I just can't see multi chip product at Med End. IMO at least Dual version should be at high end to get some advantage from from chip that can work as single and as dual or more chips in paraller.

 

[David G.]

As much as I would like to belive that .... I don't .

Anyway , Dual R200 cards are already working today in flight sims so if ATi decides to build such devices they won't have anything to do with R300 but with WorkStations appliance on profesional graphics .

So there will be no competition between R200 MAXX cards and R300 .

 

[Tahir2]

*cough*

stupid British Summer... giving me a cold I think...

 

[Doomtrooper]

There is a market for a dual card setup, and it is coming..believe it

 

[Tahir2]

There is a market...
Aye.. and I would LOVE to see it... just reminded of that FAKE pic posted earlier.. this rumour seems like it is an extension of that.

However I would LURVE to see a Radeon 8500 MAXX... why it would be double the fun

 

[Pete]

If this is true, that would mean the R300 will be very expensive. RV250 $200, 8500MAXX $300, R300 $400 wouldn't be bad as a product lineup (superior to nVidia because everything is DX8+). Of course, I'd like it more if everything slid down the scale by $100, but that's just me.

But if they're shipping an R300 at 315MHz, that indicates their yield is decent. Maybe the MAXX was a fall-back product, and it won't be needed. Then again, maybe they don't want to let that R&D go to waste....

 

[Doomtrooper]

RV 250 Valued priced card-no passive cooling <--Entry Level DX 8.1

Dual R200's/RV250's <--- mid range product DX 8.1

R300 <--- High end DX9 Compliant


Maybe

 

[LittlePenny]

If they do infact have their AGP bridge working for consumer level boards, it would be interesting to see R300 come out, then later a 2 chip R300 to combat the NV30 at its release. This would be an interesting alternative to a die shrink.

 

[pxc]

It's a photoshop fake.

 

[McElvis]

Here's what Kyle over at hardocp has to say...

Posted by Kyle 2:14 PM (CDT)

We are getting plenty of mail from readers asking why we have not posted about the dual GPU VidCard from ATi. Well here is why as stated by Rubeena Hussein of ATi. -

"We have no current intentions of making this or similar boards."

Don't believe everything you read from people that would call themselves credible sources. Credible sources do NOT use blind emails from Hot Mail addresses as statements of fact. Many of us received this hoax last week.

 

[Fuz]

The Enquirer is a joke, and it gets worse by the day.

All they do is recycle rumours as facts, and they do it so often that some of the rumours (fact according to them) they post do actually end up being fact. Then they claim they were right all along. Total BS