Did ATI hold back on R520 to make room for R580?

Kyle B wannabees ...

 

In the sense of relativity, I'm willing to bet that DX10 GPUs will be more "desirable" due to other reasons than the featureset alone. Most important being higher performance for instance; I'm also keeping my fingers crossed for higher IQ too. Hope dies last

 

I suppose the other question could be


Did Nvidia hold back on GTX7800 to make room for the Ultra?

 

Clearly.

 

Why is it not so clear to me? Was a 7800GTX 512MB release actually possible mid summer this year?

• It seems that clockspeed is going to get increased quite a bit, which means obviously also smaller availability. Any of that percentage will inevitably also shrink by the demands of the professional market.
  
• I see 600MHz GDDR3 on the 7800GTX 256MB, which came with a relatively satisfactory availability for it's time. Now I can read speculations of the 512MB variant having >800MHz GDDR3, which does make sense considering the clockspeed increase.
  
• If I look back in time one paradigm would be the GeForce2 Ultra; not only did it appear quite a bit later than the original GF2's, it was some kind of a "luxury" product too due to it's high price and I don't recall any real necessity for it either, since the GF2 PRO was already fast enough and the entire competition didn't have any real answer to it either.

IHVs will release higher speced models of a specific family if they can, I don't have a doubt about that. Personally I never and don't feel a necessity for a higher speced 7800GTX to be honest (mostly due to the single slot advantage of the 256MB variant), but besides all other factors there's always the darned performance crown IHVs are obviously taking into account. If I think of SLi setups, with two 7800GTX 512MB GPUs it feels like damn tight in between the two GPUs.

 

Well, I don't think it was the *only* reason. I think yields and margins in an environment where they clearly had the upper performance hand, and thus pricing power, also played a role. By going lower than they needed to originally (I would hope looking at the AIB clockings you would at least agree they could have clocked GTX higher and still maintained good availability), and with a one-slot cooler, they maximized profit and left themselves room to do what they are doing now. I think they felt both of those made sense. Looks like a two-fer to me.

 

If all odds would had been favourable from mid summer this year I don't see why they would had held back anything. Companies don't hold back GPUs IMHO (ok call me naive), they release when they feel they're ready. If the rumours are true for clockspeeds beyond 500MHz for the 512MB variant then it takes a couple of revisions to get there. Being still on 110nm with that kind of chip complexity you don't get those kind of frequencies overnight, especially with 6 quads and 302M transistors.

 

Well, I for one think it's pretty groovy that NVidia is actually doing a winter refresh. And it's not going to be a trivial performance upgrade (10%) either - should be in the region of 25-40%.

Still, where are the 90nm G7x GPUs?...

Jawed

 

Well, but the original question was did they hold back on 7800GTX, by which I understood to be a question could the original GTX have been clocked significantly higher in reference than it was? And it seems to me the answer is 'yes', both from AIB clocks and the single-slot cooler. If GTX had originally been a dual-slot cooler at 500mhz in reference flava, then the new GTX would not be nearly as impressive now (tho obviously the faster memory would help quite a bit). It seems to me that a 500mhz core at decent availability was well within their reach in June, and they didn't feel a need for it then. And if the question is 'why didn't they feel a need'? then yields, margins, competition at the time, and room for an Ultra (by whatever name) when the competition got stiffer, are the answer.

Or, to ask the question differently, if X1800XT had appeared in June at its clocks, would GTX have been clocked higher in reference? I think the answer is 'yes'.

 

Most definitely. It's because they had no competition more than any other reason IMHO.

 

In Nirvana, right where they belong

 

Ya I see you been around . the playground , a little wet behind the ears maybe.

Ok hindsite. 7800GTX 512 appears. Nvidia fans run out and buy them all out . Must of been millions of these cards all bought out in 2 days. People were actually trampeld to death. The resulting onslaught was resposiable raising the 7800GTX 512 from $699 to over $750. ATi even profitted when the 512 7800's were gone some stopped to buy the lowely x1800xt. Ati not wanting to miss the party raised there price to $599.

ATi now says time for the X1800xtpe which stomps the 512/7800 into submission .
Ati management quickly puts $850 price on x1800xtpe .

And who do we thank for this upsurge in prices NVIDIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am willing to bet when the next bach of 512/7800 show up they sell for $800+

 

I don't think ATI has any plans for an XT PE with the R580 coming in a couple months, but who knows.

You are right though, nvidia is largely responsible for the price increases (big surprise there) with their $600 GTX and now $650 Ultra. Not to mention pushing SLi; I'm sure nvidia would love it if everyone bought two cards for their computer. I certainly expect graphics cards to meet with CPUs in the $1000 range within the next two generations, which is utterly ridiculous. They'll just keep price gouging until the idiots stop buying them.

 

While this might be true, I don't believe it completely - after all, ATi could grab quite nice market on the top end too if they could keep their prices lower than nVidia - if nV just "pushed" the prices up, there shouldn't be reason for ATi to do the same (except getting more profits)

 

Remember, companies like profit, but more profit per unit is not always desirable. There's some optimal price in wich you maximize total profit given the number of cards(in this case) you have in stock and what the market is willing to pay.

The trend I see lately is that in the ultra high end, people are willing to pay more than manufactures think now. So maybe in this niche higher prices actually make sense.

 

You're right, especially since this involves the change in name of the top card (XTX). These conspiracy theories never end though.

 

I'm impressed how well the R520 does when OC's and using Higher rated Memory.

HIS Radeon X1800XT OC Edition(700Core/1600Memory). They over clock the chip to 756 core and 1800(900Mhz) Memory and it hits 10358 3DMark05.

Very Impressive... and shows that ATI could've done better.

As i've said before, I think ATI are also holding back on the R580 .. pity, would love to see it with 1800(900Mhz) memory.

US

 

Hey! that's impossible remember? nV's big arguement on the GTX512 is that it's the memory that's the hardest to get.. now ATi doesn't want another N/A disaster now would it?

It just makes R520/R580 a lot cheaper to produce for AIB partners which is a good thing for OEM wins, losing 3dmark06 doesn't make you the loser in the sales department...