I am sure Dave B will disagree with me on this one...

[JoshMST]

Oh come on Hellbinder, you can address me by name. You are correct in saying that ATI never "officially" put out a release date, but to analysts and whatnot Orton and the gang have repeatedly told them in the past that it would be a Spring 2005 refresh. I mean... they had first silicon in December of 2004! Right on schedule for a possible Spring 2005 release once a couple of minor revisions are accomplished to achieve good performance and yields.

Admit it, you secretly love me, which is why you can't address me personally!

 

[MuFu]

There was a "proper" R520 specification leak a while ago (December-ish) - something we never saw with R420 and R300. That's why I find the 24/32 pipeline talk confusing.

 

[tEd]

There was a "proper" R520 specification leak a while ago (December-ish) - something we never saw with R420 and R300. That's why I find the 24/32 pipeline talk confusing.

refresh my memory please :?

 

[ANova]

Precisely. Orton publicly informed analysts during a conference that material revenues from the R520 generation would begin flowing during ATI's fourth quarter, which ends on August 30th. The only chance of that happening is if the boards are on retail shelves by July, since the OEM refresh is in September.

Birds keep whispering in my ear.

July 26

 

[ondaedg]

I told you guys before R520 was never a spring product or a Q1 PRoduct. Its a late Q3 early Q4 Product. September-October time frame. (maybe introduction in late august)

I'll add this to the list, alongside the following:

Hellbinder[/url]]R520 is SM3

According to little Birdies.

And it should hit the street Around april next year. there are "rumors" that it may be launching a lot sooner.. but.. I dont have much confidence in them.

Hehe. Hellbinder, I am assuming you recanted this statement for your most recent one? I would never go out on a limb and predict a technology product cycle. My company is three months late with a product we promised and I am getting my arse kicked for it!

 

[kemosabe]

There was a "proper" R520 specification leak a while ago (December-ish) - something we never saw with R420 and R300. That's why I find the 24/32 pipeline talk confusing.

refresh my memory please :?

Ditto.

 

[kemosabe]

VR-Zone wrote:

Another side of the story we heard from the graphics cards makers that R520 is delayed due to ATI is trying to offload more X850 GPUs before releasing R520. ATI has chalked up a considerable large inventory of X850 GPUs therefore they are hoping that the recently launch of Crossfire editions will help to clear up the inventory. R520 will launch in late July as we have reported and the earliest availability of the R520 cards should be mid August.

Somehow this sounds more simple and more credible.

 

[MuFu]

Ditto.

Well, is was an extremely brief architectural summary that (on the face of it) confirmed R520 as a relatively straightforward 16 pipe design with similar outputs per clock/per pipe to R420. Simultaneously there were reliable reports of a target clock of 650-700MHz and big efficiency improvements, partly attributed to a revised internal topology (that, as hinted, may be part of the way SM3.0 support has been shoehorned into R3x0).

I expect 16 pipes, ~650Mhz and per-clock performance at least on a par with NV40 (2 full ALUs/pipe?). Maybe they have speed issues with the current yield. Maybe they are just taking their sweet time.

 

[tEd]

Well if people are aleady confused and maybe a little disappointed when they first hear officially about the 16pipes of r520 then i think they will be totally shocked about rv530

 

[Geeforcer]

VR-Zone wrote:

Another side of the story we heard from the graphics cards makers that R520 is delayed due to ATI is trying to offload more X850 GPUs before releasing R520. ATI has chalked up a considerable large inventory of X850 GPUs therefore they are hoping that the recently launch of Crossfire editions will help to clear up the inventory. R520 will launch in late July as we have reported and the earliest availability of the R520 cards should be mid August.

Somehow this sounds more simple and more credible.

That's a fine theory... except that Crossfire will not find it's way to the stores until that very same timeframe. Considering the X850 prices and the fact that Crossfire edition cards will be competing with G70 and possibly ever R520 at the time they hit the market, I don't see them unloading anything, to be honest.

 

[digitalwanderer]

I expect 16 pipes, ~650Mhz and per-clock performance at least on a par with NV40 (2 full ALUs/pipe?). Maybe they have speed issues with the current yield. Maybe they are just taking their sweet time.

You forgot to mention those are 16 super-duper extreme pipelines.

 

[dizietsma]

I tend to feel comfortable with MuFu's 16 pipes at 650Mhz, 16x650 is roughly equal to 24x430 for nvidia . It seems to me that Ati have gone the expensive process but get the speed gain and nvidia have gone the cheap process with no speed gain but because it is cheap can bung up the number of pipelines .. et voila, both cards about the same again. I do realise that this is probably too simplistic.

Maybe the delay with ATi is just getting the speed available in large quantities because they do not want a repeat ot the X800XT PE where supply was extremely limited. That's probably a wise decision.

The worrying thing though is that people on other forums are now expecting 32 pipes. Someone kindly suggested I was "LOL, full of crap again" when I suggested I thought it might be 16 pipelines and beefed up shaders.

If it is only 16 pipelines then where are these 32 pipeline rumours coming from ? nvidia ? Wishful thinking ? Mislead developers ?!

 

[Reverend]

Maybe they have speed issues with the current yield. Maybe they are just taking their sweet time.

Maybe they're simply doing "a NV30"? i.e. they'll look at G70 numbers and maybe decide to do a last minute speed bump? Possible? Crazy?

 

[_xxx_]

where are these 32 pipeline rumours coming from ? nvidia ? Wishful thinking ? Mislead developers ?!

B3D forum fanbois?

 

[HaLDoL]

VR-Zone wrote:

Another side of the story we heard from the graphics cards makers that R520 is delayed due to ATI is trying to offload more X850 GPUs before releasing R520. ATI has chalked up a considerable large inventory of X850 GPUs therefore they are hoping that the recently launch of Crossfire editions will help to clear up the inventory. R520 will launch in late July as we have reported and the earliest availability of the R520 cards should be mid August.

Somehow this sounds more simple and more credible.

Not at all, why should they hold on to a product when the competition has a much better alternative? Who's gonna buy x850 gpu when there is a G70 for the same price? It's not logical at all. They need the R520 to compete.

 

[Bjorn]

Not at all, why should they hold on to a product when the competition has a much better alternative? Who's gonna buy x850 gpu when there is a G70 for the same price? It's not logical at all. They need the R520 to compete.

I agree. And then there's the fact that Crossfire is a niche within a niche product (as is SLI) and it currently requires a new motherboard so i don't see them selling that many extra 850's because of that.

 

[ANova]

When will these companies learn. Lower the price and then they'll start to sell well, they can afford it.

I still don't understand why the prices on the 9800 XT and 5950U didn't budge after the X800s and 6800s started becoming available.

 

[HaLDoL]

The inq seems to hint that the information from the article comes from nvidia.

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=23822

 

[PaulS]

Bizarrely ironic that NVIDIA are trying to claim that the R520 is as much of a failure as their own chip - a chip they once happily hyped as the next coming.

 

[Evildeus]

Well, are they or not having issues? Anyway, something not right over there.

TSMC doesn't have any demand for 90 nanometres from ATI but I guess ATI is still not close to production. It's still tuning the chip.

From the Inq.