T2k said:
I picked up some info yesterday night... in a
club 
(if you were over there you know what I'm talking about
): it seems R350 is just an overclocked R300 with no ddr2.
Dunno but previously I expected ddr2 - well, we'll see...
This would be in line with what I have suspected all along--what's the point in making a significant jump in the spring, and then another significant jump in late summer--when you don't have to? Or, as someone else suggested, R350 could be a value part for notebooks (that might or might not fit in with what was said about R350.) I guess I have to concede at this point that we do have some decent evidence that "R350" exists (not that I doubted you, HB, I was just looking for some confirmation from ATI and this would *appear* to be that--except for the nature of the R350, of course.)
But let's say yields have improved and pipelines get tweaked, etc., and you come up with a better cooling solution (not like nv30's--just a lot more efficient than at present)--I don't think 400MHz-425MHz is out of the question for R300. The whole point of the 256-bit bus is to be able to put off the move to DDR II until you have the GPU power to fuel such a bus and you've given the II technology a bit of time to mature. If they stick to DDR but move to 2.2-2.3ns DDR, the combination would significantly enhance current R300 performance (enough to easily steal nv30's thunder--assuming nv30 actually hits 500MHz in quantity), and then save your .13 micron ~500MHz R400 beastie, coupled with your ~40 gig/sec DDRII/256-bit bus for the late-summer/fall release--at which time that product will easily keep up with and probably surpass whatever nVidia might wish to do with its nv30 fall refresh.
But I'm not placing bets...
ATI surprised the heck out of me with R300--won't be making glib projections about them again...
