Problems with volume production of 5600 Ultra rev2?

[Ostsol]

There is no such _card_ as GF FX 5600 Ultra. It's a chip.

End users buy cards, not chips. And i'm pretty sure that cardmakers will give different names to cards based on 5600U/350 vs 5600U/400.

I thought the chip was called the NV31. . .

The chip for the Radeon 9500 Pro and the Radeon 9700 is exactly the same, so how would it be appropriate to call the chip by both names? It's the R300 in both cases. The point is that the chip remains the same regardless of clock speed.

 

[kemosabe]

Thanks for all the feedback, guys, but the original question was not so much about the possible confusion related to the marketing of different versions of NV31 with the same name, but rather about the rumored difficulties with volume production of the second revision of the chip.

Is this suggestive of another low-yield issue (or "problem at the foundry" in NVDA-speak) related to the inherent design of NV31 and that seems to be plaguing the entire 0.13u FX line? Or is it more likely just because of the higher clock speeds that they have encountered these alleged problems? There is something incongruent about NVDA and ATI continuing to send mixed signals about TSMC's yields on their respective 0.13u architectures.

 

[martrox]

Pete, the remark was that 8500 LE's were sold as full 8500's, and ATI didn't do this.

Micron, while there were other manufactures of 8500's who sold lesser clocked 8500's as other than LE's, the original comment was:

When the 8550 fist came out both version were called 8500 the LE suffix came later on

Now, without condeming anyone for typing mistakes(as I have absolutely no room to talk here ), when the "8500 first" came out, there were only ATI cards, as it was a bit later - not sure just how much later - that ATI started selling the chips.

And, while I agree with you that no matter who did sell downclocked 8500's without letting the public know what they were getting is a very bad thing, it wasn't ATI that did this.......

sorry as this whole line is very OT.......

 

[micron]

 

[DegustatoR]

I thought the chip was called the NV31. . .

No. NV31 is a codename for chip during development time. NV doesn't sell "NV31s", it sells GeForce FX 5600 Ultra. It's what written on a chip if you take the cooler off.

The chip for the Radeon 9500 Pro and the Radeon 9700 is exactly the same, so how would it be appropriate to call the chip by both names? It's the R300 in both cases. The point is that the chip remains the same regardless of clock speed.

I don't know for sure, but i have a feeling, that ATI sells R9700 and R9500, not R300. Simply because R9700 costs "slightly" higher than R9500. Even though they are the same.

 

[MeltedRabbit]

Lol, I have a Built by ATi 8500LE in my second PC, it has DVI out, VGA out, and S-Video out. It came clocked at 250/275 and has 3.3ns memory on it. Part#100-431038.

Is the memory on your 8500LE BGA or DFP? Does your 8500LE have 128MB of memory? I was always under the impression that 3.3ns memory only came packaged BGA. At any rate I was under the impression that there were at least two kinds of BBA 64MB 8500LE cards. One type had the DVI, VGA and S-Video and another only had VGA. I know the type of 8500LE cards with DVI were supposed to be clocked at 250/250. Now all of the OEM 8500LE cards that I have seen did not have an external DAC chip for analog out on DVI. The external DAC is the small Analog Devices chip right next to the heatsink and fan and to the right of the Rage Theater chip. My 8500LE 64MB has the external DAC and is clocked at 250/250 even though it has 3.6ns RAM and easily overclocks to 275/275. Does everyone else with BBA 8500LE cards with DVI out have the external DAC? I was under the impression that BBA 8500LE cards are not supposed to have external DACs.