R520 launch delayed?

[_xxx_]

The only problem with 90nm I can imagine is that the yields are still very low and they don't want to repeat the R420 debacle (announcing the card but not being able to deliver quantities for retail for months).

Right now, ATI desperately needs a competitor at the same time G70 launches, otherwise they'll look VERY bad. That's why I don't believe in that "holding-back" strategy. They'd be very silly to do so.

 

[phenix]

The only problem with 90nm I can imagine is that the yields are still very low and they don't want to repeat the R420 debacle (announcing the card but not being able to deliver quantities for retail for months).

Right now, ATI desperately needs a competitor at the same time G70 launches, otherwise they'll look VERY bad. That's why I don't believe in that "holding-back" strategy. They'd be very silly to do so.

When do you think is that?

 

[Tahir2]

I honestly wonder why they're doing AMR at all. AMR and SLI are to me eqally pointless.

Yes to you they are. To a shedload of buying costumers they are not pointless.

 

[Entropy]

I honestly wonder why they're doing AMR at all. AMR and SLI are to me eqally pointless.

Yes to you they are. To a shedload of buying costumers they are not pointless.

Shedload?
Hmm.
Lacking any data whatsoever, it's difficult to tell just how many are interested in SLI. It would seem to me that these forums are where you find the people most passionately interested in graphics for graphics own sake, and even here the fraction who run SLI seems to be very small indeed.
When Valve reports SLI rigs, we might get some kind of valid independent statistics. Until then, it's all just handwaving and marketspeak.

 

[Geo]

If (based on HEXUS) ATI is launching MVP/Crossfire with R480 instead of R520, then I have to wonder if they had some "sh*t rolls downhill" problems that got them into a resource crunch they weren't expecting, with the subsequent need to make some priority choices, and R520 is lucky to get a hind tit to suck on once in a while right now.

We know they have a lot on their plate right now, and were probably scheduled very tightly without a great deal of flexibility --as stuff slipped they had few uncomitted resources to deal with getting it back on track for the original dates.

Maybe this even starts with RIALTO slipping, and the snowball turned into an avalanche by mid-spring.

Consider, we saw MVP mobos two months ago, and we're still talking another three weeks to launch (and how long after that till availability?) MVP with *existing* cards.

They knew they were getting killed in AGP land, and there was a lot of loud grumbling by enthusiasts. So the priority went R500 (it is practically unquestionable that R500 gets whatever it needs, relatively speaking), Rialto, MVP (because they are launching with existing cards), and then R520. Stuff slipped enough to get back into another R500 hotzone (Beta 2 shipping to developers) and everything else got resource-starved again.

 

[_xxx_]

The only problem with 90nm I can imagine is that the yields are still very low and they don't want to repeat the R420 debacle (announcing the card but not being able to deliver quantities for retail for months).

Right now, ATI desperately needs a competitor at the same time G70 launches, otherwise they'll look VERY bad. That's why I don't believe in that "holding-back" strategy. They'd be very silly to do so.

When do you think is that?

No idea, but ATI has to deliver either at the same time or earlier in order not to look totally stupid IMHO.

 

[_xxx_]

I honestly wonder why they're doing AMR at all. AMR and SLI are to me eqally pointless.

Yes to you they are. To a shedload of buying costumers they are not pointless.

I strongly claim that that "shedload" is well under 0.2% of all PC owners worldwide.

 

[Tahir2]

Well it needs to be narrowed down from the average computer customer to an enthusiast as most customers will never even open their case. You will be surprised to note that customers willing to even open their case and have a look at how things work will be in the single digits percentage wise.

Of these that regularly upgrade or know what PCI-E is you need to halve again. Of these that are interested in SLI and are buying into it the percentage is certainly not negligble and a market in itself.

NVIDIA sold 350'000 SLI equipped chipsets from up to April since release and this was even a surprise to NVIDIA. Many of these systems were OEM, came with two graphics cards already built in.

If you want to argue you can do, but I know first hand that SLI is very popular amongst the hardcore enthusiasts that spend a lot of money on PC upgrades as well as people who simply want the best performance in games. They really do not care about NVIDIA or ATI, just performance and for that reason NVIDIA has done very well this time around. SLI is a killer app in the retail market.

 

[Tahir2]

http://www.theinq.com/?article=21489

I know it's by Fuad, but 350'000 compared to 1'000'000 single slot solutions is indeed a "shedload" by my definition.

 

[Geo]

It seems to me I saw somewhere recently NV crowing about getting to 750k sli chipsets shipped. Within the last two weeks. Maybe it was on the press release where they beating their chest about 3dm05 records again.

Edit: Oh, here it is: http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_20488.html

 

[Skinner]

Why not bring the R500 Xbox2 monster out directly, would it be too expensive? I don't want to buy a console to get my dosis of gfx dope.

 

[MistaPi]

Please, lets not have another price / availablity discussion - there are other forums here for that.

As for the topic, does it really follow that they need to cross-fire over multiple boards before R520? Doesn't really stack up to my mind. However, R520 - reasonably big chip, change of architecture, new process, mmmmmm, may be a little time needed to understand all the variables? Are either ATI or NVIDIA really streching to get stuff out now? Longhorn is end 2006 and even without WGF2.0 - streaching things out may be arequired at the moment. Alternatively could things really be that bad? If they are going with multi-board why not release 512MB on the X850 instead of X800 XL?

Are you saying its a new architecture or are you saying its a big change from the R3xx architecture? Ive always been under the impression its the latter.

 

[Razor1]

It has to be a fairly large change, but I think ATi is just waiting for what nV has to offer, just like last time, both companies seem nervous right now and they probably don't want to get into all that messing up thier lines with a million cards thing again. nV didn't expect ATi to make a very nice performer like the x line, and ATi didn't expect the nV 40's either.

 

[Geo]

It has to be a fairly large change, but I think ATi is just waiting for what nV has to offer, just like last time, both companies seem nervous right now and they probably don't want to get into all that messing up thier lines with a million cards thing again. nV didn't expect ATi to make a very nice performer like the x line, and ATi didn't expect the nV 40's either.

Well, see above from Wavey on "waiting". I don't think they are "waiting to see" so much as they are waiting because the timeline on G70 allows them to. This is a subtle, but essential, distinction. They like having more time to optimize/stabilize/polish the drivers, but could go if NV forced their hand --the Inq article pretty much says so as well.

 

[Richard]

It is not denied neither by ATI nor by Mr. Dave Baumann.

ATi doesn't comment on rumours. Dave is not an ATi spokesperson (and even if he was, the first premise still stands).

The Inq has been saying Q1 then Q2 and now delayed. I think they're just covering every possible angle of every possible news, like they always do. They may boast of never signing an NDA but they apparently forget one of the most important rules of journalism: a story has to be corroborated by independent sources.

 

[Razor1]

It has to be a fairly large change, but I think ATi is just waiting for what nV has to offer, just like last time, both companies seem nervous right now and they probably don't want to get into all that messing up thier lines with a million cards thing again. nV didn't expect ATi to make a very nice performer like the x line, and ATi didn't expect the nV 40's either.

Well, see above from Wavey on "waiting". I don't think they are "waiting to see" so much as they are waiting because the timeline on G70 allows them to. This is a subtle, but essential, distinction. They like having more time to optimize/stabilize/polish the drivers, but could go if NV forced their hand --the Inq article pretty much says so as well.

I had the same feeling a while back about 6 months ago but I was talking to a guy can't say who but someone at the ATi booth, and they already had the 520 in one of the machines at the booth and running some of ATi's demos, but then again it could be cause they were only demos.

 

[Geo]

I suppose the silver lining, if we're right on the reasoning here, is it does also suggest they are feeling pretty good about the silicon itself, or we'd have also heard they were going back for another spin rather than sabre-rattling of the "we can go if we want" variety (unless that's just bravado).

Tho I suppose I wouldn't be surprised if they are looking at a three month delay if they took the opportunity to do so anyway if they see something worth doing it for.

The other thought I had, tho it hasn't been suggested anywhere, is high-speed memory availability.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Highly unlikely they would have had one running 6 months ago.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Well, see above from Wavey on "waiting". I don't think they are "waiting to see" so much as they are waiting because the timeline on G70 allows them to. This is a subtle, but essential, distinction. They like having more time to optimize/stabilize/polish the drivers, but could go if NV forced their hand --the Inq article pretty much says so as well.

Given how recently ATI launched the X850 range, I should think they would want to get the maximum return on it before superceding it with a SM3.0 range. If X850 is holding its own against NV40 in current games and G70 isn't here, there's an incentive to hold off on R520 for as long as possible ie, until SM3.0 is needed by a triple-A title, or Nvidia's next-gen part arrives.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Highly unlikely they would have had one running 6 months ago.

Yeah, but can you say the same thing about two months ago?