The LAST R600 Rumours & Speculation Thread

I can't believe they would pull the release unless they found a show-stopping hardware bug. Just performance wouldn't cut it, as they're losing money for every day they're not selling product.

 

I have serious doubts that AMD would change ATI's product lineup this soon after the buyout. To do so would just be, well, incredibly stupid. So I would tend to expect that this first product cycle after the merger will be essentially identical to what it would have been had there been no merger.

But yes, I would tend to expect to see AMD/ATI bow out of the high-end GPU market over a few product cycles. I am somewhat worried that the apparent failure of this product cycle will hasten that end, unfortunately.

 

@ Geo et al, can we get a summary of this thread and topic in general?

I haven't been able to follow all the excitement as of late and with the delay the thread has grown quickly. 89 pages... wow.

Maybe a summary with links would be great. Seems there is a lot of confusion, from everything about the release date, why the editors day was cancelled, when other products are coming, what we DO know, what we MAY know, and was is FUD. Heck, a "FUD" heading with links to some of the fake news would be great too!

@ Chalnoth: A hardware bug sounds most reasonable to me. A performance deficit, while no good, doesn't seem like reason enough to cancel such an event and delay (how much can they really resolve this in a short period of time?) A hardware bug that makes the GPU near useless/uncharacteristic of the design (like the R520 soft ground) is a compelling reason to push things back for a respin. Of course the truth may be one of many, many factors.

 

basically, what ive learned from this thread is 512 bit bus, ggdr4 memory, 1 gb of it for high end model, card will seemingly never launch.

 

I did not see it posted here but I think it's kind of important for you folks to know.

Here is what KMAX said about R600's delay @ R3D.

 

its going to launch sometime this year?

 

It's gonna launch at $400?

It's obviously not something technical since they don't have enough time to change that so it has to be pricing, doesn't it? Or is there something else that we'd consider "pleasant" that AMD has the power to change at this late stage?

 

I can say "strawman" for all your statements too. Where will that get us?

So you're saying these two are totally unrelated? As I said, it's the software.

I said software, this includes compiler and/or drivers. We don't know for sure all the interaction between Vista, DX10 and AMD's new hardware tech. No one knows! And like I said, I believe there is some kind of software issue that is keeping the performance from being high(as they intended). Possibly in some apps or games the performace is just not there(as in way too poor).

I'm talking about AMD's new hardware as it relates to the software, there could be some big glitches in somes apps and games(as I've said for the umpteenth time).

Again, you assume compiler. I'm talking about an unexpected glitch in the preformance as it relates to all OS, DX10, apps and games. They can't have some games work well and some others totally suck. That would be very bad for reviews. So they delayed until they can make sure everything performs up to snuff.

I said 30-40% performance that they lost, not some magical increase. And I think it's software related!!!

How about O Christmas tree?

Why not get him a strawwoman while you're at it?

After all your straws and misunderstandings all you can do is validated my original statement? Unbelievable. I will repeat it one more time for the cheap seats, it's a possibilty it's a software issue!

Are we done for now? Good.

 

My thinking as well.

Considering how late R600 is, I believe R680 is just about almost ready to go. I don't think ATi wants another R520/580 fiasco again. With this said, I believe they are holding off R600 to put the last finishing touches on R680 for a big product luanch that will cover all segements of the market meeting all the price points.


Only thing I can think of. I know it's not performance because they would have known by november. Can't be hardware problem either.

 

That would be quite sweet, one of the too good to be true outcomes.

 

I've thought about this too. After they first found out about the 8800GTX performance(which is probably months before it launched) AMD decided to go straight to the R680. It would be sweet, but that is highly unlikely, yet I still concede it's possible.

 

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=3668

These would be the 20-40% performance increases I was talking about. They only applied to OGL with AA enabled in bandwidth limited scenarios but improved most OGL games. Not entirely across the board but fairly close. I'm sure more gradual improvements came over time as they performance tuned in addition to this big jump.

All i'm trying to say is that we've seen significant jumps before with just driver tweaks.

 

It's about as likely that this is a performance issue as it is that the universe was created by fluffy pink unicorns. If it's a software issue, it could be fixed before launch or shortly thereafter. If it's a hardware performance issue, then there would be no reasonable way to fix it in time.

In short, if the performance of the R600 was worse than expected, AMD/ATI would be forced to price it accordingly. That is all.

 

Hmpf.. you're not under NDA so you know nothing officially.. !

 

Heh what if they did a run of 65nm R600's and it came back so clean that they're dumping the entire 80nm line and ramping 65nm from the get-go ?

Just thought I'd get in on the fairy-tales too

 

Or maybe R600 is DX 10.1 and ATI made a little mistake by printing DX 10.0 on the boxes instead?

 

I've got it Geo. I beaned Twinkie with it.