The LAST R600 Rumours & Speculation Thread

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Pete said:
Seems like this could be easily countered with performance and availability. Surely they could launch with the inevitable GDDR4 model and follow up with more affordable GDDR3 ones without having to delay the press fest?
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Assuming I'm correct, it still smacks of two things. One would be "Ready. Fire. Aim." somewhere in marketing, and the second would be likely that R600 is not going to be put a R300 vs NV30 smackdown on G80. I think most of us expected that went by the board in November anyway, with the possible exception of a high-bw niche here and there.

I don't know that they've ever quite had a situation like this to analyze tho either. Their flagship product is launching with two different memory types, and the asymmetry of bus-widths between them and their competitor doesn't just have bw and cost-per-mb implications (for GDDR4 vs GDDR3), it requires an asymmetric framebuffer size as well which also goes to cost. Then you have to analyse/decide what price and performance implications there are for 1GB GDDR4 vs 768MB GDDR3; 768MB GDDR3 vs 512MB GDDR3; 512MB vs 368MB (presumably NV could pull out a 368MB GTX, but would that framebuffer be an owie for a high-end card?); 512MB vs 320MB.

But, you know what, it was still somebody's job to analyse all that and to have done so before they scheduled an editor's day and launch date(s). So there's still no way around the simple fact that this wound (the pummelling they've been taking here and elsewhere for setting a date and then backing away) is self-inflicted, in my book.
 
Bit of lag-time in my reply, but I figured I'd address this.

wolf2 said:
The negative economics of launching a non-competitive product are huge.

- inventory risk
- margin pressure
- marketing launch costs (PR, evaluation boards, support costs)
- product engineering
- negative image
- lost engineering time on next generation
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That's hardly a strong argument for every single board partner refusing to build an R600 board.
Can you think of any Nvidia or ATI product so bad that nobody would slap it on a PCB?

A good portion of that is something AMD is capable of insulating board partners from, though at great expense. For a new release like R600, there's a good chance the initial allotment for such a small number of high-end boards will be be purchased anyway.

If there are for whatever reason no board partners, it is because AMD chose to make things hard on board makers to a historic degree.

I anticipate your response might be, well it hasn't stopped ATI and Nvidia from launching bad products in the past.
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No, my response is that no chip has been so bad that no board parter could be induced to be a launch partner. Rumors have R600 in the same league as G80, even if it happens to fall short of a total victory.

I don't imagine the "we hoped it could be better, so we'll pass up making boards for the segment of the market that has shown brand loyalty to ATI", argument holds much water.

To which my response would be that things (for AMD/ATI) are different now. AMD's goal is Fusion. I submit that one possible explanation for the delay, is that the management has come to realize that R600 may only be a financial burden and it might be better to cut the losses on this money-loser and double down on their Fusion strategy.
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Why would that affect what board partners would be doing? R600 is a lot closer than Fusion.
They'll just keep making boards until AMD stops supplying chips.
 
Geo said:
Meh. I still think if you combine xbit with hkepc you get the true answer.

"To better align our strategy with current market opportunities. . . targeting a broader market segment in Q2".
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That sounds like marketing-speak for "we can't compete at the high end".

If AMD could, they'd have a high-end release as a priority. It's not like the tech can't trickle down. If R600 is being pushed back further and further, it might mean that it's not trickling down from as high as they'd like.
With ATI's previous emphasis on a highly scalable architecture, the high end should have a more direct impact on the lower end.

If they are targeting the role as second-best, then it means that R600 as it stands cannot fulfill that top role. If AMD's focus is so intense on the lower and higher volume rungs of the market, it brings into question why the enthusiast niche can't be satisfied.

AMD's "retargeting" seems more like they can't do the "high-end leader with down-market benefits".
 
Geo said:
HKEPC also says that the GDDR3 versions would not be ready until April. So between xbit and HKEPC what I've been wondering is if AMD/ATI just decided why they should be at a cost disadvantage at launch with 1GB GDDR4 when they could still have more bw than the competition with less cost at 512MB of GDDR3 in April/May? It seems to me if XTX is even roughly performance competitive with 8800GTX, then the XT that HKEPC is describing should thoroughly trash an 8800GTS 640MB.
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That would make a lot of sense to me.....if they made that decision back in November when G80 was released (and that's assuming they didn't know G80's configuration before the rest of us). Why only now? Or are you suggesting they're not so much delaying the launch of R600 as much as they're cancelling the 1GB version due to its unnecessarily high cost and just going with the 512MB version that was always slated for an April/May launch?
 
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