The LAST R600 Rumours & Speculation Thread

[vertex_shader]

Reguarding lateness - the area that really was a shame for for ATI was the 'performance' section i.e the X1950 Pro SKU. It was so late that it allowed uptake of all thoughs cheap G71 variants (7900 GS/GT/GTO). The new Steam survey results really show this missed market uptake as reality.

Now the x1950pro sell like hot cake and best buy in 200$ performance segment, AMD can catch up marketshare now, too bad for AMD its coming 2 months after its originaly planned.

In modern games the r5xx cards shining, x1950pro many situation beat the much expensiver 7950gt (when reviewers not forget change the default shimmering quality on nv cards )

Now i stop off writing

 

[satein]

Supposedly R600 has been pushed back to Q2 according to the same source that came with previous GPU news. This news was told to him today by contacts in Taiwan. He forgot to ask if this was for R600 in general or for the GDDR3 or GDDR4 version. A couple of weeks ago ATI told him that R600 would be launched in February.

So this kinda contradicts the newsreports of a January launch from that Level505 site that leaked 'R600 info'. Or AMD (or his Taiwan contacts) might be feeding him with misinformation this time around.

On a sidenote, RS690 and RS690c are sampling now, and MP will start in February, but due to some productionproblems (reason not stated) the real volume production will be in H2. This chip is faster than nV's C61.

If RS690 is only sampling now, it seems rather strange we get pics of Epox mobo with it?
http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=36818

Two of them (AMD RS690G) now posted at the OCworkbench...

Jetway will release 2 AMD 690G Mainboards, models are M2A692-GHG and M2A692-GDG

ECS AMD690GM-M2 AMD 690G board to be available

And it seems like the RS690G motherboard will available soon... CJ, your source may be a bit off this time.

Just wonder what will happen to the R600 May it come by Feb or March...

 

[wishiknew]

Though unexpected things do happen, I think ATIs has done way too many mid life refreshes. Resources spread too thin between them and too different in concept console chips. Maybe ATI should have just applied the final fix to the r580 first and canned the r520 instead of doing both.

 

[Shtal]

My concern about R600 is not the performance issue, but would it be late to the market.
R520 was a good performer but it was to late; by the time it was release, R580 was about ready for production and R520 had short life.

I hope ATI don't repeat history again....

 

[no-X]

R580 - failure (too late to the market)

R580 was earlier than G71. It was at least as fast as G71 and it's IQ was better. R580 (X1900XT/XTX) had only one weak point - too loud cooling.

 

[CJ]

Two of them (AMD RS690G) now posted at the OCworkbench...

Jetway will release 2 AMD 690G Mainboards, models are M2A692-GHG and M2A692-GDG

ECS AMD690GM-M2 AMD 690G board to be available

And it seems like the RS690G motherboard will available soon... CJ, your source may be a bit off this time.

OCworkbench doesn't state WHEN these RS690 mobos will be available in mass amounts in shops. Personally I haven't seen them anywhere yet. If they start appearing in February it still might be true that MP starts in February.

And about a possible launch in February of R600... it's very hard to launch something in February, especially mid-February since every manufacturing facility in China will be closed on the 18th of February. And mind you... not just for one day, but for an entiry week because of the Chinese New Year! So if AMD wants to launch the R600 with good availability early February, they had better ramp up production big time in the next couple of weeks. Which brings us to the following... have we seen any signs of R600 reaching MP stage? And if there's a launch mid-February, it means that there will be limited availability of R600 at launch because of the Chinese New Year, followed by a small gap which will be filled again around the end of March/beginning of April.

 

[satein]

OCworkbench doesn't state WHEN these RS690 mobos will be available in mass amounts in shops. Personally I haven't seen them anywhere yet. If they start appearing in February it still might be true that MP starts in February.

And about a possible launch in February of R600... it's very hard to launch something in February, especially mid-February since every manufacturing facility in China will be closed on the 18th of February. And mind you... not just for one day, but for an entiry week because of the Chinese New Year! So if AMD wants to launch the R600 with good availability early February, they had better ramp up production big time in the next couple of weeks. Which brings us to the following... have we seen any signs of R600 reaching MP stage? And if there's a launch mid-February, it means that there will be limited availability of R600 at launch because of the Chinese New Year, followed by a small gap which will be filled again around the end of March/beginning of April.

Thank you for kindly explanation :smile:. I knew about that Chinese new year well that it would be a long holiday for them. However, according to your explanation, it sounds likely that the possibility for R600 to see the lime light soon is so dim

But, I would hope to see what will happen in the next few weeks then...
[The R600 might come to you (for reviewing or testing purpose) in the Red envelop <=part of gift on the chinese new year]

 

[overclocked_enthusiasm]

If R600 is late as implied by you know who, how can Orton keep his job? I can't remember the last time ATI has released a part on time and Nvidia has simply killed them as of late in market share as a result. Couple this failure with the magnifier of Vista being released in January and it is doubly worse. Nvidia will be blowing the DX 10 horn so loud the SM 3.0 horn blowing will seem like a forgotten whisper...

It still seems to me that ATI is so infatuated with the technology that they have forgotten how to run the business. G80 may not be the best architecture for DX 10 or unified shaders but it is in the market and is building market share and most importantly mind share....much like G70 did uncontested for months and months. Something is seriously wrong connecting the dots at ATI from a product launch standpoint.

 

[Sunday]

Mine guessing is that AMD will do same thing that ATI has done with R520: It’ll disclose R600 at the end of February for the members of the press. Public will have chance to see the cards running at the CeBIT, and actual mass sale will start at the end of the March – one month after premiere (R520 was presented at the September 30. and was on sale at the end of October). So basically promise of Q1 2K7, as the launch time frame will be fulfilled. Another topic is what NVIDIA is preparing to spoil part f their dark-green “friends”!

 

[Jawed]

Another topic is what NVIDIA is preparing to spoil part f their dark-green “friendsâ€￾!

G81M GX2?

Jawed

 

[TG01]

G81M GX2?

Jawed

A $1k consumer vid card.. ?

 

[KimB]

A $1k consumer vid card.. ?

I'd wager closer to $800.

 

[Geo]

A $1k consumer vid card.. ?

Yeah, heckuva bargain compared to 8800GTX SLI at $1,200. Quick, buy it before they run out! :smile:

 

[TG01]

Yeah, heckuva bargain compared to 8800GTX SLI at $1,200. Quick, buy it before they run out! :smile:

We're talking a few months down the road here with the R600 forcing NV to drop prices...

 

[Ailuros]

Can we count successes and failures?
R300 - success
R420&480 - so-so
R520 - failure
R580 - failure (too late to the market)
R600 - coming late.

Now go back to the pre-Orton era and start counting successes and failures and then we can talk. I won't claim that it's all because of him alone that would be too far fetched, yet I'm old enough to remember ATI since the dawn of 3D.

That said because products come a tad late to market I personally cannot consider them as a failure. What I could say is that the entire strategy since R300 has a couple of debatable mistakes, since I have a hard time placing ATI and margins in the same sentence. And no it's not so unrelated as some might think.

What the heck do you expect anyway? The GPU market is the fastest and most cut throat market around and NVIDIA most certainly not an easy opponent. NVIDIA's success rate is partly due to their successful detection of the weak spots of the competitive product line and hits exactly consistently on those wounds.

 

[Ailuros]

G80 may not be the best architecture for DX 10 or unified shaders but it is in the market and is building market share and most importantly mind share....much like G70 did uncontested for months and months. Something is seriously wrong connecting the dots at ATI from a product launch standpoint.

Not that the rest of your post made any particular sense, but would you care to elaborate what makes you think that G80 "may not be" the best architecture for D3D10 or "unified shaders" (I'm still laughing at the pixie dust comment by the way heh)...? Have you been able to run it under D3D10 or even better have you had the chance to compare it under D3D10 to other D3D10 hardware?

 

[Skrying]

You're taking his comment far to literal.

 

[Ailuros]

You're taking his comment far to literal.

NVIDIA's recent "successes" are by far not only because they release products for several past product lines first. I perfectly understood his general sense and no I don't agree with it at all.

 

[Skrying]

NVIDIA's recent "successes" are by far not only because they release products for several past product lines first. I perfectly understood his general sense and no I don't agree with it at all.

I'm talking about the Dx10 comment. It was a "may be its not the best" as in "I do not know, just throwing out there and how its not important in this case" type of comment. Yet you asked for proof, which would seem to me either I do not get it or you took it far to literal.

 

[Ailuros]

I'm talking about the Dx10 comment. It was a "may be its not the best" as in "I do not know, just throwing out there and how its not important in this case" type of comment. Yet you asked for proof, which would seem to me either I do not get it or you took it far to literal.

Trouble being that I don't think I missed his entire chain of thought, since it wasn't limited to G80/D3D10 only but was parallelizing it to G70. G70's shortcomings are more or less known by know. It did well not only because it launched earlier than R520, but because it had it's own distinct advantages.

Now until any possible shortcomings of G80 related to D3D10 are known, even hypothetical parallels to the former are senseless. Unless of course you or anyone else can guarantee that it'll stink or rock under D3D10.