http://www.beyond3d.com/#news22588
13-Aug-2005, 11:23.01 Re****ter : Dave Baumann
"While ATI have previously been a little coy about R520's release dates in
public, with ATI's CEO, Dave Orton, saying that they had initially hoped
for
an early summer release but it will now be late summer, it is blatantly
obvious that it has been delayed. In a recent investors Q&A session [
http://www.wsw.com/webcast/rbc32/ati.to/
]
ATI's Senior Vice President of the PC Business Unit, Rick Bergman, on the
subject of R520 said "We had hoped to have that product in the June
timeframe, but unfortunately due to a variety of design issues it has
moved
out to the September / October timeframe for launch". This is more or less
in-line with the late summer launch previously mentioned by Dave Orton.
The normal course for graphics development sees a new architecture being
adopted in a high end product first and then subsequent lower end products
being introduced based on that architecture over time. However, with the
delay to R520, the rest of ATI's development schedule evidently hasn't
been
similarly delayed, and during the conference Rick points out that RV515
and
RV530 are beginning their production ramp now and will also ****p in the
September / October timeframe, possibly with all three chips being
announced
with a few weeks gap between each, spanning those two months.
Whilst R520 is known to be ATI's high end product with Shader Model 3.0
capabilities, RV530 and RV515 should occupy the mainstream and entry level
ranges, roughly where ATI's X700 (RV410) and X300 (RV370) class of
products
currently exist. Releasing a top-to-bottom line of products with the same
level of shader capabilities will be a first for ATI, as previous releases
have seen their low end product lagging behind in the 3D capabilities of
their high end brethren.
Rick made note that all of ATI's current products will use 90nm from TSMC
initially, but they will spread to other fab partners in time. He also
mentioned that there is a fourth PC product based on 90nm currently
underway, which could be the rumoured R580 product. ATI's Crossfire, dual
graphics system, is also another design that was announced some time back
but has seen some delays, however Rick states that samples will be ready
to
go to press in August with the platform ****pping in September."
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