R520 - Launch and availability - August 26/27?

[turtle]

After scoping around B3d to see if Dave had any new info he wanted to leak, I came across a fairly good post that gives some darn good reasoning to when R520's being launched.

First of all, the ad:

http://www.overclockers.com.au/ads/ads/ati_ocau_468x60_2.gif

From there, look at these scheduled events:

GDC Europe - Aug 30 - Sept 1

ATi GDC - September 6-7

Not only does it make sense they'd launch right before the Game Developer Conferences (Where they can pitch their newly-released wares and it's abilities) but also it seems like a perfect one month delay from the "original" (see latest speculatory) launch date. This makes sense, as a one month delay *should* allow them time to either get enough cards to soft-launch if the last tape was just completed, or more likely to stockpile enough cards to do a hard launch like Nvidia if indeed July 26th was the original on-target date for a paper-launch with availability shortly after.

Source: Beyond3d forums, overclockers.com.au

Apologies if this has already been posted somewhere.

[DilTech]

That's for cross-fire, not the R520.

[DCR]

I hope that R520 sneaks out then.

[turtle]

I thought crossfire was paper launched at Computex? We should also see Crossfire mobos and mastercards before that date, shouldn't we? I thought we'd see Crossfire finished boards/cards by mid-august...Before this launch event.

Perhaps I misunderstood, but that date seems perfect for when everyone thinks it's going to be available, and the GDC's right afterwards make it even more believable. The $20,000 in give-a-ways also seems eerily similar to the launch event for the 7800gtx.

[DilTech]

Trust me, it's the "you can buy it now" launch of cross-fire. ATi told forbes magazine, as well as shareholders, not to expect fudo until fall at the earliest.

If you think back to last years launch of the NV40, they paper launched it, then at the availability launch you could win them. This is about the same thing.

There's a news story at the inq about cross-fire being available in august, which fits right into this.