I dont see why is this so surprising? Same big chip as g80 and gt200 (or even bigger) and based on not nearly great and proven process as 90nm or 65/55nm. I'd sad it was more than expected.



But i'd take it with grain of salt. Cause we don't know what they really emeant with just 7 chips to be success . Does that mean only seven came out uncorrupted or only seven reach jump over bar that's raised too much by some CEO. I'd rather expect only 20% but onmuch lower clocks than expected. What they announce ~750MHz while they reach only 650MHz on much smaller gt200b and on 18 month old proces. I'd say the bar is too optimistically risen too high for gt300.

Yep i know they only have 128TMUs and 64RBEs nowadays so that advantage over ATi is now with RV870 totally melt away especially from the glorious days of g80 64:24 @680MHz vs. lately r600 pitiful 16:16 @740MHz. But still even with only 600MHz (i think they could reach at least 20% yield at that clock ) 128TMUs 76,8GTex/s vs. RV870 80TMUs (@850MHz) that reaches only 68GTex/s. But on the other hand do they really think they could make single chip that will make ATi crawl again without some really new radically architecture?!