Word, so did I. Here we were expecting 90nm to bring super high clocks from ATi, but 32pp and a high clock (the best of both worlds) may have been asking too much.
In theory, if it was MADE to be 16pp, the room to clock to 700mhz would be there, but with a chip made to have 32pp, couldn't that hamper it's ability to have a high clock? This makes sense to me as when nvidia moved to 110nm you'd think the chip would clock a good deal better than the 130nm gf6, but it doesn't, just a little. It makes me think this is hampered by the addition of pipes. I'm not an engineer though, so don't take that as fact.
Also, obviously ATi is having yield problems. Some chips probably do clock really well, but they have to set a standard somewhere so they can get an acceptable amount of chips out to sell. Maybe it's 3% that can do 700mhz with 24pipes? Maybe 700mhz @ 16pp was possible with 16 quads not working at an acceptable, but they figured 500 @ 24pp was a optimal design that also had an acceptable yield? That would make sense then they'd release it at 500mhz if a greater yield could operate at that clock with 24pipes, and still beat G70. Who knows what they did and why they did it, maybe those 3% will become the xtpesupermegadeluxeultra's to beat the G70 ultra. That would also give you a clue how high the R520's will clock (If 3% hit target speeds...say 600/700/800...we'll obviously hit a wall in our overclocking much below that under normal cooling...but who knows what that target was...
It still looks to me though as the refresh will look more exciting.
ATi R580 - 32pp, clock prolly similar to R520 but really anyone's guess, more TMUs? (500x32?)
Nvidia G71 - 90nm G70...so 24pp, prolly a super high clock. (24x650?)
^^anyone's guess on clocks
That'll be a fun one...
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