RV670 to get a name at 11th hour
IT SEEMS THAT AMD is just about to overtake Nvidia in the battle of higher numbers. Since Nvidia is so high on extending the life-line of 8800 brand with the G92_200 series being called 8800GT, AMD saw the golden opportunity.
With G92 supporting DirectX 10.0 and RV670 supporting DirectX 10.1 API, marketing war was set to be quite interesting. From one side, calling a mainstream part that can beat the high-end part 8800GT instead of 8900GT was a safe call for Nvidia, and riding the wave of brilliant success what 8800 is - but it seems that people like Pat, Captain Hook, Jon, and Ian are pulling things in a different direction.
The RV670 is more than a die-shrink of R600. It fixes a lot of inefficiency issues that ATI faced with a long-delayed child named R600, and now with 55nm process, there was enough room on the die to go large, both with precision of units, data formats, cache sizes and of course, API support.
Not a lot of people know that main target of RV670 is to establish CTM as a viable alternative to Nvidia's Tesla, thus GPGPU and professional 3D were very high on priority list. We already know that R600 variants in FireGL versions are demolishing Quadros (for the very first time in history of professional 3D, ATI has a real contender), so FireGL and FireStream guys are awaiting their RV670 chips with great expectations.
Radeon HD3700/3800 gets ready for a launch...
So, what to do with a product that has a huge challenge instead? Not burn it with a brand name that is somewhat tamed, and that was Radeon HD 2900 series. 2950 was a stillborn from day one, and now the marketing team is deciding between Radeon HD 3600, 3700, 3800. Taiwan just got the nod about HD3000 series, and we're just about to see the new chapter in the whole Marchitecture wars.
Greet Radeon HD3000 PCIe series with its member HD3800... or is HD3800 another deliberately leaked name in order to get leaky suspects?
The name is not decided yet, and don't expect it to be announced to partners up till the point of printing retail boxes, which is still some time ahead (but not a whole lot time left).
The move to HD3000 has to leave enough room for upcoming Q1'08 monster called R680 and of course, the mega-daddy MCM chippey named R700. R680 will be branded as Radeon HD3800 or HD3900, thus leaving very little amount of marketing space for the R700.
Realistically speaking, only logic for AMD would be to brand the RV670 " Radeon HD 3700", since this would leave enough room for R680, R700 and of course, R(V)710 and R(V)730, the value variants (they would probably take the usual x400 and x600).
Unless of course, HD3000 series is the final "HDsomething" coming from AMD, with completely new branding that may or may not wait in the halls of Austin and Markham. Radeon 700HD just may not seem all that far fetched, just take a look at the world of AMD chipsets.
One thing is certain: when it comes to number of sudden turns and unexpected situations, Mexican soap operas might want to take a page from the AMD/ATI/Nvidia book. µ
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquir.../18/rv670-name
AMD HD 3000 Series Confirmed: RV670 Gets A New Name
Originally Posted by SparkyJJO
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