news on r520 - 26th of May

[Der_KHAN]

ATI-News.de has postet first official news on the r520 http://www.ati-news.de/cgi-bin/News/...&id=1117138247

During the Computex theres gonna be a demo by ATI and Cyberlink in the in the Grand Hyatt Hotel about the support for H.264-Video

official press release:
“ATI is transforming the PC video landscape by leading the industry adoption of Blu-ray and HD DVD on the PC. This new innovation builds upon ATI's unrivaled video and display technologies,” said Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President, PC Business Unit, ATI Technologies.



there are also new RUMORS on the specs of X900 cards:

Radeon X900 XT-PE
• 32 Pixel-Pipelines
• 10 Vertex-Shader Einheiten
• 90nm low-k bei TSMC
• 500 Mhz Chiptakt
• 700 MHz (1,4 Ghz) Speichertakt
• 512 MB GDDR-3

Radeon X900 XT
• 32 Pixel-Pipelines
• 10 Vertex-Shader Einheiten
• 90nm low-k bei TSMC
• 450 Mhz Chiptakt
• 600 MHz (1,2 Ghz) Speichertakt
• 512 MB GDDR-3

Radeon X900 Pro
• 24 Pixel-Pipelines
• 10 Vertex-Shader Einheiten
• 90nm low-k bei TSMC
• 450 Mhz Chiptakt
• 600 MHz (1,2 Ghz) Speichertakt
• 256/512 MB GDDR-3

Radeon X900
• 16 Pixel-Pipelines
• 8 Vertex-Shader Einheiten
• 110nm low-k bei TSMC
• 500 Mhz Chiptakt
• 500 MHz (1,0 Ghz) Speichertakt
• 256/512 MB GDDR-3

[saaya]

lol, where do those rumors come from?
r520 has aunified pixel and vertex shader architecture afaik, so 10 vertex units and 32 pipes makes no sence whatsoever

[saaya]

edited my post, i didnt see it was a "rumor"
where did you get this from?

[Der_KHAN]

ATI-News.de ... as i mentioned

[saaya]

1. i dont think ati will release a 32 pipe card right at launch but will only enabled 24 pipes in the first cards.
2. i doubt they would release an XTPE card right at the start since that makes it impossible for them to increase the clockspeed if necessary to beat nvidia in case they release a faster card.
3. r500 has a unified pixel and vertex pipeline architecture and i highly doubt that r520 will have fixed pipelines
4. even if it has fixed pipelines 10 vertex units seems too low for 32 pixel pipelines
5. i highly doubt ati would build the x900 non pro at 110nm without low-k and expect it to reach a 500mhz core clock...

if you ask me those rumors "appeared" in the head of the writer of those news at ati.de

[wittekakker]

Unlock heaven

[DilTech]

1. i dont think ati will release a 32 pipe card right at launch but will only enabled 24 pipes in the first cards.
2. i doubt they would release an XTPE card right at the start since that makes it impossible for them to increase the clockspeed if necessary to beat nvidia in case they release a faster card.
3. r500 has a unified pixel and vertex pipeline architecture and i highly doubt that r520 will have fixed pipelines
4. even if it has fixed pipelines 10 vertex units seems too low for 32 pixel pipelines
5. i highly doubt ati would build the x900 non pro at 110nm without low-k and expect it to reach a 500mhz core clock...

if you ask me those rumors "appeared" in the head of the writer of those news at ati.de

These sound about right to me. The r500 has the unified pixel/vertex pipeline, but the R500 is actually the PC's R600. The r520 is NOT a variation of the R500, but a completely different core. I can't remember where I read this at, but it was on multiple sites.

This, to me, sounds about right. Also, the x900 non-pro says low-k, just incase you didn't see it.

[saaya]

there is no 110nm low-k process at tsmc and i doubt there will ever be one
performence is now 90nm low.k, 110nm is just for high quantities and i doubt they will introduce 110nm low-k if they already have 90nm low-k for performence parts wich should be cheaper an faster than 110nm low-k

and you posted in another thread that the mentioned specs were not true, what makes you so certain? the specs you think are right are just from some web sites as well

and there have been many rumors abour r420 r500 r520 and r600

as ive said before, the thing that makes most sence, at least to me, is that both r500 and r520 are very close to each other. it doesnt make sence to develop two different architectures if you basically need the same thing in both cases, a fast cheap sm3.0+ capable vpu...

[mesyn191]

Its been known for a while now Saaya that ATi has at least 3 major development teams and at least one of those development teams' design in the past has been scrapped (R400) and another has been for console's only (remember, we never saw the Flipper make it to any desktops..) so its not totally unbelievable that whatever ATi will be releasing (late?) this year will be a traditional part...

[aoc007]

Ugh I just want the damn thing to come out already so I can buy it lol.

[Muk]

its been known for months that r520 will not have a unified shader architecture. The windows api is not in place for this yet.

[DudeMiester]

lol, where do those rumors come from?
r520 has aunified pixel and vertex shader architecture afaik, so 10 vertex units and 32 pipes makes no sence whatsoever

The R520 is NOT a unified architecture, that has been postponed until the R600. The R600 is an upgrade of the R500, which is an upgrade of the R400, and neither R500 nor R400 will ever be released for PCs. The reason for the postponement is that Microsoft wanted a unique GPU for their Xbox360, even if it meant forcing ATI to give PC users a lesser product. ATI agreed, because all the money they are going to make on the Xbox360 will easily compesate for the money lost from high-end PC videocard.

Fortunitly, no such arrangment exists with Nvidia and Sony, so expect Nvidia to demolish ATI on the high end this round in the GPU wars. At least that's my prediction.

[Cyrilix]

The R520 is NOT a unified architecture, that has been postponed until the R600. The R600 is an upgrade of the R500, which is an upgrade of the R400, and neither R500 nor R400 will ever be released for PCs. The reason for the postponement is that Microsoft wanted a unique GPU for their Xbox360, even if it meant forcing ATI to give PC users a lesser product. ATI agreed, because all the money they are going to make on the Xbox360 will easily compesate for the money lost from high-end PC videocard.

Fortunitly, no such arrangment exists with Nvidia and Sony, so expect Nvidia to demolish ATI on the high end this round in the GPU wars. At least that's my prediction.

Is this unified architecture really that powerful? I was under the impression that it was mainly used to facilitate the design of software/games that use these features. I could be TOTALLY off, though.

[saaya]

Its been known for a while now Saaya that ATi has at least 3 major development teams and at least one of those development teams' design in the past has been scrapped (R400) and another has been for console's only (remember, we never saw the Flipper make it to any desktops..) so its not totally unbelievable that whatever ATi will be releasing (late?) this year will be a traditional part...

flipper was based on 8500 aka r250, it was never planned to get it to the desktop afaik.

its been known for months that r520 will not have a unified shader architecture. The windows api is not in place for this yet.

this needs a new windows api? hmmmm cant they lock the unified pipes? some for vertex and some for pixel shader processing?

[DudeMiester]

It's not an API issue like I said, it's a political one. You need the API so you can more exactly control the balancing, and the other nifty features of a unified shader architecture. They can expose this through extensions with OpenGL, but you can't do that in DirectX. Even so, it will still work, you just don't get access to the fancy features in DirectX.

[mesyn191]

Sayaa: Flipper wasn't based on the 8500, it was made by an outside company called ArtX and ATi bought them out just before Nintendo launched the NGC. IIRC it wasn't even in the 8500's class, it was more of a very fast DX7 product with some nifty register combiners to fake some DX8 class effects with reasonable speed.

[kryptobs2000]

Glad to see this is actually labeled a rumor for once, although to me this does seem more believeable then the 7800 gtx threads, still I think its fake though. Very sad news that ati is making the r520 basically suck to help the xbox 360, what kinda crap is that, I'm really getting tired of all of ati's bs, I hope the 7800 gtx is good. Even if the r520 is a little faster I'd still choose the 7800 if they're that close just cause I actually like nvidia... well.. I don't really like either, more of a lesser of two evils... I wish 3dfx was still around

[FireDragon]

Just because there top end arcitecture is in the Xbox360 doesn't mean that tere next in line isn't as fast as there top end doesn't mean they will be left hagging they wouldn't have agreed to the hole Xbox360 thing if it would leave them hanggin in the PC market to hurt there rep...R520 will be directly competitive with Nvidia's newest offering ATi would never loose out like this and let Nvidia get that much more share on them...

Dragon

[perkam]

I've for one am bored of the speculation. You can see the G70 prototype for god sakes, and we're still wondering what tech the R520 will use.

All I have to say to those rumours is: Meow.

Perkam

[deltarealm]

Guessing from the above specs:

X900 XT PE = Binned core and higher spec Samsung memory, maybe 1.4ns (faster than current 1.6ns) This should enable ATI to keep a soild gap between the XT and the PE

X900 XT = likely Samsung 1.6ns memory. Will need alot of mods to match PE?

X900 pro = hopefully same memory as the XT, judging on listed speed, then yes. Flashing to X900 XT most likely possible?, if so, then this card look set to be best bang for buck.

X900 = either slightly slower or par (maybe even faster?) with fastest X800 card today.


All guessing ok.