It's from the Inquirer, but... oh well. Just take it with a pound of salt
and be happy.

http://www.guru3d.com/newsitem.php?id=2483

---------begin paste---------
It's not often that I quote from the Inquirer, this one however is rather
too tasty to miss. ATI's Future R520 graphics core will end up with a
minimum of twenty four pipelines. We are talking about extremely big chip
and it won't be a problem to plumb it with more than just twenty four pipes.

If we are talking about more than 300 million transistors in the chip that
is 17 square mm small, we believe that we are talking about one of the
biggest semiconductor chip for a computer ever built and it will be used for
games.

We still cannot predict the exact number of pipelines of R520 chip. ATI
placed 32 pipelines inside, but there is a chance that it will enable just
24 for a start. It will be a pure marketing decision but technically every
R520 "Fudo" will have full 32 pipes. ATI can just keep these extra eight
pipes for the later chip and enable them if necessary. If ATI's czars decide
that they need more performance they will go with full 32 pipes.

You can imagine that twice as much pipelines from R420 generation can result
with almost twice the performance that we saw with the Radeon X800
generation of cards. This will be creepily fast and one R520 can possibly
give two NV45 a run for their money.

If this is not fast enough for you, you will be able to plug two cards in
and have 48 or even 64 pipelines rendering your graphics at once. If ATI
Multi rendering becomes ready this summer and R520 turns out good and fast,
Nvidia's SLI will definitely have some nasty competition.

Source: inquirer
---------end paste---------
--

Tony DiMarzio
(E-Mail Removed)
(E-Mail Removed)

The increase in pipelines is not matched with a proportional increase in
memory bandwidth (guess a 512-bit interface is unpackageable). It's Geforce1
SDR all over again...

--
"War is the continuation of politics by other means.
It can therefore be said that politics is war without
bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed."


"Tony DiMarzio" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:Ou-dnZBA7IOOhNbfRVn-(E-Mail Removed)...
> It's from the Inquirer, but... oh well. Just take it with a pound of salt
> and be happy.
>
> http://www.guru3d.com/newsitem.php?id=2483
>
> ---------begin paste---------
> It's not often that I quote from the Inquirer, this one however is rather
> too tasty to miss. ATI's Future R520 graphics core will end up with a
> minimum of twenty four pipelines. We are talking about extremely big chip
> and it won't be a problem to plumb it with more than just twenty four
pipes.
>
> If we are talking about more than 300 million transistors in the chip that
> is 17 square mm small, we believe that we are talking about one of the
> biggest semiconductor chip for a computer ever built and it will be used
for
> games.
>
> We still cannot predict the exact number of pipelines of R520 chip. ATI
> placed 32 pipelines inside, but there is a chance that it will enable just
> 24 for a start. It will be a pure marketing decision but technically every
> R520 "Fudo" will have full 32 pipes. ATI can just keep these extra eight
> pipes for the later chip and enable them if necessary. If ATI's czars
decide
> that they need more performance they will go with full 32 pipes.
>
> You can imagine that twice as much pipelines from R420 generation can
result
> with almost twice the performance that we saw with the Radeon X800
> generation of cards. This will be creepily fast and one R520 can possibly
> give two NV45 a run for their money.
>
> If this is not fast enough for you, you will be able to plug two cards in
> and have 48 or even 64 pipelines rendering your graphics at once. If ATI
> Multi rendering becomes ready this summer and R520 turns out good and
fast,
> Nvidia's SLI will definitely have some nasty competition.
>
> Source: inquirer
> ---------end paste---------
> --
>
> Tony DiMarzio
> (E-Mail Removed)
> (E-Mail Removed)
>
>
>