ATI CEO Dave Orton on R580, R580-Crossfire launch

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ATI conference call webcast audio:
http://ir.ati.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=105421&p=irol-irhome


http://www.beyond3d.com/#news26829

R580 and Crossfire R580 Early 2006
22-Dec-2005, 04:06.18 Reporter : Dave Baumann
Speculation over the arrival of ATI's next high end chip, to replace
the tardy R520, has been rife over the past few months, with the
popular theorists pinning towards a late January 2006 timeframe.
ATI's recent conference call for their Quarter 1 financial results
more or less confirmed the theories with CEO, Dave Orton, stating
"Over the next 90 days, you will see us recapture the performance
leadership from ourselves, with our R580 launch in Q2, delivering the
most compelling multi-GPU graphics platform with CrossFire, and ramping
OEMs with this solution in the quarter as well."

In that statement Orton not only singles out R580 but Crossfire for it
as well. Crossfire has been on a rocky path since its announcement with
Radeon X850 Crossfire being very late and not at all well received,
although the recent X1800 Crossfire release has ironed out some of the
kinks, although a few still remain. However, with R580 coming within
the next month or so it raises the question as to how much uptake X1800
Crossfire will have and how much support the platform is going to
receive. Given R520's late introduction and the impending arrival of
R580 in relation to the Crossfire variant of R520 it may be the case
that the Crossfire system really only gets serious on its third
incarnation - even then its quite possible that the hardware to
provide the solution is still evolving, and may continue to do so for
some time.
 
ATI conference call webcast audio:
http://ir.ati.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=105421&p=irol-irhome


http://www.beyond3d.com/#news26829

R580 and Crossfire R580 Early 2006
22-Dec-2005, 04:06.18 Reporter : Dave Baumann
Speculation over the arrival of ATI's next high end chip, to replace
the tardy R520, has been rife over the past few months, with the
popular theorists pinning towards a late January 2006 timeframe.
ATI's recent conference call for their Quarter 1 financial results
more or less confirmed the theories with CEO, Dave Orton, stating
"Over the next 90 days, you will see us recapture the performance
leadership from ourselves, with our R580 launch in Q2, delivering the
most compelling multi-GPU graphics platform with CrossFire, and ramping
OEMs with this solution in the quarter as well."

In that statement Orton not only singles out R580 but Crossfire for it
as well. Crossfire has been on a rocky path since its announcement with
Radeon X850 Crossfire being very late and not at all well received,
although the recent X1800 Crossfire release has ironed out some of the
kinks, although a few still remain. However, with R580 coming within
the next month or so it raises the question as to how much uptake X1800
Crossfire will have and how much support the platform is going to
receive. Given R520's late introduction and the impending arrival of
R580 in relation to the Crossfire variant of R520 it may be the case
that the Crossfire system really only gets serious on its third
incarnation - even then its quite possible that the hardware to
provide the solution is still evolving, and may continue to do so for
some time.
Click to expand...

Hopefully, the R580 will solder directly on the footprint of the R520
and require no other design changes whatsoever to R520 video cards,
otherwise expect a large number of unhappy 3rd-party "partners" -- as
their investment in the design/manufacturing of the much delayed
R520 cards will never be recouped...assuming of course that Mr Orton's
announcement is not yet another gust of ATi hot-air with regard to
availability.

Of course, if the R580 solders directly into a R520 video-card, then
the Crossfire compositor will still not have been integrated and will
still be a bag-on-the-side, with the mandatory need for a Crossfire
master-card and dongle -- unless ATi create 2 completely different
versions of the R580--- a very expensive design/masking duplication
exercise. An expensive Catch 22 for Ati in their self-generated
Crossfire mess.

John Lewis
 
Hopefully, the R580 will solder directly on the footprint of the R520
and require no other design changes whatsoever to R520 video cards,
otherwise expect a large number of unhappy 3rd-party "partners" -- as
their investment in the design/manufacturing of the much delayed
R520 cards will never be recouped...assuming of course that Mr Orton's
announcement is not yet another gust of ATi hot-air with regard to
availability.
Click to expand...

The video boards for R580 are different than those of R520.

X1800XT is actually selling very well. If anyone wants to buy a fast
512 meg card right now, it's the only choice. For past several weeks
7800GTX 512 can't be found anywhere outside EBay and most retailers
are giving mid-late January as the restocking date. Besides, the more
than $250 difference in price makes X1800XT even more attractive
(X1800XT 512 can be found for less than $500 now)

Having said that, the new X1900XT (R580) seems like a great card. It
will have the basic features of X1800XT (high quality AF, AA+FPHDR,
floating point frame buffer, SM3.0, 512 meg) with thrice the number of
shader processors.

Considering that it's very likely to come out in January, the prices
of X1800XT and 7800GTX cards will be taking a plunge soon. Those of us
who never buy these $300-500 graphic cards have something to look
forward to. Considering the forward-looking features of R580 (3:1
ALU-Tex ratio, for instance) it'll be the most future-proof graphic
card by far. If it comes out in a lower-clocked version, for around
$300-400, I might actually buy it. The last $300 graphic card, that I
bought was Voodoo2 based Righteous 3D II, eight years ago and I expect
X1900XT to have the same value.
 
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