The inquirer claims that ATI is rapidly losing it's market share.Not very good news :( It seems that AMD doesn't give a quarter for ATI. They bought it only to streghten their position against Intel and only because of chipsets. Let's hope that R600 comes in time, and that it comes hard. But it seems to me that I am having a deja vu here (R600 = V5 5500). It came too late and it was too weak. :(

Here's the link:
http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=36191

wrote on 11.12.06 at 08:29:49:

They bought it only to streghten their position against Intel and only because of chipsets.

Is anyone surprised? I pointed this out sometime ago.

AMD will do what is in AMD's best interest.

I think that the R600 is more like the 3dfx Specter [Ramapge 2000] delays dealy and more things like delays, the PCB has been redesigned because the Rev.A0 prototype had a PCB of 30 cm long, so then they redesigned the PCB to a 28cm size which ofcourse costs more money and time therefore another delay, then they had to rotate the core on the chip by 45 degrees which also costed more time therefore another delay.

First it was planned for Q4 2006 then it was moved to Q1 2007 end of Januari and now it's replaced to mid Februari.
When this card releases it will only have like 4 mounths of best performance untill nVidia strikes back with thier G81 aka GeForce 8900 series.

the only advantage ATi has with R600 are the following, which are mere speculations of it. ;) :

720 Million Transistors
1024 Bit Ringbus Memory Controller
1GB 512 Bit GDDR3 / GDDR4
4x 96 Stream processors
115 GB per sec GDDR3 or 142GB per sec with GDDR4

if the R600 is gonna have GDDR3 or GDDR4 that's still the question what we do know that the memory bus is gonna be 512 Bit and the Riingbus memory controller 1024 bit, so in any case a single R600 card would outperform the memory bandwidth on any G80 based card.

while nvidia's G80/81

681 Million Transistors
384 Bit memory controller
768MB 384 Bit GDDR3
1x 128 Stream processors
86,4GB per second memory bandwidth

if the ram would also be like 512Bit GDDR3 or GDDR4 nVidia would have to redesign the whole PCB + GPU so I don't think that the G81 will get the features like 512Bit GDDR3 / GDDR4 and 256 stream processors, it would cost nvidia too much money, also extra delays.

the G81 will be like the G71 a nice speed bump maybe lesser Transistors and other GPU/Ram clock speeds othing much more :)

I sense ATi shall regain power with thier R600.

What AMD/ATI need is 3 key things :

- Cheap, powerful, low-power integrated Video for OEM Motherboards
(getting there)
- a rock-solid, feature-rich and performant Chipset series (for AMD and intel Systems)
(nothing really there yet)
- a clear line of competitive, ATI branded Video Cards for budget, mainstream and performance
(already there, just need to combat the G80)

well I must say that the RD580 CrossFire Xpress for AMD systems S939 as AM2 based systems are very rocksolid, the chipset request's no driver to function which is a great advantage, since I know many people with the RD580 CrossFire Xpress chipset, never heard complains from them, my experience with this chipset is also very possitive, no probs yet and it's very feature rich :)
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2697

for the Intel side there is the rock solid intel 965 and 975 X chipsets for ATi CrossFire setups :)

so for chipsets they did get it go'n I guess :)

Did you check the price for that motherboard ?

This is not what they need, only a few enthusiasts will buy anything like that.

PS.
If that Chipset "does not request" any Drivers then there's something terribly wrong with the Installation (unless one wants to use this Chipset in poor compatibility mode with a safe mode generic Driver)

well I have this board for like 6 a 7 mounths and hey never seen a problem with it yet, it's chipset is rock solid like AMD's AM760MPX once was, it needs no drivers it just fit's in orsay it's unified ;)

the ATi RD580 is the most rock stable chipset I have witnessed since the AM760MPX from AMD.
That review from Anandtech also say's that it was a rock stable system, Anand is also one of the most reliable sources, most dutch people advise to read reviews there :)

I got it for 189 euro's it was just released, and hey it is a high end gamers mobo with 2 lane PCI-x16 CrossFire connections, 6 SATAII connectors, it has the great Raid 5 and JBOD setups, also support Raid 0, 1 ad0+1 combined.
it has Dual 1Gigabit RJ45 jacks one is via the PCI bus the other is PCI-E from Marvel also aa nice choice, it support all Socket 939 processors, Athlon64, Athlon64 X2, Athlon64 FX and Opteron 1.xx series.

Anyways for a high end S939 board 189 euro's is a normal price tag.

the Dual Opteron DP 244 motherboard I had was 254 euro's only it had AGP x8 support uhm dual Opteron 250 support as max CPU no dual core and so on, so the setup with this X2 4400+ is faster but also cheaper, no more ECC reg ram , no 2nd CPU and some other small things overall it would be cheaper than a dual 248 setup 6 a 7 months ago.

at first I wanted the MSI MS-9620 K8N Master2 FAR Dual Opteron Dual core board with the nVidia Nforce 2200 Pro chipset, only it's layout was rather too packed and found out that CrossFire wasn't possible on that setup, a shame there.

and I wanted something with an AMD Dual Core setup with CrossFire support the ASUS A8R32 MVP Deluxe was my answer.

anywyas the Dual Opteron 270 [2x dualcore 2.0Ghz each core 1MB L2, total 2x 2.0Ghz & 4MB L2] would of been my choice if I had taken the MS-9620 setup and a 7950 GX2 as VGA oh well this R580 CF setup in that RD580 board rocks can't complain yet even a Voodoo5 5500 Macintosh sits in between the two big R580 cards, ATi CrossFire & 3dfx SLi in one PC  LoL ;D

wrote on 11.12.06 at 19:20:55:

That review from Anandtech also say's that it was a rock stable system, Anand is also one of the most reliable sources, most dutch people advise to read reviews there :)

I have my doubts after the "killer nic" review.

anyways that review was launched along time ago when the ASUS A8R32 MVP Deluxe was released so we'll have to wait and see what R600 will bring up, I have a good feeling about it, ATi is gonna make a nice surprise attack, like they did with R300 and R580 :)

Well, if R600 is going to be sold for cca 150 e, I think it would devastate Nvidia (as well as other video card manufacturers)  ;D

I would be the first one to get one or two for me ;)

a normal price would be 500 a 520 euro's no more.

I paid 515 Euro's for my Sapphire X1900 XTX when it was released on the market, while most prices were beyond 580 euro's.

anywyas 150 euro's is more a price for the mid-low end market.

The R600 will possibly have the following names and groupings:

Enthousiast:
X2800 XTX @ 550 Euro's
X2800 XT @ 450 Euro's

High End:
X2800 XL @ 350 Euro's
X2800 Pro @ 300 Euro's

Mid End:
X2600 XT @ 250 Euro's
X2600 Pro @ 200 Euro's

Low End:
X2300 XT @ 150 Euro's
X2300 Pro @ 100 Euro's
X2300 LE @ 80 Euro's

Anywyas just a speculation of how it could be like :)

Here some news about the AMD.ATi Motherboard lines :D
http://www.amd.com/us-en/0,,3715_13530_14669,00.html?redir=ATCI20

580X based on the RD580 for high end and enthousiasts and 480X based on the RD480 for the mainstream market, both chipsets based for AMD Socket AM2 ofcourse :)

wrote on 11.12.06 at 23:35:45:

a normal price would be 500 a 520 euro's no more.

That would hardly devastate the dominance of GF8800. If that's true ATI I mean, AMD is in deep **** (problems). Even if the card is going to be that good, that it blows away performance of 8800GTX (which is a tough chance, I'd give them at best 10-20% better perfomance over NV) the new 8900 is coming soon. When that happends, the prices of 8800 are going to drop seriously, like hitting a 250e barrier and entering the middle market segment. That's going to be reasonably painfull for X2600 as you call it...

It's just... ATI-AMD is LATE. Too late, I am afraid...  :-/

wrote on 13.12.06 at 19:40:47:

It's just... ATI-AMD is LATE. Too late, I am afraid...  :-/

History repeats itself, except that AMD has deeper pockets then 3dfx did.

In the long run, the ATI chipsets and intergrated video are more important then the high end video products.

High end gets all the press, but the onboard graphics is where the bread and butter is... ATI proved that years ago.

I'd think (being second in the row this time) they'll carefully adjust performance and pricing of the downscaled versions to give NVidias portofolio a good run for the money.

I also think before any of the two companies goes down the drain, AMD will part in advance (sending ATI into independence again).

Looking at AMD itself, they still stand strong enough to buffer the time until the K8L is released (their new 65nm/65W Energy Efficient series began shipping to OEMs on Dec 5th, plus they're upto Athlon64 X2 5600+ by now, although right now only available from Dell AFAIK).

Therefor, I wouldn't see things too bad for both, next year will look alot different than late 2006.
One has to realize that two large companies, freshly joined, do not produce true synergetic effects until many month/a year after merging.

wrote on 14.12.06 at 02:14:09:

I also think before any of the two companies goes down the drain, AMD will part in advance (sending ATI into independence again).

Oh I don't think AMD will come even close to going down the drain, I just think they consider the one-upmanship contest for "fastest video" board to be not that important when the money is in chipsets and OEM video devices.

Far more low end video cards are sold then top of the line. Low end volume trumps high end margins every time.

True, but the big name requires ownage of the performance crown at least once a while.

The image of a permanent 2nd (or 3rd) place isn't good for the whole product line.
(XGI folded over that and the S3 Chrome series will never gain any relevant market share due to that)

I totally agree with that one. I mean look what happened once the older 9800 cards came out and stomped all over Nvidia? The sales of the 9600's soared as well because of people were getting a much better card for decent money. You have to get your name out on top once in a while for the middle cards, which are your bread and butter, to sell.