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

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.

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

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

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

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
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

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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.

Quote:


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.