News R600 launch will be top-to-bottom

Don't worry about that, AMD won't stop making graphics cards anytime soon, they've only just finished developing R600, and if they had any plans to stop, they wouldn't have finished it.

dgb has hit the nail on the head tbh - they're having trouble making the high-end cores, but the ones which don't quite meet the standard are suitable for the XT and XL product lines. Why waste good cores when you can have a massive, expansive product release and poke nVidia in the eye?

 

well its hardly poking nvidia in the eye, its so late its like [insert appropriate anecdote here]

 

How many people have waited for R600? How many more will now wait, knowing they'll probably be able to get an XT/XL at the end of May if it trounces an 8800GTS for the same money?

 

Thanks for the response...but I still need a little clarification. I'm unfamiliar with ATI's convention, but I know with nVidia, say the G80 is the "top of the line" and it's used in the 8800GTX and GTS -- just slightly disabled and clocked differently in the GTS version. Then they'll also have a G86 (for an 8300) and a G84 (for an 8600). All of those are in the G8x family, but not necessarily in the G80 family, depending on your mindset...

So when you say "derived from R600 technology," would that include only GPUs/cards that actually use an R600 core (at various clock speeds, with or without some parts disabled), or would that include any chips in the R6xx category?

 

R600 is top of the line I believe. The R630 is middle and R650 is bottom (or numbers to that affect)

To get an idea of model numbers, look at ATIs X1xxx Range and replace X1 with X2.

 

I forget the exact model numbers off the top of my head (plus being half awake at this time of the morning) so please forgive if the mid and low-end parts aren't the correct models. With that said R600 technology = R600 (high-end, 80nm), RV630 (mid-range, 65nm) and RV615 (low-end, 65nm).

 

Neat...thanks. Sounds like a pretty big launch then.

 

@ Tim S

Worth holding off buying an 8800?