Is it really that R600XT will be launched tomorrow?

[babalapia]

I got some news that AMD will launch R600XT at May 2 a couple of days ago,but now I don't see any sign of that, another disappointed gift sent from AMD

 

[ausch30]

Does this mean that the R600 will be released in May? Well, we heard that ATI intends to launch it somewhere in the middle of May, with some giving May 14th as a tentative date, but that's just another rumour in a long line of rumours. Given the fact that ATI has not been shy in postponing the launch of the R600 on numerous occasions, it's not inconceivable they will do it again.

Site

There has been a lot of speculation and I really don't think AMD even really knows when it will be released.

 

[kaoru780]

By the time they release anything , directx 11 already came out.

 

[babalapia]

yes,I have waited so long.what the hell is AMD doing ? waiting to die?

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

So lets see, was that AFTER they had the first WHQL driver ever written and passed for DX10? Hmmm lets see, when was this written? Oh here it is

AMD Layoffs Announced
Company cutting 375 jobs to eliminate redundancies in wake of ATI acquisition.
Ben Ames, IDG News Service
Friday, November 17, 2006 2:00 PM PST

So that was waaaay back in November. I guess whoever it was that was layed off then would be bitter and probly still outta work, and have nothing better to do than slam ATI/AMD in forums. Get a grip man

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

The way I see it is, once they come out, for prople knocking them, itll be over. That day is looming. No more of these posts. And IF the wait was worthwhile? then what? I have a 1900xt, Im happy with it. I havnt missed anything so far. The midrange parts were just released from nVid, and soon the AMD/ATI cards will be too. So whos missed out? The only ones that have are the ones betting and hoping their purchases of their 88 series on a upgrade program have these concerns. And yet, theyve had the benefits of their cards this whole time. I look forward to the competition, its good for the hardware community, might as well be the gpu's since the cpu's havnt been there for awhile.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

anytime you see redundant jobs it means the people that make the most and new hires are getting layed off

Look into the layoffs further, the majority of jobs lost in Nov and recently were marketing, accounting, HR, and other overlapping redundant jobs. To date no one has said a tech level job was cut from their Markham or California locations. I'm sure there's been some turn-over like in most companies, but the two major layoffs were support people not engineers.

This issue gets brought up time and time again for FUD purposes as if ATi is shedding their best and brightest engineers and just keeping the cleaning staff.

And even if it were engineers, it seems intel was able to shed engineers at the same time they were developing conroe, so neither really relates, because getting rid of bad engineers is still a good idea.

 

[thomasxstewart]

its definately 14may'7 event, yet heres catche- mostly upgrades are one level up so 939 market with 580 chipsets will want it for their crossfire, with ultimate of course & thats heck of load for #2. /Think of 3 16X slots & you've got to last year, oh sure it might work on 680/690 stuff crossfire stuff, yet in ultimate again just being able to handle load is bruiser of sports. so its gonna need some help probably, help that ati is without clue. Well that is idea of crossfire testing & physics & et. al.

SignedHYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART VON DRASHEK M.D.

 

[No1sFanboy]

its definately 14may'7 event, yet heres catche- mostly upgrades are one level up so 939 market with 580 chipsets will want it for their crossfire, with ultimate of course & thats heck of load for #2. /Think of 3 16X slots & you've got to last year, oh sure it might work on 680/690 stuff crossfire stuff, yet in ultimate again just being able to handle load is bruiser of sports. so its gonna need some help probably, help that ati is without clue. Well that is idea of crossfire testing & physics & et. al.

SignedHYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART VON DRASHEK M.D.

8O I have no choice but to...............agree with you. :?:

Edit: To add an off topic question.
Von Drashek, are you a person, bot or both? Please answer in a clear grammatically correct sentence.

 

[piratepast40]

SignedHYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART VON DRASHEK M.D.

Von Drashek, are you a person, bot or both? Please answer in a clear grammatically correct sentence.

Hmmmm ... a little "googling" shows his grammer is in context with his screen name.

 

[bliq]

So lets see, was that AFTER they had the first WHQL driver ever written and passed for DX10? Hmmm lets see, when was this written? Oh here it is AMD Layoffs Announced
Company cutting 375 jobs to eliminate redundancies in wake of ATI acquisition.
Ben Ames, IDG News Service
Friday, November 17, 2006 2:00 PM PST

So that was waaaay back in November. I guess whoever it was that was layed off then would be bitter and probly still outta work, and have nothing better to do than slam ATI/AMD in forums. Get a grip man

I don't know how many of you have worked for big tech companies that merged but generally, when they do, it's not the engineers that are laid off (unless they sucked to begin with). It's extremely hard to hire a good engineer with a proven track record. trust me, I've been hiring in the last few weeks and it's hard.

Usually the casualties are from redundant staffs like accounting, HR, middle management (and sometimes upper management) and often marketing and sales. Engineers usually stick around.

All the stories you hear of out of work engineers are usually from companies that shut down entirely or declare bankruptcy. AMD/ATI is not one of these companies.

 

[Phrozt]

anytime you see redundant jobs it means the people that make the most and new hires are getting layed off

Look into the layoffs further, the majority of jobs lost in Nov and recently were marketing, accounting, HR, and other overlapping redundant jobs. To date no one has said a tech level job was cut from their Markham or California locations. I'm sure there's been some turn-over like in most companies, but the two major layoffs were support people not engineers.

This issue gets brought up time and time again for FUD purposes as if ATi is shedding their best and brightest engineers and just keeping the cleaning staff.

And even if it were engineers, it seems intel was able to shed engineers at the same time they were developing conroe, so neither really relates, because getting rid of bad engineers is still a good idea.

this is what i just said
redundant means fire the most expensive and new people
and i am sure intel fires the same way. they just have more people and can absorb the impact better.

Actually, that's not at all what you said...

 

[kaotao]

anytime you see redundant jobs it means the people that make the most and new hires are getting layed off

Look into the layoffs further, the majority of jobs lost in Nov and recently were marketing, accounting, HR, and other overlapping redundant jobs. To date no one has said a tech level job was cut from their Markham or California locations. I'm sure there's been some turn-over like in most companies, but the two major layoffs were support people not engineers.

This issue gets brought up time and time again for FUD purposes as if ATi is shedding their best and brightest engineers and just keeping the cleaning staff.

And even if it were engineers, it seems intel was able to shed engineers at the same time they were developing conroe, so neither really relates, because getting rid of bad engineers is still a good idea.

this is what i just said
redundant means fire the most expensive and new people


No it's not, and you apparently don't know what redundant means. Just accept the fact that you have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[kaotao]

You said this...

i think writing DX10 drivers and laying off your engineers at the same time makes life difficult

No where in the link you provided did it mention laying off engineers. You obviously don't know what you're talking about. Save your breathe for a topic that you might actually have something intelligent to add.

 

[kaotao]

OMG you're stupid. No where does it state that they're laying off engineers, which was the whole point (if you can call it that) of your post. Listening to you, one would think that they layed off most of their engineering staff. Grape said it right, and your initial post was an assumption you made about something you know absolutely nothing about. That was made more obvious by you not even knowing what the word redundant even means. :roll:

 

[Gary_Busey]

I think the point they're trying to make is that there would be no redundencies in the engineering departments, since the merger is between two companies that make two different products, each side would still need to keep it's engineers to be able to engineer both products. Jobs, such as marketing, would be considered redundant because after the merger, you'd have several positions where multiple people were doing the same job.

 

[bigbadjohnnyb]

I think the point he was trying to make was this:

If it was only marketing and support staff that were let go, why the delay? So he's deducing that since there is a delay then maybe engineers were caught in the net too.

However... I doubt that's the case, especially in a publically traded company where the success your next major products will propel the years results after announcing huge let-downs from the previous year.

I think the delay is a combination of :

1) technical challenges with the mid-level cards (suspicion only)
2) software glitches in drivers across the board that they're trying to avoid (and some with G80's are still fighting, I'm sure they don't want that on top of delaying...)
3) The decision in general to have the full range released at once, not just the flagship, which hopefully means meaningful quantities at release.

Bottom line - upon release, it's not going to change much other than pricing. The true fanatics are on G80's, the casual buyer is using a mid-upper-mid range card from either camp depending on game/app, which is probably not G8x until 6 months from now, and the DAMMIT fanboys are chomping at the bit and pissed while G80's clan are laughing at the wait. Upon release, the only change is the fanboys (hopefully) get what they want and hopefully prices across the board come down.

But does that mean a flood of purchases from anyone other than the highest of high end? I doubt it. Plus its gonna take a number of weeks for the markets to react to the introduction of competition, so if that's what you're waiting for the wait is even longer.... So what's all the hub-bub about? Sheesh...

 

[Eviltwin17]

sorry to disappoint, but amd pushed the release to mid may

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

learn to read please

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,127946-pg,1-RSS,RSS/article.html
AMD Layoffs Announced
Company cutting 375 jobs to eliminate redundancies in wake of ATI acquisition.

ELIMINATE REDUNDANCIES

was the R600 not released last year because of a marketing problem? if that is the case then i agree none of these jobs are engineering type of jobs.
but i suspect its marketing and accounting and yes engineering jobs that were eliminated. ATI has engineers to you know

Actually you're assuming that means engineers, and that's the Fall article, the more recent article from the York Region went into detail about the fact that it's accounting, HR, marketing and other duplicate jobs, and not engineers.

http://www.yorkregion.com/Business/article/18820

"We didn't need two finance departments or two human resources departments," said Mr. Erskine

So once again you're putting spins on things and adding BS out there with an obvious slant, as if HR and acountants has anything to do with driver writing like you imply. :roll:

BTW, the intel layoffs did include engineers, and it's a heck of alot more numbers even as a percentage than AMD's layoffs. Which goes to illustrate my point that even if it were engineers, it necessarily mean anything more than just the layoffs themselves.

go have a coffee break with grape
r600 is late for engineering reasons its not that hard to figure out

Actually it's not hard to guess at, but like most of your guesses, they're wrong. My coffee break refreshes me, I don't know if a reality break could help straighten you out. :roll:

 

[Blackhawk44M]

Thought it was the 14th/ idk

 

[justjc]

The rumor behind this thread, and a May 2nd launch, came from this article http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39223

Yes it's another one from the Inq...

 

[rwayne]

ATI has zero business sense.

Tradionally they have provided a better product, at a lower price, with better picture quality and more pixel shadders than Nividia.

And Nvidia is just beating them over the head with superior marketing promoting inferior video cards and selling them for a higher price.

The R600 should have been released back in 2006 when the 8800 was released.

Now there is rumor that the 2950XTX will only be slightly faster than the 8800GTS but slower than the 8800GTX.

Why delay 6 months for that?

They are losing money for a reason. They don't know how to market what they got.

 

[Steve911924]

I have a feeling AMD underestimated how powerful the 8800's would be. Now their playing catch up, for 6 or so months now....

Why don't they release a mid range card (X2600XT), to dominate the most lucrative market there is for gamers? Or a budget card for OEM's and HTPC's? That would at least keep AMD's income going and their stock prices from totally crapping in amongst themselves

 

[rwayne]

From what I read the ATI division of AMD lost $35 million dollars last year. What the H3LL is wrong with them? How many more millions are they going to voluntarily give (or gift I should say) to Nvidia before they start selling the R600?

IF they were first to market before the 8800 they could of reaped a bunch of sales in. Because it would be a new product, first of it's kind, direct x10 compatible. But they sat on their butts. Then said they would launch it before Xmas, then delayed it again, then second guessed themselves and the market, then delayed again. Just total incompentence on their part. Both them and AMD. Every day they delayed it Nvidia sold at least 1,000 8800 Geforces a day.

It is just bad decision after bad decision. They deserve to be losing millions / billions.

I like ATI cards too. It is just really Pathetic how they are running their company.

 

[senor_bob]

And Nvidia is just beating them over the head with superior marketing promoting inferior video cards and selling them for a higher price.

That may be true on average, but I hardly think the GF8800 series qualify as "inferior video cards". In fact, I think the X1950XTX costs more than the 8800GTS these days. Now the Ultra for $999, that's an overpriced card if the rumors are correct.

However, nVidia's getting their logo splashed on all those games with that "the way it's meant to be played" crap has got be second only to "Intel Inside" in computer industry marketing success. (this was particularly funny on the many games where X19xx series humiliated GF79xx series). If anything, I think the two divisions of AMD (CPU and ATI) hit the same problem at once - they were both used to having a technically superior product and were caught off guard when their more marketing savvy competitors released excellent products (C2D and G80) that were significant improvements over the existing products rather than relying on marketing.

Still I agree that ATI's planning makes no obvious sense to me. I would have released the R600 back in January, even if it lost to the GTX, and start recovering some of the investment while working on R650. But I don't know all the details and neither does anybody else on here, there may have been technical problems where the R600 simply didn't work and they needed another spin or 2 on the design, or maybe they have some master plan beyond any of our knowledge.

I do find their "we're stockpiling so we can launch the whole series at once" to be a rather suspect excuse, I can't imagine a company bleeding debt like AMD would want to have a bunch of expensive video cards sitting around in warehouses (sunk manufacturing and development costs) as they claim they do waiting for the midrange to be ready rather than getting some of that cost recovered by selling the things.