Radeon HD 2950 XTX coming in the third quarter

A small piece of news that I, for one, didn't like reading
http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/12424
I've been holding out for the R600 since... forever. But if something cheaper, faster, more efficient and less power hungry is just 3, maybe 4, months away, then what's the point of buying the 2900 which isn't even out yet?
I know that a card that's very good today will also be at least good enough in 3 months from now, I know that a high-end graphics card is not about value for money, or that I shouldn't expect any sort of return to my "investment", but, boy, talk about the "next big thing" being right around the corner!
I think I'll buy a 8800GTS 320MB tomorrow and go for the 2950 XTX come August
Oh yes... and I also know that it's only a rumour and perhaps the 2950 will also be delayed indefinitely but still, if you are prepared to dish out between 400 and 600 euros you don't want to be left feeling (even more) stupid...

What'sthe point in buying anythig before you know even what the HD2900s can do, let alone the HD2950s?

So the question is if 'st00pid avoidance' is what you're trying to do, why not at least wait until you know what the cards they are offering next week and what the prices of the GTS-640s will be?

Makes no sense to buy tomorrow versus next Monday. :?:

I personally like fudzilla's "crap", but I have always wondered why they are allowed to break amd's nda, or have a different one

It's not violating an NDA to speculate wildly, nor are there laws against producing news via your primary posterior orifice.

Actually Fudzilla, like the InQ, isn't bound by NDA so what they get is either from NDA breakers (whom they try to protect as sources of course), or from rumour sources. Basically they write each story as if it automatically opens in your browser with the following;

"So a little birdy told me......."

People who have rumours, tell the InQ and Fuad, and VR-Zone, etc.
Some are credible and pan out, others are FUD or someone wanting to see their rumour in the net tabloids, and others are real leaks, but by the time the product arrives it's been redesigned twice and it resembles the original concept in name only.

Basically anything from Fuad isn't under NDA, it's a collection of rumours, and also a dissemination point for rumours. He has well conected connections, and people wanting to leak stuff for PR reasonss (either for BUZZ or for FUD).

Always entertaining, but I'd never invest anything more than my time into the articles that come out of the InQ and FUDzilla.

Ahh, so that means they aren't breaking nda, but a ton of other people are.

I personally believe fudzilla for the majority of their things, since a lot of turns out to be true, but I take the Inq with a HUGE MOUNTAIN OF SALT, so depending on which site posts it, I'll either believe it or think I ate one too many tacos the night before (which strangely enough is what I'm having for dinner today)

The main point is, the consideration that the 'IFs' in you statements, could also be;

What IF the GTS-640 drops to near the price of the GTS-320 next week?

What IF the HD2900SE or whatever is the same price as the GTS-320 only more performant?

Neither of which I would bet on, but by the same token getting close to either is a possability.

I just dont see the wisedom in getting even the attractive GTS-320 now instead of first thing next week, considering that the price isn't about to go up, so the only downside would be losing 5 days of gameplay in order to make an informed decision. Seems to be the logical route regardless of whether you end up with the GTS-320 or not.

Perhaps, but technology tends to change that fast

Plenty of things have been changing, for one thing, ati added one more stream shader per group, they clocked it higher, made it 65nm, from the beginning when the r600 was supposed to debut in like February, the card has completely changed

Yeah, but see, the first ones were speculation, and the second ones were actual tests. But considering how hot the 6800xt(s) ran, I'm surprised the r600 doesn't hit 100c

So would we all, we're hoping the rumor about a May 10th Barcelona benchmark is confirmed and that they actually bench the chip, task manager is a pretty interesting program, but most of us prefer seeing 3dmark scores, or fp comparisons

I won't be one bit surprised if DAAMIT does release an HD2950XTX in Q3. Anyone remember the X1800?

They released the X1800 cards, then months later the X1900 cards...because the X1800 cards underperformed, whereas the X1900 cards have had great success and is a great product. I would guess they're doing it again.

It's the card they should be releasing now, instead of Q3 and instead of the underperforming 2900 (again if rumours are correct)

why dont you just wait for the dx10 games and see what card will be best at that time? ati or nvidia. and buy a gts now probably wouldnt be stupid, its a nice card.
but im gonna wait and see who's the best performer.. i wonder what 8900 will do

It's not that I need the best and fastest as soon as it's available, it's just that my current card (X1600XT) does not perform like a champ especially considering that I'm using a 24" screen with a native resolution of 1920x1200. I can't run ANY of the games I play at that rez with that card. So I've wanted to upgrade since I got this monitor, a few months ago, and it seemed like the logical thing to go for a next gen part that could handle 19x12 and HD stuff with ease.
I've already mentioned why I would rather get an ATI part so you can understand why I'm so eager for them to come out.
And with the possibility of such an imminent release of the "refresh" product (ie R650) it feels like ATI is telling us that the GPU they should be releasing now is still a few months away and in the mean time we can have sth that's good but not that good yet.
Bear in mind though that I'm pressing the point only because the R650 release seems so imminent

I'm thinking more - than +.

The 7900GTO is still a great card, but I wanted an 8800GTX to really boost my Oblivion performance.

Honestly you could get away with using a really crappy card for a long time if you continually lower the settings, but eventually you get sick of games that can look good looking like crap, especially if you have the money to upgrade. This situation is bad because people who have been waiting for an upgrade for a long time might end up being kinda screwed if they buy a 2900 and then a superior 2950 comes out shortly afterwards. Either way they'll get a nice upgrade, but honestly if I had bought a X1800 when they launched I would've been kinda mad that they released new cards so soon.

Yeah, and that's what I didn't get.

Anywhoo believe me I understand your frustration, but at least you've had options, if anyone can point me to a quality Napa or Santa Rosa laptop with a good DX10 solution with 17" and full keyboard, that'd be helpful, but those are still on hold too despite the GF8600 launch.

I think it'd probably have been beter if there were no rumours. Then people could've bought their GF8800 long ago if they wanted/needed to upgrade from their X1K/GF7, and then this fall when the games ship treat everything like a new refresh and decide again when the games come out.
I thinnk the rumours hve switched the buyers back into focusing on the hardware instead of on the gameplay the hardware offers.

Well, I'm sure they were already planning for a refresh prior to their upcoming release, I'm guessing they've just accelerated the process of getting the refresh to market.

Yea, if the performance is as lousy as they say, there probably never will be a 2900XTX. They likely wouldn't be able to recoup the manufacturing costs. I too am highly curious about the core of the 2950. DDR 3 or 4? Shaders, pipes, memory interface, etc. Hopefully some credible info will leak soon. I don't understand how AMD can afford to keep it a secret, at this point, if they're going to have a good performer they better let everyone know. The 8900 can't be too far away.

If your motherboard supports it, why don't you Crossfire your X1600XT for right now. That should give you better performance.

Have you seen benchmarks for the 1600XT Crossfired? Definitely not worth it. Incidentally, I can hardly find it anymore and the few 1600XT's I can find are close to 140euros. I'd be better off buying a single 1950PRO. Anyway, the reason I ended up with that card was that late last year I got a good deal selling my old X800XT PE (which was still rather good) and mobo (AGP) and I bought a PCI-e mobo for which I needed a new card. So I thought I'd get sth cheap for the time being until R600 comes out. And I've been waiting ever since. It was never my plan to stick with it for too long

Next week I'm upgrading. Don't know to what yet but it's happening

I'm not upgrading my mobo (and CPU, and RAM) just my graphics card

what PC u have ? O.o

First, as mentioned by bullarh, the shrink to 65nm should mean less power consumption (although not guaranteed, since it can increase leakage and cross-talk because the pathways are closer to gether, thus requiring increased voltage to overcome), high clocks are often also achieveable, but that also works against power efficiency. Also if yield % are the same, then the yield per 300mm wafer should be higher since you can fit more parts per wafer so let's say 75% of them are good, and that's the same as the R600 on 80nm then since there are let say 20% more per wafer then that means you should get a few more working chips per wafer at the same cost. Thus the cost per chip goes down.

Now since this is a full new node and not an optical shrink like the 80nm, it should theoretically give them better results in most of those areas with greatly reduced footprint and less leakage, and all those nice things.

That's the benefit of moving to a smaller process, however like I said the pathways and gates are now very small, and very close, and the thinner a pathway the higher the resistance. So it's still a tradeoff to some extent. Also maturation of the process hopefully learned from the mid range parts should help these new high-end 65nm parts from AMD and nV come out of the gates (no pun intended) strong.

Ok, now this is out of the realm of 'facts' and going into to the rumour region for thos of you reading along and wearing tight panties....

[rumour]
The current rumour is that the R650 does have so additional tweaks in design and while not radical update like an R700 core, or like the move from X1800 to X1900 was, there are suposedly some refinements in the architecture, similar to what happened going from the R9700 to R9800 where they tacked on some HyperZ improvement and some vertex engine updates.

Supposedly there's some minor tweaks for the R650 core as well, and there's been mentions of changes to texture add/filt ratios, mention of tweaks to the ROP (which I think unlikely, ROPs are not as important later in the game when they can't be fed by the front end). There's also been talk of an update to the scheduler and for improved stream support, however this is all talk, and I don't see any of it being a major improvement.
[/rumour]