Report: HD 6970 Release to be Delayed

Word on the street is that yield problems are to blame.

The GPU wars usually hit a crescendo as the holidays near, with AMD and NVIDIA jockeying for a spot on customers’ shopping lists. Seems some production-related delays may tip the scale in NVIDIA’s and the upcoming GTX 580’s favor.

If various sources based within Taiwan are to be believed, then AMD and its manufacturing partner TSMC has encountered some problems in generating enough volume for a planned November 22 release. The issues are bad enough that test yields amount only in the single digits.

The AMD Radeon HD 6970 “Cayman” will reportedly feature a 256-bit controller and 2GB of GDDR5 RAM, while the competing GTX 580 will “only” work with 1.5GB of memory. Both high-end video cards will be overkill for any single-display system.

Does the rumor indicate a problem with the Cayman architecture? Or are TSMC’s fabrication capabilities lacking? Most importantly, will AMD ship on time? Only time will provide definitive answers to these questions, and confirmation (or lack thereof) of the rumor’s validity. Stay tuned, dear readers!

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