Report: HD 6970 Release to be Delayed

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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!

Source

Rico Mossesgeld
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50 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Snipergod87
    There is always a fabrication process issue..
    Reply
  • kresso
    Sounds like your selling a murder mystery.
    Reply
  • cinergy
    Delays or not, it'll be worth the wait.
    Reply
  • NapoleonDK
    I would like 6 months worth of boxart from both parties first please. :)

    /sarcasm
    Reply
  • bgaimur
    how can you even call this news? From taiwanese sources? This is a reproduced article based on another site that posted this earlier, which is claimed to be bogus. Pure speculation
    Reply
  • IzzyCraft
    kressoSounds like your selling a murder mystery.
    Does the rumor indicate a problem with the Cayman architecture? Or are TSMC’s fabrication capabilities lacking? Most importantly, will AMD ship on time?
    Either way i swear i've already read this story like a year ago it seems...
    Reply
  • jomofro39
    Yields of single digits?! That is terrible. Is that accurate? For the prototype attempts? Am I wrong in criticizing that poor yield? What are the normal yields for a first-stage production of a consumer graphics card? In my industry, yields that low mean that something is terribly wrong, and it should never have even progressed to production if such errors are even a possibility, let alone a reality.
    Reply
  • megamanx00
    Perhaps an error in the design? Truly AMD has done enough 40nm parts to know what to expect. I don't think it would just be related to the increased die size. We'll see.
    Reply
  • "Both high-end video cards will be overkill for any single-display system."

    That's a pretty audacious statement. They're both just die shrinks. Nothing revolutionary, just evolutionary.

    I can pretty guarantee that still, neither of them will be able to run Crys... er.. the unmentionable game at highest settings at 2560x1600 with a min of 30fps.

    Unless you mean both cards together in some future actually working version of Lucid Hydra. That would be a mean machine.
    Reply
  • LORD_ORION
    Right...
    Both Nvidia and AMD have been using his process for a year now... and only now AMD is having a yield problem...

    More like Nvidia friendly parties are trying to move as much of their 465 and higher inventory as they can before the 69xx and 580 force a fire sale of the entire upper bracket of cards.
    Reply