R520 Launch date?

[balilu]

Ati's next GFX Cards will likely ship in mid-August/beginning of September according to the latest reports from Ati Taiwan.

Not only that, but the company has two products lined up to accompany R520 - namely, R530 and RV515, as well as R580 due to arrive in 2006.

R520 will be the 'X950 XT' class part, whereas the R530 will be the 'X900' part, and RV515 will be... well, we don't know what the nomenclature is, but it will be the next-gen equivalent of what the X700 is right now.

Why will Ati launch it's next generation cards 3 months after nvidia?

Well, the last generation of Radeon cards were based on 110nm manufacturing methods, which were industry standard. ATI are now moving to 90nm processes, meaning smaller cores (and more room for more complex functions) and less heat - but seeing as the techniques for building these chips is still being perfected, it can - and, it appears, has - lead to problems.

This is the same as happened to Nvidia when they moved from 150nm to 130nm and they launched the crappy GeForce FX. We hope Ati doesn't make the same mistake like Nvidia did with it's GeForce FX