THINGS ARE finally starting to make sense. ATI has just announced the Radeon X800 GT and GTO cards and it took us a while until we realised how this card can co-exist with upcoming RV530, Radeon X1600 series. The real answer is, it won't.
ATI plans to volume ship the GTO until the end of the year. RV530 won't see the light of day until sometime in December. Therefore you have to fill the gap with some other product that can make Nvidia 6800 standard and 6600GT run like a fox for cover.
The second part of the story is that ATI actually has great volumes of both R430 and R480 and wants to use both chips for Radeon X800GTO and GT cards. How convenient.
So when it comes to the mainstream and Shader Model 3.0 from ATI, you will have to wait a few more weeks than expected but we can confirm that some of the R520, Radeon X1800 series and all of the RV 515 Radeon X1300 will be available in quantity.
Nvidia is planning a counter attack, of course, but we suspect some massive price cut on its existing parts, at least until the new mainstream and low end cards are ready.
