ATI RV570XT launch postponed till autumn

ATI'S RADEON 'X1950XT' will be making an official appearance not in July or August, as our sources were previously telling us.

The current projection of R570XT debut is sometimes in the first two weeks of September, making it pretty much a back-to-school thing. ATI currently targets full availability of the product at the day of the launch, and not just in the first wave.

If you thing nVIDIA has nothing to worry about, think again: ATI's target is to equal or outdo the performance of R580 with fewer Shader units, but staying around the same clock.

The line-up consists of three models: two Hellfires and a Gemini. Hellfire-1 will be probably marked as the X1950XT, although nothing is set in stone. The GPU will be clocked somewhere around 600 to 650MHz for the GPU, while the 512MB of GDDR-3 memory is scheduled to run at 700 or 750MHz DDR (1400-1500MHz).

Since the RV570 chip has nice 512-bit internal (256-bit external) memory controller, you can expect bandwidth figures of 48 GB/s.

It will end up churning out around 7.8 billion pixels. The XTX part is scheduled to shove pretty much the same amount of pixels, since the clock speed of the XT and XTX will be pretty much in the same line.

The difference between the two the 136-pin BGA chip: the memory ATI will use the fastest GDDR-3 memory to date, which is only 400MHz shy of theoretical maximum X1K marchitecture can support.

The memory clock is scheduled to run at 1100MHz DDR, (2.2GHz!) When combining the number of bytes (256 bit equals 32 bytes) and the memory clock, we end up with data rate of incredible 70 GB/s for a single board!

What is certainly going to leave nVIDIA in awe are the four DualLink-DVI connectors on the Gemini board.

ATI learned that laughing at Nvidians over their Blowdrier (NV30) is only funny if you don't follow up with a vacuum cleaner in the next generation.

I admit to having gone so far as to dry my hair on the X1800XT CrossFire Edition last autumn. And I have to admit it pretty much works. If you keep the copper fins clear of dust. µ