R520 has 32 pipelines, 24 working

IT MIGHT be the only chip capable of doing H.264 video in hardware for a while, as we believe that not even Nvidia G70 will be able to do this. H.264 is next generation codec used for HD-DVD content. Despite that we heard more than once that R520 aka Fudo is the biggest chip ever built.

R520 was showed in Taiwan and it's up and running, showcasing two games, PREY and Alan Wake at ATI booth and doing some H.264 video decoding at a different corner.

We learned that R520 might be quite hot as it is the biggest chip ever with its 300+ millions transistors. Since its 90 nanometre its kind of logical that you can place quite a lot of pipelines under its hood and it turns out that ATI has managed to pack in 32 pipes. Having 32 happy Scottish chaps in kilts playing the pipes at the same time is perhaps the best metaphor.

We wrote about this before but I don't think ATI will decide about final pipe number until it seas Nvidia's G70, Geforce 7800GTX in action. ATI will have to choose between 24 pipeline part of the nasty decision of having all 32 pipes working at once. If R520 manages to defeat G70 ATI will stick to 24 pipes story and all will be happy in Toronto and ATI's part of Santa Clara. If G70 scores better then ATI will have to enable all 32 pipes. The real problem is that at 32 pipelines yields are not that good as we are talking about very complex chip.

Whatever Nvidia do ATI have reasonable chances this time around. We even heard from Hexus that Nvidia might have some G70 Ultra card in its pocket saving it for rainy days. It's going to be tight we are more than sure. µ