Report: HD 6970 Release to be Delayed
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!
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I bet AMD will ship on time... even if its just 20 copy per continent lol... they will release it, just might not be in the desired quantities...
Its all speculation as well, and the writer sounds like the ad's for reality shows, where the next episode is GUARANTEED to be chock block full of drama and suspense and its really not... oh well, hope they at least release SOMETHING.
I smell a rat.
TSMC's 40nm process is very mature now, and I don't think the 6900 series has enough actual changes on it to complicate production. "Low yields" just sounds like an excuse to hold off a wee bit, build up a big stock of cards, see where the GTX 580 price point ends up and then just flood the market with price-undercutting 6900s.
Single digit yields? Takes me back to January when NV were having the same problem with Fermi.
Still, 40nm shouldn't be giving TSMC a problem, maybe Cayman has hit a hurdle.