http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22588

While ATI have previously been a little coy about R520’s release dates in public, with ATI’s CEO, Dave Orton, saying that they had initially hoped for an early summer release but it will now be late summer, it is blatantly obvious that it has been delayed. In a recent investors Q&A session ATI’s Senior Vice President of the PC Business Unit, Rick Bergman, on the subject of R520 said “We had hoped to have that product in the June timeframe, but unfortunately due to a variety of design issues it has moved out to the September / October timeframe for launch”. This is more or less in-line with the late summer launch previously mentioned by Dave Orton.

The normal course for graphics development sees a new architecture being adopted in a high end product first and then subsequent lower end products being introduced based on that architecture over time. However, with the delay to R520, the rest of ATI’s development schedule evidently hasn’t been similarly delayed, and during the conference Rick points out that RV515 and RV530 are beginning their production ramp now and will also ship in the September / October timeframe, possibly with all three chips being announced with a few weeks gap between each, spanning those two months.

Whilst R520 is known to be ATI’s high end product with Shader Model 3.0 capabilities, RV530 and RV515 should occupy the mainstream and entry level ranges, roughly where ATI’s X700 (RV410) and X300 (RV370) class of products currently exist. Releasing a top-to-bottom line of products with the same level of shader capabilities will be a first for ATI, as previous releases have seen their low end product lagging behind in the 3D capabilities of their high end brethren.

Rick made note that all of ATI’s current products will use 90nm from TSMC initially, but they will spread to other fab partners in time. He also mentioned that there is a fourth PC product based on 90nm currently underway, which could be the rumoured R580 product. ATI’s Crossfire, dual graphics system, is also another design that was announced some time back but has seen some delays, however Rick states that samples will be ready to go to press in August with the platform shipping in September.