No 7800 ultra

[Orlun]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25949

So, this is what this hardware dummy thinks.

ATI 520 is delayed long enough that they are going to revamp their chip to be even more powerfull when it does come out.

Nvidia decides to cancel the ultra which they were keeping in reserve to counter the ATI 520. This lets them (1)sell more GTs because the holdouts won't holdout and (2) keep the GT price higher because they won't have to drop it because a new higher end option is on the shelves and (3) Quickly and quietly move forward on the successor to the ultra which will battle better against the yet unreleased 520. /boggle


Am I close? :p

[Alodar]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25949

So, this is what this hardware dummy thinks.

ATI 520 is delayed long enough that they are going to revamp their chip to be even more powerfull when it does come out.

Nvidia decides to cancel the ultra which they were keeping in reserve to counter the ATI 520. This lets them (1)sell more GTs because the holdouts won't holdout and (2) keep the GT price higher because they won't have to drop it because a new higher end option is on the shelves and (3) Quickly and quietly move forward on the successor to the ultra which will battle better against the yet unreleased 520. /boggle


Am I close? :p

Pretty much, yeah. They 520 isn't going to get a chance to be revamped AGAIN, because they're doing it already to counter the 7800 architecture. NVidia is of course not sitting around with it's thumb up it's ass so to speak, and so the fact that ATI might have the 'performance crown' for a short while when the 520 comes out won't bother them too much. In fact, the 520 is going to have to pull a real leap for ATI, not just be another step like they normally do. Granted, they normally have good, solid strides, but I don't think that that will be enough this next time.

[Fozzik]

It is sort of a bummer if true...but considering Nvidia had never really announced the Ultra product in the first place, not announcing that it's cancelled doesn't mean a whole lot. ;)

The R520 mid-high end part (XL) will probably arrive mid-late this month, and the XT version will probably be early October. ATI has already designed the follow-up part for this generation, it's codenamed R580, and supposedly will be somewhat different than the R520 in more than just clock speed.

ATI's R520 XT part will be in low volume, and may be hard to get and expensive. Nvidia is probably just not seeing much reason to compete with that part. My guess is that the R520 XL will be somewhat competitive with the 7800 GTX...the question is how much heat and power will the higher clockspeed of ATI's parts require.

Another question is of course exactly what changes ATI has made to their architecture... the current rumors say it will still be 16 pipelines, and this is supported by the number of pipelines that the mid (RV530) and low (RV515) parts have. Nvidia probably has a pretty good idea of what the architecture is like, since ATI has been handing them out in ones and twos for a couple months now...no doubt Nvidia has at least one in-house and maybe the cancellation of their Ultra product is a bad omen for the overall performance and feature set of the R520.

Hopefully all the guesswork will be over in another few weeks.