Does that sound familiar? Yes, that is what Intel did; they pushed the Pentium 4 as far as it could go in terms of clock speed, finally admitting defeat at 3.8GHz. As a result, AMD is now the favourite for clued up gamers looking for a gaming processor. This could be the situation ATI find themselves in if they don’t get something sorted quickly. I don’t know how much they can push the R520, but if manufacturing problems are anything to go by they could be in for a bumpy ride.



Yes, that’s right, manufacturing problems. Ever since I heard about R520 I have heard the same story, ATI can’t get the yield up. Yield is the amount of usable cores they can get from one slab of silicon, and ATI have been having major problems getting enough out from day one. This could be the reason they have stuck with 16 pipelines, there could have been too many faults with the cores, and lowering the amount of working pipelines required would solve some yield problems.

As for the actual performance, most people expect it will be around 7800GTX performance. It makes sense, but what happens if NVIDIA release an even faster 7800? Could ATI pump up the clock speed even more? Well, ATI are now hoping to bring another chip, the R580 into play as soon as possible. Not happy with the R520, the R580 should have more pipelines to outmatch the 7800. Details are scarce about this part though, probably until R520 is released.

So, in conclusion, don’t expect any miracles if you are an ATI fan. The R520 may turn out to be around 7800 performance levels, but if NVIDIA get faster chances are ATI won’t. Also, if ATI are having yield problems, don’t expect to see as many of these in shops as you would with 7800 cards.


Article by Richard Powell.