Radeon 4850 launch delayed to 26 June

[AthlonXP1800]

Taipei (Taiwan) – In the latest round of rumors from Computex 2008, we learned that AMD managed to upset the majority of its partners by delaying the Radeon 4850 512MB GDDR3, code-named Makedon.

AMD has decided not to launch its new graphics cards on June 18 as originally planned. Instead, ATI will be briefing members of the press around this date and launch the product in the following week. Since Nvidia is going to launch non-competing parts on June 17, it sounds like a reasonable decision not t o launch its new GPUs just one day later.

However, add-in-board companies have the cards available right now or can receive them within 24 hours of time. Given the current market climate, some companies believe AMD should have launched the cards at Computex.

We were told that there are “tens of thousands of boards just sitting there” and AMD’s partners are not too thrilled.

However, it looks like that AMD is using the delay to change its launch strategy. The GDDR5 equipped 4870 will now launch at the same time as the 4850 512MB GDDR3, but it is unclear whether there are enough GDDR5 chips to enable AMD to ship the 4870 in volume right off the bat.

Two updated dates for your calendar are: June 17: Nvidia launches GeForce GTX 200 series. June 23: AMD launches Radeon 4800 series.

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/37795/135/

AMD partners not happy with too few 4850 cards, maybe AMD have yield problem with 55nm?

[nrdstrm]

Did you read the article you posted? :o :p

AMD partners not happy with too few 4850 cards, maybe AMD have yield problem with 55nm?

They have PLENTY of 4850's

We were told that there are “tens of thousands of boards just sitting there” and AMD’s partners are not too thrilled.


It's the 4870's that there **may** be a shortage of...

The GDDR5 equipped 4870 will now launch at the same time as the 4850 512MB GDDR3, but it is unclear whether there are enough GDDR5 chips to enable AMD to ship the 4870 in volume right off the bat.

[AthlonXP1800]

No actually it the 4850 originally scheduled to launch on 18 June while 4870 still stick with original 26 June launch date. Tens of thousands is really not that alot, here are 31 AMD partners total worldwide so imagine if here are 60,000 4850 cards distributed through 31 AMD partners so how many each got? 1935 cards for each partner, that still not enough to make profit when sell at very low price.

[Ninja Prime]

No actually it the 4850 originally scheduled to launch on 18 June while 4870 still stick with original 26 June launch date. Tens of thousands is really not that alot, here are 31 AMD partners total worldwide so imagine if here are 60,000 4850 cards distributed through 31 AMD partners so how many each got? 1935 cards for each partner, that still not enough to make profit when sell at very low price.

You really have no clue, do you?

[AthlonXP1800]

You really have no clue, do you?

You really have no clue, do you?

What does majority of 31 AMD partners mean?

[nrdstrm]

No actually it the 4850 originally scheduled to launch on 18 June while 4870 still stick with original 26 June launch date. Tens of thousands is really not that alot, here are 31 AMD partners total worldwide so imagine if here are 60,000 4850 cards distributed through 31 AMD partners so how many each got? 1935 cards for each partner, that still not enough to make profit when sell at very low price.

That's not quite how it works man. Out of the 31 AMD partners, lets say 5 are tier one partners (ie. Sapphire). Those 5 are going to get the lions share. So assuming there were 60,000 cards, I would guess (after working in the industry) that those 5 would get about 80% of the available cards. That would give the tier one partners around 48000 cards. That is quite a lot for launch...If you split it equally (which they won't) between those 5 partners, that would be 9600 cards per partner. Trust me when I say that is not common in recent times for a partner to get 9600 cards for LAUNCH DAY!

BTW, your still reading the story wrong. The 4850 has "10's of thousands of cards", not the 4870...There will likely be many less of those due to the reasons stated in the article you posted (DDR5).

[AthlonXP1800]

BTW, your still reading the story wrong. The 4850 has "10's of thousands of cards", not the 4870

That is what I am trying to say.

[Lfctony]

No, you're talking about yield problems with the 48xx, when clearly, there aren't any... Partners are yelling because they'll have so many cards sitting around doing nothing. The problem lies with the GDDR5 chips, but that doesn't affect the 4850 production. Also, the cards are delayed to June 23...

[mojoman0]

can't we just close this thread? That article was horrible.

[AthlonXP1800]

No, you're talking about yield problems with the 48xx, when clearly, there aren't any... Partners are yelling because they'll have so many cards sitting around doing nothing. The problem lies with the GDDR5 chips, but that doesn't affect the 4850 production. Also, the cards are delayed to June 23...

Well the GDDR5 chips from Samsung, Hynix and Qimonda had been in mass production for months and the chips already been shipped to ATI a few months ago as well as the Radeon 4800 series been in mass production since April.

I think maybe here is a problem with 55nm yield where ATI cant binned higher clock chips. If the problem lies with the GDDR5 chips then we would already heard news about GDDR5 shortage so here were none.

Opps my bad got the 26 June launch date wrong. :p

[AthlonXP1800]

can't we just close this thread? That article was horrible.

I dont mind the mod to close this thread, yeah of course that article was so horrible. The article author Theo Valich been worked for The Inquirer. :) Look what I found? Surprise surprise Theo now working for Tomshardware and probably other sites.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-GeForce,5400.html

[Lfctony]

Well the GDDR5 chips from Samsung, Hynix and Qimonda had been in mass production for months and the chips already been shipped to ATI a few months ago as well as the Radeon 4800 series been in mass production since April.

I think maybe here is a problem with 55nm yield where ATI cant binned higher clock chips. If the problem lies with the GDDR5 chips then we would already heard news about GDDR5 shortage so here were none.

Opps my bad got the 26 June launch date wrong. :p

No, there's another problem... ATI supposedly can't get the 4GHz rated GDDR5 chips to work at 4Ghz. Thus, there were rumors that they might be forced to use 4.5Ghz chips. The cost would shoot through the roof. There aren't any yield problems, just 2 options: ship the 4870 with lower memory speed than intended initially (less than 4Ghz), or ship at intended speeds (4Ghz) and suffer the extra cost...

http://r800.blogspot.com/2008/05/ati-now-focuses-on-improving-rv770.html

If the video ram of 4870 can not be steady at 4GHz in time, ATI may use the alternate plan to use GDDR5 video ram from Qimonda at 4.5GHz default speed, apparently the plan B will increase the cost of 4870 tremendously.

[Viral]

Well the GDDR5 chips from Samsung, Hynix and Qimonda had been in mass production for months and the chips already been shipped to ATI a few months ago as well as the Radeon 4800 series been in mass production since April.

I think maybe here is a problem with 55nm yield where ATI cant binned higher clock chips. If the problem lies with the GDDR5 chips then we would already heard news about GDDR5 shortage so here were none.

Opps my bad got the 26 June launch date wrong. :p

Seriously, all the article states is that there are problems supplying the GDDR-5 for the 4870 and as such, it is not in big supply. How exactly do you get yield problems with the actual chips from that? Clearly its not the chip causing the supply issues as there are PLENTY of 4850's.

If ATI have had the 4850 in decent supply for a few weeks, IMO they should've launched it and paper launched the 4870 like they did 4 years ago with the X800Pro and X800XT-PE. Lots of people snapped up the X800Pro with the intention of replacing it in a few months just to have something next gen. Granted, 4850 won't be a jump over the last gen like X800Pro was, but it's still better than having good cards sitting around doing nothing.

[AthlonXP1800]

Hmmm according to Fudzilla here are not 10,000s 4850s shipped to some partners but 1,000s.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7742&Itemid=1

So it probably around 15,000 4850s, look like ATI have problems with both 55nm and 4GHz DDR5 yield.

Both 4800 and GT200 series will be in shortage supply. Oh crap! :(

[Lfctony]

Hmmm according to Fudzilla here are not 10,000s 4850s shipped to some partners but 1,000s.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7742&Itemid=1

So it probably around 15,000 4850s, look like ATI have problems with both 55nm and 4GHz DDR5 yield.

Both 4800 and GT200 series will be in shortage supply. Oh crap! :(

Dude, wrong AGAIN. Don't jump to conclusions. He says "Thousands, if not tens of thousands" That means a lot of ****ing cards, allright? It could be anywhere up to 100000 cards! Then it would be hundreds of thousands...

[Viral]

It was pretty obviously a positive article. When it sounds positive and they say "thousands, or even tens of thousands" you should be assuming whatever the exact number is, it's a decent amount and enough to satisfy the expected initial demand. I just don't know how you're managing to put a negative tint on every ATI related article out there.

[slick]

Because it's Athlon. He's been at it for quite literally years and can't seem to give it up. You'd think he'd either get bored or grow up, but neither has yet seemed to happen.

[AthlonXP1800]

:lol: Radeon 4850 and 4870 23 June launch delayed again.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7769&Itemid=1

It now push back to 25 June or maybe later if it delay again. If CJ from Beyond3D's inside information is correct that both 4800 and GT200 have supply problem, we not going to have a happy summer.

[Medion]

Guys, lay off the arguing with Athlon. The guy graduated tops of his special ed class. They gave him the golden helmet.

[AthlonXP1800]

AMD informed their board partners that they finalised 4850 and 4870 launch details, confirmed it will launch on 25 June. 4850 clock speed will be 625MHz but 4870 clock speed will be 750MHz instead of 850MHz.

http://www.vr-zone.com/articles/RV770_Launch_On_25th_June%2C_Clocks_Finalized/5857.html

AMD having problem with 55nm RV770XT yield reached 850MHz.

[Medion]

AMD informed their board partners that they finalised 4850 and 4870 launch details, confirmed it will launch on 25 June. 4850 clock speed will be 625MHz but 4870 clock speed will be 750MHz instead of 850MHz.

http://www.vr-zone.com/articles/RV770_Launch_On_25th_June%2C_Clocks_Finalized/5857.html

AMD having problem with 55nm RV770XT yield reached 850MHz.

The article you linked states nothing about yield issues, nor an original spec of 850mhz. You're making things up to support your misread assumption.

You're special all right...

[Xion X2]

How does a guy with a name like "Athlon" turn out to be an anti-ATIAMD homer?

[Ninja Prime]

How does a guy with a name like "Athlon" turn out to be an anti-ATIAMD homer?

Interesting isn't it? I think he made the genius decision to name himself after his proc back in the day when he had an 1800+, in the hopes that he'd never upgrade?

[AthlonXP1800]

The article you linked states nothing about yield issues, nor an original spec of 850mhz. You're making things up to support your misread assumption.

Here is original 4870 spec from an official AMD document mentioned 850MHz core and 3870MHz GDDR5 with original launch date in early May. The document published around the same time 4800 series went in full production in April and it will be 2 months since when it launch on 25 June.

http://www.hardware-infos.com/news.php?news=2008

So AMD supposed to launched 4800 series in early May few weeks after it went in production, I think they kept us in the dark same thing ATI did with R580 fiasco. ATI never disclosed about the yield rates.

[mullet]

I have to give him that, he takes a licking and keeps on ticking. We need a mod to change his name to Timex. :p