R600 will come in 65nm

[Bastieeeh]

Everyone who could attend the HIS press dinner yesterday in the evening was surely disappointed afterwards. HIS had to inform the invited journalists that they won't see the R600 at HIS' booth - not even behind closed doors! - I guess GeCube won't show the chip neither, though they promised to do so! - ATI/AMD then let the press people know they will set up a special Tech-Day until the 31st of March and disclosed some new information. The R600 will be produced in 65nm by TSMC and not using the 80nm process because of difficulties (low yield and high leakage current). Daniel Wenzel from the German K-Hardware adds rumours have it AMD/ATI still got issues with the 512 bit memory subsystem. I nearly forgot to add the newly planned release date: Six weeks from now which reads begin of May.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[erocker]

Wow does this mean more delays? I am glad that they are using a smaller process though, and hopefully it will mean less power consumption. This card would be out already if AMD didn't purchase ATi.

 

[EastCoasthandle]

So there was problems with the R600 after all. Now it sounds to me they must abandon 80nm and use 65nm (if the article is true). I have one initial concern, when you go from 80nm to 65nm don't you have to rebuild the arch. from the ground up?
Now, the real question is how long will this delay the release of the video card now?

 

[Ketxxx]

I dont think there are any particular problems with the .080nm process. I've heard and seen great success stories with it and engineering sample X1950Pros, so I think the move to a smaller process is purely to compete on the power consumption stakes.

 

[magibeg]

As for the delays, we're probably experiencing them as a result of the 65nm. They have probably been working away on making them 65nm for a while.

 

[WarEagleAU]

Should result in lower power consumption and also a bit better ocing

 

[tkpenalty]

...fud.