14 DAY TRIAL // After several rumors arose suggesting that AMD's HD 6900 series would be delayed, it seems that the confirmation has finally arrived, the HD 6970 and HD 6950 board having been pushed back by a few weeks.
Though NVIDIA's launch of the GeForce GTX 580 could have been seen as an extra reason for AMD to hurry up with its high-end HD 6000 cards, it seems that users will have to wait for a while longer still.
The past week even saw the emergence of rumors which stated that Advanced Micro Devices would not have its cards out in time.
This went for not just the HD 6970 and HD 6950, but also for the dual-GPU HD 6990, the last of these supposedly delayed until Q1, 2011.
Now, it is stated that AMD's HD 6900 boards really have been pushed back, although by not as much as end-users may have been worried about.
Apparently, the Radeon HD 6950 and HD 6970 will come out during the week of December 13, which means that, with some proper planning and preparations, enthusiasts should still be able to get one in time for Christmas.
A previous report suggested that the reason behind the delay of the Radoen HD 6970 was the shortage of DrMOS chips.
The new report now implies that this is either not the case or not as serious an issue as previously implied.
What AMD supposedly said was that the Radeon HD 5800 line is still in strong demand and that the HD 5970 is still the leader in terms of raw performance (it is a dual-GPU DirectX 11 card).
Basically, AMD seems to want to exhaust existing HD 5000 inventories before launching the new boards.
Nevertheless, enthusiasts that were eager to get their hands on a new video controller may end up somewhat put out, considering that the product launch was supposed to take place on November 22.
Still, in the end, the real challenge for these consumers will be to somehow make it so that their new video board gets delivered in time for the holiday gift giving custom, since December 13 really only leaves time for last-minute orders.