14 DAY TRIAL // Even though NVIDIA launched the GeForce GTX 570 just a short time ago, AMD is also working on its latest HD 6000 cards, only it seems that the two HD 6900 still need a week or so to get ready.
Not too long ago, a leak revealed that the GeForce GTX 570 is quite a bit more powerful than not just the GTX 470, which it will replace, but than the GTX 480 as well (reviewers should confirm or deny this soon enough).
As such, any video card that Advanced Micro Devices plans to bring out for the same market segment will have to at least come close to matching that performance.
Some previous rumors said that AMD would bring out the Radeon HD 6970 and 6950 tomorrow, December 8, 2010.
Said rumors were not exactly confirmed, of course, and it seems that a more recent one, from Fudzilla, says the launch will, in fact, happen later.
Basically, the announcement will be made on December 15, which means that end-users will still have to wait for about a week or so.
While unfortunate, this so-called delay is not altogether unexpected, considering the history of the GPU market and all unexpected factors that may appear.
A company may be faced with lower yields or driver issues, or with shortage of components or many other problems.
In this case, the report says that the driver is the main culprit behind this decision, and this can be interpreted in more than one ways.
While the software may just not be complete, it is also possible that NVIDIA's GTX 580 is better than AMD expected it to turn out.
As such, they likely hope to refine the driver while hoping that end-users will hold out on buying NVIDIA's new cards until they can compare it to the HD 6970. And since no performance and pricing details exist, this means they will have to wait for the actual launch.