AMD Says the R600 Delay Is Only a Marketing Scheme

AMD/ATI R600 GPU has been continuously delayed since fall 2006 and various rumors regarding the actual reasons for such disappointing acts have circulated all over the Internet. Most of these rumors presented technical problems with AMD/ATI's upcoming GPU, but AMD now steps up and denies such nonsensical information.

AMD claims that the company decided to postpone the launch of its highly anticipated R600 GPU, although it predicted that this move would cause annoyance, irritation and a certain amount of pondering on the hardcore fans' behalf. The puzzling strategic move led to all sorts of speculations, but it seems the delay wasn't caused by any technical bugs or manufacturing problems. According to AMD, the delayed launch is in concordance with the manufacturer's plans on launching the R6xx series graphics cards for all high-end to low-end segments at once. The statement came as a prompt answer to the question of why AMD decided to postpone R600, at a press event in San Francisco.

"We pushed out the launch of the R600 and people thought is must be a silicon or software problem…it's got to be a bug," said Dave Orton, president and chief executive of ATI. "In fact, our mainstream chips are in 65nm and are coming out extremely fast. Because of that configuration, we have an interesting opportunity to come to market with a broader range of products," he explained. "Instead of having them separate, we thought, let's line that up, so we delayed for several weeks."

AMD/ATI acknowledged that the R600 will be integrated in Radeon x2900 graphics cards and will be available in XTX (top of the line), XT, and XL variants. However, the audience still couldn't obtain a concise release date for the controversial GPU, being reassured that the R600 family and "Barcelona" quad-core CPU design are still on track for release during the first and second half of this year, respectively.