14 DAY TRIAL // Although ATI's Radeon HD 2900XT video card comes as a semi-failure, NVIDIA cannot yet claim victory. AMD/ATI reminds us that the video drivers are still in their early days and we shouldn't forget about the upcoming R650 video cards, which are scheduled for Q3 this year.
ATI has already acknowledged that the R600 cards had to be rushed a bit in order to keep the DX10 generation launch as close as possible to the original plans. ATI also admits that the R600 graphics core has inefficient power requirements, thermal dissipation problems and a lack of texture power in the current 80 nm design. It's true, this might be the biggest chip up until now, but it makes sense when we take into consideration the included 512bit memory controller and 320 stream processor, which, quite frankly, seem a little redundant. However, the HD 2900XT still remains a good option for its price.
As far as the upcoming R650 is concerned, AMD/ATI assure us that it is on schedule and should be ready in Q3. In addition, the R650 graphics core will come in a 65nm package and this may prove to solve all the current problems with the 80nm core. As such, the R650 should be dissipating far less heat as the transistors and gates will get significantly smaller.
In the other corner, we have NVIDIA probably working on a R650 competitor. For now, there are some rumors that the 65nm G90 may be the counterpart of R650, but NIVIDA did not care to reveal details on this aspect.
Scrying into the future, we come across the R700 chip that is scheduled for the first half of 2008. The next-generation graphics core is said to be manufactured at 55 nm process. AMD/ATI claims that this new graphics chip will be using the Multi Core Unified Architecture. NVIDIA also mentioned something about their 1Q 2008 G100 graphics core, which seems to R700's rival as far as we can tell.
For the moment, we have yet to see how overclocked and water-cooled HD 2900XT models perform, hoping that ATI won't be delaying the R650 any longer.