ATI R520 First Look

ATI next generation R520 has been experiencing several delays in launch and in order to eager HKEPC readers, they specially brought back a ATI R520 REV02 engineering sample from Taiwan to let everyone to have a first look.

Comparing the ATI R520 Rev 2 card against the previous generation Radeon X850XT PE, we can observe that the PCB is longer at 229mm similar to GeForce 7800GTX. According to our source, the R520 core is design with 32 pipelines in mind but due to yield problem, not all the pipelines can be utilized. We expect R520 will have 16pp (pixel pipelines?), 24pp and 32pp versions using 90nm micron process technology from TSMC. Die size is at 16mm x 18mm and will support Shader Model 3.0 and Direct X 9.0c. According to our source, the R520XT sample will be clocked at 650Mhz core and support 512bit memory internal bus but only a 256bit controller.