WE'VE BEEN WAITING quite a while for ATI's new generation of graphics chips. It's no secret that the R500-series GPUs are arriving later than expected, and fans of the company have nervously speculated about the cause of the delay. ATI chose to build its new series of graphics chips using 90nm process technology, and going with new process tech has always been risky. Some folks fretted that ATI may have run into the same sort of problems at 90nm that made Intel's Pentium 4 "Prescott" processors famously hot, power hungry, and unable to hit their projected clock speeds. In a related vein, others fussed over rumors that ATI's new high-end R520 architecture was "only" 16 pipes wide, compounding the process technology risk..



Link: The Tech Report