The much-delayed R600 GPUs has been a subject of hot debate for a long while now, with broken promises all over the place. One can hardly blame AMD, who is still shuffling with the transition of ATI over to themselves. According to them, however, R600 could be released today if they were so inclined. That won't happen, of course, but they do mention they intend to release in the second quarter of this year - which has already begun. They say the problems were not with manufacturing, but rather with compatibility:
"The R600 will be out in the second quarter. The reason we decided to delay the launch was that we wanted to have a complete DX10-enabled solutions top-to-bottom. A lot of people wrote that the reason it is delayed is because of a problem with the silicon, but there is no problem with the silicon. We are demonstrating it. We can ship it today. "
Somehow, my faith isn't as strong as it might have been six months ago. While I would very much like to see some competition for the 8800 series which is currently obliterating all other offerings, the R600 has seen very little light. On top of that, Nvidia is not resting on their successes and is probably preparing something to steal AMD's thunder when R600 finally does go live. The power-hungry beast had better live up to expectations or AMD will be in some serious hot water, losing on both the CPU and GPU fronts. Here's to hoping.