X1900 reference samples?
The Inquirer reports that ATI has begun shipping reference R580 (possibly called x1900) boards to its vendor partners and has started getting the marketing wheel rolling in preparation for CES. Of particular interest is the reference of an X1900 All-In-Wonder sku which sounds as if it could possibly be ready at teh same time the "standard" X1900 boards ship. With the rising cost of flagship graphics cards over the last year, I hate to imagine what that board would cost. However, with all the bells and whistles with flagship performance on top of it all it might be worth whatever teh asking price will be.
ATI's recently shipped reference boards with R580 chip to its partners and is organising road-tours showing of the new product as we write these lines. The PCB looks almost identically to "old" R520 boards, with same cooling solutions and so on. Since the R580 chip is pin-compatible with R520, there was very small number of modifications ATi needed to do. As far as the product line-up goes, you can expect X1900XL, X1900XT and All-in-Wonder X1900XL boards.
While the first two can get their counterparts from Nvidia, the All-in-Wonder X1900 is going to be "zero competition board"; since nV still has no high-end products featuring TV tuners... and digital DVB-T with GeForce sounds like a pipe-dream.
