The gang at HKEPC report that ATI's latest roadmaps to motherboard vendors are now missing all next generation chipsets for the Intel platform and have the RC610 chipset as the last product in development. This means that RD700, RS700 and RC710 are no longer being developed with those teams likely now focusing their attention on the AMD platform. Despite several claims assuring the industry there would be no conflict on the Intel platform, motherboard vendors have painful memories of the NVIDIA/ULI acquisition where they were left without any supply of Southbridge chips. As a result, the industry trend seems to have vendors creating fewer ATI/Intel based motherboard sku's in an attempt to avoid any allocation issues. Once ATI's license to manufacture chipsets for the Intel platform expires or the FSB cap of 1066MHz is exceeded, we will have concrete confirmation that ATI's time on the Intel platform is up as it is highly unlikely Intel would ever renew the agreement.
On a contrary, chipset for AMD platform is now what ATI focusing on. There are upcoming RS690 (AVIVO + HDMI) and RC690C (AVIVO) in Oct 2006, RD790 with CrossFire enabled in Q2 2007, and RS790 DirectX 10 supported IGP in Q3 2007.
In addition, there is new ATI IGP product appears in the latest roadmap. Codenamed SC780, it's a unified version of RS690 and SB600, using 65nm manufacturing process. SC780 is designed for entry level. It will be releasing in Q3 2007, yet it has been a year late than NVIDIA MCP61 family."
Marco Chiappetta
Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com
