[AMD Plans R600 Hard Launch in Q2]

AMD has delayed R600 launch from March to unconfirmed date in Q2 according to INQ and TechPowerup. The reason cited by AMD is that their R600 series is not where they want it to be yet, so they decided to move the launch to be able to deliver a competitive product. We will also see more than just GPU related stuff for the launch in Q2.

However, this decision is no surprise to us. Two weeks back, we have heard that ATi was considering pushing back the schedule for R600. It is mainly due to 2 reasons. AMD wants a hard launch like what NVIDIA has been doing so far so availability of the retail cards at launch is the key. Also AMD is still working on enhancing the performance of the drivers for R600 and we heard that the performance few weeks ago is just almost on par with GeForce 8800GTX and there is a potential to go another 20-30% more. Last week, AMD has decided on the marketing name for R600 as X2900 series so we can presume the performance is already higher than 8800GTX now.
http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=4688