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AMD Next-Gen Graphics May Slip To End of 2013
MojoKid writes "AMD has yet to make an official statement on this topic, but several unofficial remarks and leaks point in the same direction. Contrary to rumor, there won't be a new GCN 2.0 GPU out this spring to head up the Radeon HD 8000 family. This breaks with a pattern AMD has followed for nearly six years. AMD recently refreshed its mobile product lines with HD 8000M hardware, replacing some old 40nm parts with new 28nm GPUs based on GCN (Graphics Core Next). In desktop, it's a different story. AMD is already shipping 'Radeon HD 8000' cards to OEMs, but these cards are based on HD 7000 cores with new model numbers. RAM, TDP, core counts, and architectural features are all identical to the HD 7000 lineup. GPU rebadges are nothing new, but this is the first time in at least six years that AMD has rebadged the top end of a product line. Obviously any delay in a cutthroat market against Nvidia is a non-optimal situation, but consider the problem from AMD's point of view. We know AMD built the GPU inside Wii U. It's also widely rumored to have designed the CPU and GPU for the Xbox Durango and possibly both of those components for the PS4 as well. It's possible, if not likely, that the company has opted to focus on the technologies most vital to its survival over the next 12 months."
Maybe the Free GNU/Linux drivers will be ready at launch after all.
AMD announced today that they would have a message clarifying this. Apparently these rumors are not all true.
All generalizations are false, including this one. Mark Twain
What do you mean, "never"? It's already usable for 2d. 3d will probably take a while longer, but it's still a very recent card by open driver development standards. Support will probably only get better with time, and I'm hoping that talk on Phoronix forums about synching the development of open drivers with Catalyst for the 8xxx or 9xxx cards will bring us better support.
While I agree with you that right now Intel is the only way to go if you're dead set on using open drivers, making future purchase plans based on one bad experience will probably only cripple your choice in the future. Remeber that Sandy Bridge failed to deliver drivers in a timely manner too (it took a couple of months, IIRC, for Linux support - if I got mad back then and decided I would never use Intel graphics again, I'd either have to swallow my unlightened words or follow them up with suboptimal behavior).
Typically the supplies dry up pretty quick during a launch. By selling in the spring, they can go through that initial shortage while they ramp up production and then not miss out on sales during the holiday season.
I live in Austin. The only thing that AMD is know for around here is layoffs. I'm surprised they have any engineers left to work on their products. Why anyone would work for them is a mystery to me.
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