wow amd does somthing right! R600 has always been ready?

I'm not whether or not to flame you yet, so hold up till i figure it out

As for the card, i laugh at the sound card part. They probably put it in to fill in the space left on the massive pcb we saw in the pics.

On a serious note, R600 will probably pwn all 8)

uhh, this news has been out for a few days, the r600 has been done for a while, that was confirmed a few days ago, and the built in sound card is to utilize the hdmi on it more to kinda shove some random features in nvidia's face

1. This is not CPU
2. lol at them for holding back when it's already "ready".

Man, still that stalker is hunting you down and voting a good instead of best every single post, what's with that?

I believe it's ready when I see third party benchmarks and can buy it on Newegg - untill then....meh....

well with all the 680i sound issues i though its nice to have a back up with the sound.

i just about spend my r600 money a oc 8800gts 640 - now i am confused again. com on amd give us details show off some cards

I for one think it's a very good idea. I won't use it on my gaming PC, but the R6xx just jumped into the lead for building a HTPC.

I agree with others that on a gaming pc I don't see the benefit but for an HTPC it is a real benefit. Heck if they want to own the HTPC market build this card as an AIW with their new OCUR cable card support.

I would have to disagree here, but running the sound through hdmi with the video, you would get less interferance and would have hd sound without the need of a very high end sound card, so ati is actually saving some people a pretty nice sized pocket of pennies for new gaming rigs

All MOBO's already have onboard sound and most enthusiast boards have very good onboard sound yet most gamers still buy dedicated audio cards. Do you really think ATI's sound would be better or more worth using than say the sound on the Stryker Extreme. I agree that having only one cable and loading only one driver will be convenient but since when do people who are seeking ultimate performance take the easy way out. The biggest use of this integrated sound will be in the low to mid end and I'm not even really sure about HTPC's because those like me with a high end Home Theater would never rely on sound from an integrated solution.

So how do you propose we connect our HDMI cable to our speakers and our monitor?

The only real benefit here is like someone said above that it would be in a HTPC, but if ATi does what ATi we all know you aren't going to find a HDMI connection with onboard sound on a midrange gpu, it will of course be on there high end most likely. They would be smart to implement on there AIW but otherwise this plan is a total wash.

You are all getting away from onboard sound from your motherboard, there is not a very good chance that they will be able to put much better sound on there, look at the damn size of the 8800GTX, where are you supposed to put silicon on there for sound.

The best solution if they wanted to use HDMI even tho HDMI is not backed by nvidia or ATi, rather they back displayport, would be to connect the soundcard to the graphics card via some type of bridge comparable to an SLi bridge.

Regardless of whether ATi does this or not there would be no way for any current gamer to use the HDMI cable, cause they would have to either convert to a DVI or they would have no way of connecting it to the speakers. The more i think about it the more this idea seems to lose any momentum for me.

Furthermore, an HDMI cable carries video as well as sound so does that mean you are planning to use your integrated monitor speakers to play HD-audio if not you will need to hook up your surround speakers somewhere so exactly which which monitors have outputs for multi-channel surround. I like AMD-ATI, they have tried to innovate and push the boundries over the years but adding sound will only increase the heat generated by an already too hot component, and increase the cost for a feature that many won't even use

Edit:

IcY18 beat me to it.

AMD wants to demo R600 with Barcelona, other wise many more upgraders will go C2D.

I think there's an answer to that, nobody but fools. EIther this article is a crock full of garbage or AMD/ATI has to be trying out for a part as the biggest bunch of idiots that ever existed in the business world.

They said "there is no problem with the silicon. We are demonstrating it. We can ship it today". Yeah right, and they also think there's a good bridge in Brooklyn for us to buy. They are demonstrating it; to whom, where? I haven't read of one demonstartion, I haven't read one set of benchmarks from any third party reviewer. All I hear is their words of how great a card this will be. They could ship it today? Then why don't they ship it? If it was really ready to be shipped, why would they keep back a potential money maker, a product that could give them some positive cash flow which would then help their stock? If they have the card and hold onto it long enough, Nvidia will just get richer and when the R600 is finally released, Nvidia's new cards will leave it in the dust.

I think this story is nothing more then a continuation of the BS that AMD has been handing out for a months, and they hope we're suckers enough to believe it. Unless they have absolutely insane people in their executive staff, these cards either have undisclosed problems or AMD/ATI just doesn't have enough to ship. They are anything but ready. Until the cards show up in the stores and Tom's, etc are publishing benchmarks, I don't believe it at all.

Well, if you're happy with it, then just stick with that, but for someone like me that just has the free sound card that came with their mobo (asus gives you a sound card on their top five models, commando, crosshair-mine-650i plus, and both 680is instead of integrated), then getting one free with the gfx card seems like a nice thing to have

I've seen a person buy a pentium d 915 in order to get a quadro plex for gaming, he was the laughing stock of the week because he had just put down something like $17k for something that is demolished by my x2 4000 90nm 2gb ram and a 6600gt 8O Newbs that don't have the money will do that, though it's smarter to get a nice cpu with 2gb ram and a 7600gt to start with then upgrade the gfx down the road, much easier than having to buy a new mobo for a new processor instead

Wall, also ati has a lot of people holding their money, which wouldn't be good for the industry if there was a greater percentage of enthusiasts out there, so nvidia is also loosing some sales just because some people are playing it out safe and waiting for some benchmarks

I think the thing that is really hurting amd/ati is because of all their delays, they keep loosing more big time companies to intel and nvidia, and that is where the majority of their losses are coming from, as amd makes the majority of it's money from it's opteron processors, which is exactly why it spends the most time and effort perfecting them, and ati makes a lot of their money from big time companies seeling top end computers like alienware or dell's xps line, as they know they can't compete really in integrated gfx as they aren't a big enough company to fill the demand for integrated gfx on cheap dells and such

ROFLMAO

"we cant beat Intel or Nvidia so we'll JUST ADD INTEGRATED SOUND" :lol: :lol:

I would have to disagree here, but running the sound through hdmi with the video, you would get less interferance and would have hd sound without the need of a very high end sound card, so ati is actually saving some people a pretty nice sized pocket of pennies for new gaming rigs
A higher end stand along PCI sound card is still better for now.

I'm just wondering if this is part of AMD's strategy to redescribe what a PC is...their new platform. Trying to do away with PCI perhaps? I mean honestly, why do we need PCI and PCI-E if you can combine and minimize? It seems like a good idea to me as well. An "all in one" system that can do anything that is 1/3rd of the size of a full ATX computer? Who DOESN'T want that? Except maybe those guys (ahem) who get their ego's from what they own...

Maybe it would lower their costs, but I dont think so. This is a gimmick of the 5th order. Why in the world would you want integrated audio on your video card? What if something wonks out on the audio? Oops! Now you have NO audio and a worthless $500 video card! Congrats! Combining components for computers does two things: scales them down and makes them harder to fix. If your sound goes out and you have a HTPC, what are you going to do with your HDMI ($100+ cable)?
Let's see:
$500 video/sound card
$100+ HDMI cable
$300-$13000 HDMI receiver(or a TV, take your pick)

All this added expense for what? Just so that when my audio goes tits-up, that I have to buy a WHOLE NEW VIDEO CARD just to make my HDMI work? That's GENIUS!!!!!
Just sell me a $400 video card and a $100 audio card. If either of them go out, it's only the one component. There's not a performance gain to be seen from this as long as you are comparing dedicated audio processors and not shared-load sound like on the integrated chipsets.
Anyway, why do you want your computer smaller? Everyone knows that the size of your case is the same size as your ****... oh, sorry, that's not true .

The thing you have to remember is while enthusiasts know the G80 currently rules, that is still a small part of the market. It's more of a bragging rights/reputation thing that hurts them more than the financial sales loss to G80. And to be honest, possibly a good 50% of that elite small percentage of card owners, will dump their G80 and grab a R600 if it greatly outperfoms their G80, the same way they dropped their X1900XTX's and grabed an 8800GTX. Sure, ATI lost some high end customers to NV not having G80 competition. But they also still have a chance of grabbing many of them back again if they have a stellar product to offer. I think while possible they could launch R600, they can't launch a complete line and wouldn't have sufficeint stock to fill demand. So while they possibly could launch, it would be a bad move and they know it.

While reading through this, a thought crossed my mind that might have been mentioned elsewhere and I missed it. I wonder if the reason that AMD has help off with the R600 is because they are developing a new motherboard to go with the R600, perhaps to implement Crossfire better, and their real plan is to introduce the new motherboard and the R600 together for better sales/performance. It could make a nice package that way.

No, projectors don't have surround speakers, but you would hook up the speakers through the projector, which is possible on some, or just have a midway point to connect all the parts

But I'm just wondering, who would be stupid enough to buy the fastest/second fastest and one of the most expensive gfx cards on the market for a home theater build 8O Most people use 7600gts at best because that's all they need, or the cheapest hdcp enabled card they can find

Dont know... good question. AMD is just throwing out grenades and hoping one of them lands near the right spot.
I think that with more people pushing 1080p, that they might start looking at bleeding-edge graphics from their HTPC's, but most of them dont game with these things, they surf the web on their 60" plasma or something. I know people like this and they dont use their HTPC for anything other than what a PC is known for: email, surfing the internet, watching pixelated movies on a huge screen, etc. When it's time to game, they bring out the PS3 or the 360 and game in what they call "HD" not knowing that the resolutions on my monitor are twice that of theirs.
Makes me cringe to think that people actually pay $4000 for a media center PC just to have it be a $1500 off-the-shelf model with a nice case and what's-barely-enough parts...

Yeah, I remember that, though too this day I wonder if it was just someone making a strange joke about how much money could be spent for so little value.

There are some things I would never brag about, especially when they point out how I did something particularly foolish.