If you are gonna use 16xSS your fillrate will end up much earlier than you expect it to be. Now if you want to play a game that relies heavily on branching or texturing you can't possibly expect it to run at high resolutions in these settings..
My previous example was just an analogy. All I'm saying is that until we know what algorithms the architecture uses it is pointless to debate about the necessity for such bandwidth.
A matter of semantics I suppose. How about this.... Either way AMD releasing their DX10 part several months after NVIDIA can't be helping them any.
It might if it is worth the wait. Imagine what would have happened if Nvidia
wouldn't have caught their transistor problem earlier. Of course, I will agree that a lot is riding on this launch. The most recent ATi releases have been less than noteworthy.
My use of the term "delay" is brought about by reading too many rumor sites I suppose. If you do a google search for R600 and delay you will find it is referenced quite often.
It is referenced often
because it finds all of the rumors you've mentioned. There hasn't been any official word yet that I know of.
We're just starting to see leaked pics and I assume benches are not far off either. I don't think ATi's R600 "delay" is hurting them anymore than AMD's "delay" is with its upcoming quad-cores.
Product cycles are just different sometimes, that's why I've had experience with several vendors; sometimes companies that normally do pretty good just don't have a product ready yet. When I got my X1900XTX, Nvidia didn't have anything that could answer to it. Same was the situation when I had my 7800GT's, nothing ATi had at the time could touch them.