In a bit of a surprise, ATI is running working R520 silicon behind closed doors at their booth here at E3.
The R520, not the GPU in the upcoming Xbox 360 but rather the next-generation PC GPU, was running in an Intel PCIe system at ATI's booth.
The system was used to demonstrate Remedy's upcoming title called Alan Wake. The game itself was quite impressive, with an incredibly large and interactive environment, as well as some of the most impressive weather effects we'd ever seen.
Alan Wake is designed for the next-generation consoles (e.g. Xbox 360 and PS3), and thus wasn't running perfectly smoothly on the R520 but performance was quite respectable.
We aren't expecting to see the official R520 launch until later this year and not at Computex, based on information we've been hearing from Taiwan.
The fact that there is working R520 silicon at this point is important, as NVIDIA is sure to be talking quite a bit about their GF70 GPU at the show.
Unfortunately cameras weren't allowed in the Alan Wake demo room, so we couldn't capture the impressive demo or shots of the board running in the system.
We also received word that Prey, another title using the Doom 3 engine, may have also been running on R520 silicon.
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
woops, sorry about that guys - this was supposed to be listed as an Insider Story, not in the normal reviews section. I just got back from the show and hadn't had a chance to check it until now.For those asking why there is no Day 1 wrapup like we normally do, there's honestly not that much at all. This show was a lot smaller than I had expected, so there's not as much to talk about. Honestly, the Alan Wake demonstration was quite possibly the (software) highlight of the show - and I couldn't take any pictures of the demo.
There is more that I'm working on, but I can't talk about it until tomorrow :)
Take care,
Anand
Shadowmage - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
#9: Like #19 said, all games are optimized for XBox 360, so they had to do some conversion or some (gasp!) emulation in order for it to run smoothly. Remember how they use COMPLETELY different instruction sets! (PPC vs x86)michaelpatrick33 - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
#19 That's right as I said they should have run it on the X2 4800 (well I said AMD but the 4800+ is even better) and watch it fly, baby, fly ...Son of a N00b - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
it was also probably hiccupping becuase the game is optimized for the xbox and probably multithreaded and all that good stuff....love the bits! i for one was happy not to have to spend 15-20 min on one article to get up to date
michaelpatrick33 - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
The reason it is hiccupping is because they used Intel as the cpu (wink wink). What the bleep were they thinking gaming on an Intel platform?JarredWalton - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
As far as I'm aware (maybe Anand can say more), R520 isn't going to have any embedded RAM in the core. So, while the R520 will in some ways be faster than the R500, the R500 is probably still a bit ahead. Remember when the Xbox launched with NV2A while NV20 was in some ways faster (more bandwidth) but only had one vertex unit? That's basically what we're seeing again.Filibuster - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
I need a reason to complain, but so far I haven't seen one.overclockingoodness - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
#13: I so agree with that. Some people just need a reason to complain.Kalessian - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
How about, progressive articles!Then people with only enough battery power for one mouse click can just wait until the thing is completely finished to read it!
Alx - Wednesday, May 18, 2005 - link
#12 or maybe you could sit down once a day and read several articles one after another. Is clicking an extra link too hard for you?