some site that has the R520 but im not tooooo sure if it is u have to c it for urself http://www.hkepc.com/hwdb/r520firstlook.htm
It's possible at this point for big companies to get a test purpose card I suppose. Things seems to happen pretty quite in the FarEast for some reason. The pics look as legitimate so I don't doubt the have it. Couldnt' really see how it stacked up with the GTX though.
yea with only 16 pipelines i dont think it will stack up against the GTX, the R520 jus has high clock speeds and stuff like that
Yeah I don't see how 650Mhz could out perform a card with 8 extra pipes either but it's a pretty long wait to bring out a card that can't compete you know. Maybe ATI has more up it's sleeve than just clockspeed.
Again by the time they release the card, likely they would have improved the card to compete with the G70. Although clock speed is no longer the current paradigm for today's graphics cards at the moment we still don't know any major micro-architecturical details. So assuming that it will be inferior due to less pipelines may be jumping to conclusions.
I mainly say that because they already have a R580 more or less ready to go so they don't need to go all out with this one. They may just launch it with a lower price to compete with the GT or something. 8 pipelines does make a big difference though you must admit. This may well be an exception to the rule but no cards today can compete with eachother when their pipeline count varies any more than say 4, max.