ATI has denied claims that it has scaled back or postponed its plan to adopt an 80nm chip fabrication process this year. Industry insiders had alleged two GPUs due to ship in Q3 will now be fabbed at 90nm and not the smaller node as planned.

Both claim and counterclaim was reported by DigiTimes yesterday. The moles maintain the RV560, RV570, RV505 and RV535 - all yet to be officially announced by ATI - were scheduled to be fabbed at 80nm but now only the RV505 and RV535 will be produced using that process.

That said, it's not uncommon for companies like ATI and Nvidia to introduce new processes with low-end chips - the RV505 and RV535 are described as "entry level" - while continuing to produce higher-end, higher margin parts using more mature processes.

The sources claim ATI's X1900 GPUs, launched last month, were planned to be 80nm parts. To blame, they say, are the yields foundry TSMC has experienced at 80nm. TSMC declined to comment on the allegations.

ATI re-iterated its plan to migrate to 65nm in 2007. ®