During ATI"s 2006 third quarter financial results conference call this morning, ATI CEO Dave Orton revealed to analysts that despite demonstrating physics processing earlier this year, actual retail availability will not be available for another "9 to 12 months." Orton indicated that the technology was still undergoing testing and preparation. Interestingly, ATI indicated earlier that its physics technology was already on the market and needed only driver updates.
DailyTech has attempted to test some physics-enabled demos on a pair of Radeon X1900 XTX boards but drivers were not ready. Interestingly, ATI demonstrated physics on its RD600 chipset at Computex earlier this year but a year from now, ATI"s RD600 will more than likely be phased out. In fact, ATI said during the call that it was already developing and testing RD700, its next generation core logic.