Picture of R600 based Radeon X2800 Spotted

I would think it's safe to assume the OEM models are earlier/less advanced or simply lower quality chips, whatever the case it consumes higher voltages hence the bigger cooler design. AMD has gone through 15 revisions of it. The OEM and Retail XTX cards have identical specs (From what I know) but a 30watt difference in power draw, so the power has to be going somewhere, which makes sense with the larger fan on it to match. What better way to unload lower quality parts and turn otherwise unusable chips into profit? It is interesting that the R600XT is rated for the same 240watt power as the R600XTX Retail version, I don't think the memory difference are enough to explain it?

I might be wrong, but my understanding is this will be the biggest single "core" chip yet, give or take a few Intel parts. The bigger/more complex the core the lower the yields and higher the defect rate, especially since this is AMD/IBM/ATI, not Intel. ATI has to combat this problem somehow, I bet the OEM edition is it.

I think it is more that the card can be secured in the case than to make it cheaper.

maybe OEM uses cheaper components which cause the size to go up, but since it's OEM, cases will fit the card

retail has to fit in more cases, so smaller

why the retail long one, will it be faster?

retail version won't be that big. This fits only special cases that still support the hold for very long cards (Voodoo 5500 style)

Good comparison!

Some interesting info in the below article as well... any idea which silicon versions these two cards might happen to be using?

http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-13...tx-and-xt.html

this is the OEM board I think, much like the OEM 7900GX2 which was mega huge too

Wow...Is it me or is that more like small-form-factor ATX board instead? =P

More pics of the R600 spotted here: http://overclockers.com/articles1411/