It looks like those who have been holding their breath in the hopes that the HD5890 or 5870X2 would be arriving soon, or that the current HD5xxx cards will drop in price may be waiting a bit longer.  The 40nm process at TMSC is having problems again, the same issue that pretty much killed the HD4770 at birth.  For a while it looked as if the problems had finally been solved but the news from DigiTimes is that yields are once again dropping. 

“Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has revealed it recently run into issues with its 40nm process technology impacting yields. Company chairman and CEO Morris Chang pledged the issue will be solved within the quarter.

TSMC said it has seen yield rates for its 40nm node drop to 40% due chamber matching issues. Main customers for TSMC’s 40nm processes are GPU vendors AMD, which recently launched its new 40nm-based Radeon 5870 series, and Nvidia, who is scheduled to launch its 40nm-based GT300 series of chips in December, according to previous reports. TSMC’s recent issues may impact the shipping schedules of the GPU vendors, market watchers commented.

During TSMC’s July 2009 investors conference, Chang revealed that yield rates for 40nm processes had improved to 60%, up from as low as 20-30% in the second quarter of 2009.”

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