ATI demos R520 GPU at E3

In a bit of a surprise, ATI is running working R520 silicon behind closed doors at their booth here at E3.

The R520, not the GPU in the upcoming Xbox 360 but rather the next-generation PC GPU, was running in an Intel PCIe system at ATI's booth.

The system was used to demonstrate Remedy's upcoming title called Alan Wake. The game itself was quite impressive, with an incredibly large and interactive environment, as well as some of the most impressive weather effects we'd ever seen.

Alan Wake is designed for the next-generation consoles (e.g. Xbox 360 and PS3), and thus wasn't running perfectly smoothly on the R520 but performance was quite respectable.

We aren't expecting to see the official R520 launch until later this year and not at Computex, based on information we've been hearing from Taiwan.

The fact that there is working R520 silicon at this point is important, as NVIDIA is sure to be talking quite a bit about their GF70 GPU at the show.

Unfortunately cameras weren't allowed in the Alan Wake demo room, so we couldn't capture the impressive demo or shots of the board running in the system.

We also received word that Prey, another title using the Doom 3 engine, may have also been running on R520 silicon.