If rumors are to be believed, then the real reason behind AMD Cayman 6970/6950 delay is this:
If you unmount the cooler of a reference card, you could notice an obvious abrasion over the corner of the inner 6/8-pin power
connector socket. No, it ain’t by chance you’ve got a bad pick. It’s common among all the popular review sites.Yes, it’s because if you don’t polish that corner, you wouldn’t be able to mount and install that cooler! Thus AMD spent a delay
to fix that – they polish every card by hand, therefore each card is guaranteed to be a hand-crafted unique version!
Anandtech
So here you have it, a Rolls Royce of video cards.