AMD is just about complete with its top-to-bottom lineup of DirectX 11 compliant GPUs, whose series is codenamed Evergreen. Under this, the company has a GPU and its derivative targeted at almost every price point, from the entry-level Radeon HD 5450, to the fastest graphics card - Radeon HD 5970. With the onset of NVIDIA's first current-generation GPU codenamed Fermi, NVIDIA might attempt to reclaim the performance crown, and infuse competition in the higher-end segment. Currently there's no news of lower-end derivatives of Fermi.

Probably in response to Fermi, AMD is readying a new GPU architecture slated for release within this calendar year, in the second half. "We are ramping the ATI Radeon HD 5000 series now and look forward to refreshing the entire lineup in the second half of next year," said Dirk Meyer, chief executive officer of AMD, during quarterly conference call with financial analysts. His reference to "next year" was of next fiscal year (FY 2010), in context of him speaking at a quarterly conference call with financial analysts for FY 2009. The new series of GPUs is codenamed "Northern Islands". At this point in time, nothing much is known about the new GPU series. TSMC, AMD's main foundry partner for GPUs and motherboard chipsets, earlier claimed that it will be ready with a 28 nm production node by the end of this year. Whether the new GPU series makes use of the new fab technology is anybody's guess.