AMD has reportedly delayed the launch of its much talked about Radeon HD 6000 series graphics processors from its expected date of October 12, to November, 2010. Whatever be the company's motive behind this delay, it creates room for NVIDIA to release new lower-mainstream and entry-level products. Perhaps AMD wants to make sure media-attention isn't split between HD 6000 series launch, and those of NVIDIA's GeForce 400 series spread throughout October.

These include the GeForce GT 430. Apart from new GPUs, NVIDIA is also said to be lowering the prices of some of its key SKUs, including the GeForce GTX 460 768 MB, and previous-generation GeForce GT 220. Meanwhile, it is increasingly looking like the first Radeon HD 6000 series SKUs will be based on the "Barts" die, these SKUs will succeed the Radeon HD 5700 series, and restore competitiveness against key NVIDIA SKUs.

Here is the slide we've been waiting for, the specs sheet of AMD's next-generation Radeon HD 6700 series GPUs, based on a new, radically redesigned core, codenamed "Barts". The XT variant denotes Radeon HD 6770, and Pro denotes HD 6750. AMD claims that the HD 6700 series will pack "Twice the Horsepower", over previous generation HD 5700 series. Compared to the "Juniper" die that went into making the Radeon HD 5700 series, Barts features twice the memory bandwidth thanks to its 256-bit wide high-speed memory interface, key components such as the SIMD arrays split into two blocks (like on Cypress), and we're now getting to learn that it uses a more efficient 4-D stream processor design. There are 1280 stream processors available to the HD 6770 (Barts XT), and 1120 stream processors to the HD 6750 (Barts Pro). Both SKUs use the full 256-bit memory bus width.

The most interesting specification here is the shader compute power. Barts XT churns out 2.3 TFLOP/s with 1280 stream processors, GPU clocked at 900 MHz, while the Radeon HD 5870 manages 2.72 TFLOP/s with 1600 stream processors, 850 MHz. So indeed the redesigned SIMD core is working its magic. Z/Stencil performance also shot up more than 100% over the Radeon HD 5700 series. Both the HD 6770 and HD 6750 will be equipped with 5 GT/s memory chips, at least on the reference-design cards, which are technically capable of running at 1250 MHz (5 GHz effective), though are clocked at 1050 MHz (4.20 GHz effective) on HD 6770, and 1000 MHz (4 GHz effective) on HD 6750. Although these design changes will inevitably result in a larger die compared to Juniper, it could still be smaller than Cypress, and hence, more energy-efficient.

Barely a week after pictures of AMD's "Barts" prototype surfaced, it wasn't long before a specifications sheet followed. The all-important slide from AMD's presentation to its add-in board partners made it to sections of the Chinese media. "Barts" is a successor to "Juniper", on which are based the Radeon HD 5750 and HD 5770. The specs sheet reveals that while indeed the GPU looks to be larger physically, there are other factors that make it big:

Memory Controller
Barts has a 256-bit wide memory interface, which significantly increases its pin-count, and package-size. The "Pro" and "XT" variants (which will go on to be HD 6x50 and HD 6x70, respectively), have memory clocked at 1000 MHz and 1200 MHz, respectively, so that's nearly 100% increase in memory bandwidth .

After recent photo exposés of the Cayman XT (Radeon HD 5870 successor) and Caicos (Radeon HD 5400 series successor), the third, juicy set of pictures exposes the XT variant of Barts reference board (Radeon HD 5770 successor), which will likely go on to become Radeon HD 6770.

While the specifications of the GPU are not known, what we can tell from the pictures is that the card is powered by two 6-pin power connectors, uses 4+1 phase digital PWM circuitry, and looks to have a 256-bit wide memory interface for a near 80~100% increase in memory bandwidth compared to the previous generation. Display outputs include two DVI, one HDMI, and two mini-DisplayPort. There is one CrossFire connector for 2-way CrossFire support. AMD will kickstart its next-generation Radeon graphics series launches later this year. Don't mind the puny looking GPU-cooler, AMD uses it on prototypes. The actual cooler's outline is drawn on the PCB.

Even as NVIDIA is taking its own sweet time to complete building its lineup of DirectX 11 compliant GPUs to target all market segments, AMD, which got a 6 months' headstart into releasing its lineup, which ended up targeting all market segments in a span of 5 months, is readying the Radeon HD 6000 series for launch well within this year. Just as the Radeon HD 5000 series GPU family was codenamed Evergreen with its members codenamed after evergreen trees (such as Cypress, Juniper, Redwood, Cedar), the Radeon HD 6000 is codenamed "Southern Islands", with its members codenamed after islands in the Caribbean (not islands in the Mediterranean).

"Bart" (after Saint Barthélemy island) is the codename for the performance/upper-mid segment GPU, a successor to the "Juniper" Radeon HD 5700 series. "Cayman" (after Cayman Islands) is the enthusiast GPU, successor to Cypress, and will go into making SKUs that succeed the Radeon HD 5800 series. Finally, the king of the hill is codenamed "Antilles" (after Antilles Islands), it is the dual-GPU SKU that makes use of two Cayman GPUs, successor to the Radeon HD 5970 "Hemlock". AMD partners will be in a position to sell graphics cards based on these by November 2010. The Radeon HD 6970 "Antilles" should be out by December 2010. The lower-half of the family will likely release next year.