The Inquirer reports that ATI/AMD's R600 will win the "WHQL race" - both the hardware, as well as the necessary "WHQL certified" driver is due on CeBIT's eve - that is March 14th, to be exact. The drivers will support single as well as CrossFire setups for all ATI cards including the R600 generation, for both Windows XP and Vista. It is not certain if DX10 drivers for 64-bit operating systems will be out at the same time, but AMD has done its best so that the driver support will be second to none. AMD now has a levy over Nvidia measured in weeks - WHQL SLI driver for DirectX 10 or 64-bit Vista isn't expected until April - which is pretty sad. Nvidia has been shipping G80, or GeForce 8800 for almost six months now, and AMD will in the end ship more Vista WHQL certified dual-GPU systems than a six-month shipping product from their competitor. It is also important to note that the driver not only includes support for the Radeon X2900 series, but also low-end and mainstream parts under code-names RV610 and RV630, or Radeon X2200 and X2400.

During the last couple of weeks one could read a lot of so called 'news' about the upcoming graphics chip generation from AMD/ATI. What me really annoyed was the sheer ignorance that turned most of the rumors into facts right away. Without even thinking about it for a second many sites including ours presented the 'most final specifications' read out from the final silicon itself.
Please excuse us for acting like some wicked monkeys! Confronted with the best looking female counterpart one could imagine standing right beside a huge pile of bananas our brain goes crazy from time to time.
Anyway... the rumor I was talking about is more a feature the R600 definitely needs to survive the next years: HDMI. The implementation of this nifty little abbreviation is needed in order to play HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc in HD resolutions and to benefit from their full potential.
You want to read more? Then hop over to TheInquirer once more and read the whole story.

The R600 is set to become AMD/ATI's flagship product as they move into the DirectX 10 era, and the company has now announced the final details of the R600 GPU. Although there are still contradicting reports concerning the existence of a 12" OEM version of the card, it is now clear that the first X2x00 series cards will be the X2900 XTX and the X2900 XT, with the XTX version being released on 30th March and the XT about a month later. The R600 will feature 700 million transistors (the X1900 series cards had 384 million), a 512-bit memory interface and support for both GDDR3 and GDDR4. The retail version of the X2900XTX is expected to have 1GB of Samsung GDDR4 memory and a vapour chamber cooler, with the XT using GDDR3 memory. Both cards will have native CrossFire support without the need for an external bridging cable or a master card, and HDMI will feature on both versions of the X2900.

ATI has listed some of its first DirectX 10 offerings with specs and prices. Topping the list is the X2800XTX, with a 750 MHz core clock and a Gigabyte of GDDR4 running at 2.2 GHz on a 512 bit bus. Like Nvidia's new cards, it features 128 shaders and an 80nm architecture. The card will initially be going for 600 USD. A dual card christened the X2800XTX2 has also been announced, and is said to be running two 575MHz cores and a Gigabyte of GDDR4 at 2GHz. However, due to the nature of the design, the memory bus has been cut back to 256 bits, rather than 512, and it will only feature 96 shaders. A 512 Megabyte version of the single XTX running the same clocks will also be available for 550 USD.

The next card in line is the X2800XT. Unfortunately this card is slated to run GDDR3 and sports less impressive speeds. The core will run at 600 MHz, and the 512 MBs of memory at 1.8 GHz. It will also only run on a 256 bit bus, with 96 shaders. However, the card will sell for 500 USD, one hundred less than the flagship XTX.

Also unveiled was the X2800XL, listed at 400 USD with 512 Megabytes of GDDR3 and 96 shaders. And last but not least is the X2800GTO, selling for 300 USD and sporting 256MB of 256-bit GDDR3 with 96 shaders as well. All in all, its a formidable lineup, and hopefully one that will help to bring the price of DirectX 10 gameplay down to a reasonable level for most gamers.

"AMD's R600 mysteries revealed" Says TheINQ.net
First clarification TheINQ makes says that all cards will be 9' their will be no 12' variants. The picture of the card that made its rounds last week was not for a PC, what was it for? Well it was for Apple. According to TheINQ "At present, there is actually only one design for both OEM/SI and retail/AIBs, and that one is 8-pin/6-pin. You can use 6+6-pin configuration, but if you do not plug 8-pin/6-pin, the ATI Catalyst driver suite will forbid you to enter the "Overdrive Zone"." This means it is coming with a fully legal overclocking mode. Current clock estimates are 1 and 1.1GHz GDDR-4 memory in DDR mode (which translates to 2.0-2.2 GHz), the actual GPU clock will be set at 800Mhz.

AMD/ATI seems to be planning twelve different cards in the R600 series to be released during 2007. The chart above lists the different models, and although it is in Chinese/ Japanese (sorry, not sure what each looks like) the columns have been translated to mean (from left to right) GPU model name, GPU clock/ memory Clock, memory type, memory width, memory size, number of pipelines, manufacturing process and recommended price (presumably in US $). One interesting thing to note is the X2800XTX2, which could be a dual GPU card.

VR-Zone claims to have dug up a bit more information on AMD's R600, the company's flagship DirectX 10 card. When it launches there should be both XTX and XT versions of the card. The XTX, with 1GB GDDR4 memory, will have OEM and retail versions - the OEM (pictured above) will measure 12.4" and consume 270W of power, whilst the 9.5" retail version will use 240W. The XT version of the R600 will have 512MB of GDDR3 memory, being 9.5" long and using 240W of power. The XL version of the card is expected to be released at a later date.

We currently know that there are two R600 variants, one with GDDR3 and one with GDDR4. ATI confirmed that there will be two more variants, and gave details about one of them. The R600 "Uber Edition" will come with the highest clocked core and GDDR4 memory, as well as a liquid cooling system built in. There are two companies competing for the rights to build that liquid cooler, Asetek and Aavid. The LCS would be completely contained in a two (or maybe three) PCI slot solution, and would look like a normal video card (no stray LCS tubes, looks like normal VGA with heatsink and fan).

AMD (ATI) has been working on the quad-GPU problem ever since NVIDIA released their 7900GX2. AMD has officially solved it, with their wonder-GPU, the R600. The R600, with it's high clocks and GDDR4, will support quad-GPU CrossFire. Of course, the requirements for this will be substantial to say the least. Getting a motherboard with four PCI Express ports, and a power supply that will run four high-performance graphics cards like the R600, will cost a lot of money.

The R6x0 series will be paper-launched at CeBIT this year, though we will still have to wait until roughly March before seeing anything, so that we don't see any shortages. The latest details of the R6x0 family, according to our friends at VR-Zone:

• The R600 will be available as previously stated. It will come with 64 unified shaders (32 ROP's?), clocked at 814MHz. It should perform 2.5 to 8 times better than the current R580, depending on the application.
• The RV610 will be AMD's entry-level DirectX10 entry. It will ship in May. It will have an 8 layer PCB, digital PWM's, will be manufactured on a 65nm process, and support up to 256MB of 64 bit DDR2.
• The RV630 will be AMD's mid-level DirectX10 entry. It will ship with the RV610. It will be on a 65nm process, use "bi-directional PWM for GPU and uni-directional PWM for memories", and have up to 2x256MB (wonder why they don't call it 512MB) GDDR4.

Ruby is ATI/AMDs mascot when it comes to graphic cards. The vitual model has been refreshed for DirectX 10 and the R600. She seems to favor lipp gloss when run on the new generation of hardware.

DailyTech is reporting that a few more details on AMD/ATI's next graphics processor are available. Apparently there are three GPUs set to be launched over the coming months, the flagship R600 along with the R610 and R630. Previously the slower models have been given lower codenames by ATI, but the R610 is expected to be the mid-range card, whilst the R630 is likely to be the budget offering - both the R610 and R630 are due for June 2007. The R600 is believed to support unified shaders and both GDDR4 and GDDR3 memory. GDDR3 versions of the A12 revision of the card are being shown to select press, with the A13 expected to be the final revision of the chip. The most powerful card will be the R600 with GDDR4 memory, although clock speeds are still unknown.

The first AMD/ATI graphics chip is about to be delayed again because of serious problems. The last revision of the prototype chip - upon which a certain "pre-review" is based - suffers from problems which are serious enough to get another re-spin. This re-spin puts a hold on the launch for another couple of weeks, and now R600 is looking like an early March launch, probably the week before SnowBIT in Hangover. However, AMD/ATI is making severe changes to the whole line up and when the card is finally ready to roll, it promises to shock the 3D industry with performance. Just remember this is not official, it's a "somebody told me" story by theINQ.

AMD has a basic driver for it's R600 ready for action, though they definitely want to polish some things before releasing it. AMD knows that CrossFire and OpenGL performance are huge problems in Windows Vista, so AMD is working hard on tweaking these things. The R600 is confirmed to use an 80nm process, have a 512-bit memory controller, unified shader architecture, DX10 support, and enough performance to "make G80 run for its money." The launch is expected to take place in early February, though the launch date has been moved several times.

We reported just a few days ago that Level505.com had posted benchmarks of test samples of the R600. However, there is a good chance that those benchmarks were doctored. For one thing, if AMD had released test samples of it's next graphics card, the R600 series, there would have been a press release. The website had went online just before releasing those benchmarks, there were no pictures of the R600, and there was some odd benchmark data (like a strangely slow G80 in Oblivion). Basically, The entire thing just doesn't look official, and looks more like a marketing gimmick in favor of AMD's R600.

Newly created site Level 505 has leaked benchmarks and specifications of AMD's upcoming ATI R600 graphics processor expected in January 2007. Some of ATI's R600 preliminary specifications are: 64 4-Way SIMD Unified Shaders, 128 Shader Operations/Cycle, 512 bit Memory Controller, full 32 bit per chip connection, GDDR3 at 900 MHz clock speed (January)- total bandwidth 115 GB/s, GDDR4 at 1.1 GHz clock speed (March, revised edition)- total bandwidth 140 GB/s, consumer memory support 1024 MB, DX10 full compatibility with draft DX10.1 vendor-specific cap removal (unified programming), 230W TDP PCI-SIG compliant, CrossFire support. Click here to read all twelve pages of the article posted on Level 505.

Probably all of us are eagerly awaiting the R600 from ATI. The news floating on the internet is mixed - some report that the chip runs cool and doesn't draw a lot of power, while others tell us the contrary.

Hexus.net managed to find out some information about how ATI plans to cool the chip. Apparently, NanoFoil technology will be used. The technology works by having ultra-thin nanolayers of aluminium and nickel that can be controlled by heat, electricity or mechanical or optical stimulation, causing a reaction that gives off heat in a controlled fashion. The technology has been around since 2003, but hasn't yet been used to cool computer components.

While there were initially predictions about low GDDR4 yields and high costs, AMD has announced that they will only put GDDR4 memory in the R600 series. The R600 series will also be compatible with Stream computing (maybe even a second version).