ATI plots to drop X700XT - replaces with cheaper, faster 12-pipe X800
 

Hexus has news that ATI may be ditching its X700 XT graphics card and replacing it with a 12-pipe version of the Radeon X800/X800 XL core. NVIDIA has been putting on the pressure this round and ATI is pulling out all of the stops to match or exceed them on every move:

Yep - the strategy seems to be to replace its X700XT - a competitor to NVIDIA's well received GeForce 6600GT - with a 12-pipeline RADEON X800 (possibly a RADEON X800 XL variant) featuring a 400MHz GPU core and 500MHz memory clocks, and ship it at an aggressive price-point, thereby enabling its AIB partners - such as Connect3D and GeCUBE - to supply to the channel at $249 or, probably, much less.

http://www.hexus.net/#X700