ATI R600 has 64 real pipes
 

We previously wrote that the chip will have sixty four Shader units but we never realised at the time that the design is actually built around a full sixty four physical pipes. That is what various high-ranking sources are telling us. In this scenario, unless Nvidia also managed to triple its pipeline count in the upcoming G80, this chip could lose out big time when put against a 64-pipeline ATI offering. The outcome is still uncertain as we don’t know enough about the G80 to make the final conclusion.