jmke

Close partner of ATI said ATI will release a brand new video card to replace X1800XT. X1800 will be a half-year-old king. The card that will be replacing X1800XT is the famous R580. Its internal name is now X1900. It is Pin-to-Pin competiable with the X1800XT PCB. The engineering sample uses the identical cooling as the X1800XT. Its competitor will be nVidia Geforce G71, a new gen 90nm core. Seems like the Q1 of next year will be an interesting year as the war btw ATI & nVidia heats up.

Futhermore, a cheaper version of ATI Radeon X1300, RV505, will also be released Q1 of 2006 to fight against nVidia G72. RV505 is about the same as RV515, the only difference would be the 80nm process which makes it even cheaper. Same idea as RV380 vs RV370 of last gen.

The close partner of ATI also stated that graphics cards will break the record price. The highest card now is US$649, quite a lot higher than last year's 499. However, graphics card in 2007 will be as expensive as a CPU (~US$1000)

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1028654300
src: W2S

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