14 DAY TRIAL // Despite the new R680 graphics chips looking like the much-hated R600 GPUs, they are quite different, both in performance and architecture. Rumor has it that AMD has chosen to stuff the R680 with two 55nm processor cores and avoid a larger and more power-consuming 80-nanometer monolith.
The company did not comment upon the fact that the 680 would be comprised of two RV670 GPU cores leaning on the same board although the company representatives said that "each core has the same specifications of an RV670 processor".
The dual-GPU platform has been heavily used by now by all the major graphics card manufacturers - ASUS, Gigabyte, Sapphire, HIS and PowerColor - to boost performance, but these practices were never associated to either Nvidia or ATI.
The RV670 graphics processor series has been launched in November, at the same time the Phenoms emerged, and are the first graphics processors built on the 55-nanometer technology. AMD does not intend to make a headline out of the card, and would rather target it to mid-range computers, but analysts hasted in heralding it as the company's product of the year.
There are also the RV620 and RV635 GPU cores, but the company was laconic in details and it is alleged that these cores are just a 55-nanometer replica of AMD's previous RV610 and RV630 graphics processors. AMD has scheduled the three new products to be unveiled early next month.
Nvidia have already announced that they will shift all the 90nm G80 graphics cores to the newer G92 derivatives until 2008, based on the success the series has had. The GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB, based on the G92 launched early this week has sold to death. The next move Nvidia is ready to make is to launch the DirectX 10.1 family of 65nm processors. These graphics processors will bring a fresh start for Nvidia, since they are completely different from the G80/G92 family.