14 DAY TRIAL // Not too long ago, it was revealed that AMD wasn't planning on reducing the prices of its ATI Radeon HD 5000 series graphics cards because it was already preparing its next generation of adapters. Known as the HD 6000 line, this new series is supposedly going to come out by October and will be the real competitors to whatever NVIDIA has in store for the market. Not much real information really surfaced on these adapters, however, and whatever rumors are circulating on the web aren't as promising as one may hope.
According to Fudzilla, the same website that was behind the initial HD 6000 report, the upcoming series won't exactly be a cause for rave and awe. The video cards will supposedly be just tweaked versions of the HD 5000 series. This is mostly because they will be based on the same manufacturing process as their predecessors, namely the 40nm technology. No clocks or other numbers are known for now, but there is a possibility that AMD will speed up the development in order to get them out by September and, thus, play the 'released in Q3' card.
Advanced Micro Devices managed to launch the HD 5000 series in late Q3 last year, and this gave them an advantage during the back to school period. Fudzilla thinks it possible that the developers are considering pulling off something similar with the upcoming 6000 series as well, though nothing is really confirmed. Either way, it is these boards that NVIDIA's own offerings will have to face during the fourth quarter.
A head-on battle between ATI and NVIDIA cards is always welcome news among consumers, since it means lower prices and, thus, higher end-users satisfaction. Advanced Micro Devices is, of course, working on a more advanced GPU technology, the 28nm. Boards based on it won't debut until sometime in 2011, however, so they aren't exactly high on market watchers' priority lists when it comes to leaks and reports.