14 DAY TRIAL // As the end of what has been a rather full year in terms of IT-related events is drawing nearer, more details emerge on several upcoming hardware products, designed to take on the future of desktop computer graphics. On several occasions, details on NVIDIA's future GeForce flagship cards, the GTX 285 and the GTX 295, have already been leaked on the Internet, so it's only natural that specifics on ATI's upcoming Radeon product lineup also transpire on the vast source of information that is the Internet.
According to a recent post on Expreview, ATI's next 55nm-based graphics cards are going to provide improved versions of the company's already successful RV770 graphics processor. Expected to be released sometime in early Q1, after the launch of NVIDIA's products, the new RV770Pro, RV770XT, RV775Pro and RV775XT are bound to set new standards for gaming enthusiasts, as they will further expand the company's range of desktop graphics processors. As seen from the details that have surfaced on Expreview, the first card to be released is the RV775XT, slated to come out in January next year.
Later in 2009, the RV770Pro, RV770XT and the RV775Pro are also going to make their debut, in June and March, to be more specific. Both new RV770 models will be build with 800 Stream Processors, while the other two RV775-based cards are to provide a boost of 40 more Stream Processors, for a total of 840. The TMU (Texture Mapping Unit) is also going to be increased on the RV775 cards, with both models boasting 48, 8 over the 40 available in the RV770 models.
Some resemblances between all four GPUs are notable, especially in terms of their memory size and bus specifications. All four will be featured with at least 512MB of 256bit memory. Aside from this, the tech specs are different. First of all, the die size of the RV775 cards has been lowered, when compared with the one used for the RV770 cards, now being featured at 246mm, as opposed to 260mm. The transistors count has also been lowered for the RV775 cards, from 956M to 927M, while the clock rates are expected to be higher on the RV775 models. The RV770Pro and RV770XT will be featured at 625MHz and 750MHz, respectively, while the RV775Pro and RV775XT will have their clock rates featured at 725MHz and 900MHz.
All of the details above are still to be officially confirmed by the Sunnyvale, California-based chip maker. However, it will be quite interesting to see how the new cards measure against NVIDIA’s upcoming lineup.