14 DAY TRIAL // Soon after NVIDIA unleashed the GeForce GTX 460 graphics adapter, Advanced Micro Devices finally had enough of a reason to reduce the price of its HD 5830 card. After that, even NVIDIA's own GTX 480 got cheaper, but AMD didn't exactly follow up with any new price cuts. Naturally, one would assume that the reason behind this reluctance to engage in a price competition is that the company doesn't see the GTX 460 as a particularly big threat to its own models. Fudzilla, however, may be on to something different.
A recent report suggests that ATI is getting close to the moment when it will unveil a new generation of graphics cards. Fudzilla's so-called investigations apparently uncovered two codenames, namely Turks and Caicos. These models will be based on the same 40nm manufacturing process technology that the current DirectX 11 cards use. Basically, they should take the places of the ATI Radeon HD 5670, HD 5550 and HD 5400.
Fudzilla states that October is the month when these newcomers will first show themselves in public. So far, there is no information of any sort on performance or energy efficiency. Whatever information is available, however, at least points towards the so-called Southern Islands/Cayman group of products, which will replace the HD 5800 series. They will be known as the ATI Radeon HD 6000 and might show up around the same time as the ones in October. Nevertheless, at least as much chance exists that they won't surface until next year.
Naturally, as all rumors must, this report should be taken with the obligatory grain of salt. Still, if said boards to appear, the current products will finally get cheaper, though by how much is still undecided. Finally, ATI is preparing a dual-chip high-grade card, though when and where it will show up is unmentioned.