14 DAY TRIAL // Ati (it spells AMD but I keep forgetting that) has decided to give a name to its new GPU line. R600 will probably come out in February (or March, no one knows for sure, AMD included). And since its latest GPU line dubbed X1950 was significantly different from the R600, they could only do one logical step and switch to the X2000 numbering method. As far as we can tell, AMD has created 4 different PCBs for the R600 GPU so it's safe to assume that 4 flavors of the R600 GPU will appear.
The first will have a 12 inches long PCB and will probably be known as XTX version (X2800 XTX if I'm to make an assumption). The board will come with 1GB GDDR-4 memory from Samsung connected to the GPU via 512-bit interface. The chips will have a maximum working frequency of 2.4GHz clock (1.2GHz x2) so the throughput could go as high as 153.6 GB/s (8800GTX boasts about 86.4 GB/s). But we don't know for sure if this will indeed be the actual frequency of the chips so we won't take the reasoning any further. Next, we have a card which will feature a 9" PCB (X2x00 XT?) but it will come with the same GDDR-4 memory. The GPU/mem clocks will be lower than the ones of its bigger brother and it will probably have 256-512MB of Ram onboard. The third board will be a single slot solution so this means even lower frequencies but it will probably rely on GDDR4 too. The card will receive the X2x00 XL numbering.
The fourth and last (slower) part based on R600 will have GDDR3 onboard and this means it will be the most affordable of the entire line. Moreover, AMD is said to develop a new generation of GPGPU cards based on it with 2GB models starting to emerge by the end of 2007.
And another thing. The new boards will probably use the new 8-pin PCIE power connector so be sure that you have a PSU with such a connector. If you don't you can buy an adaptor but don't think it will work with a value PSU. Recent rumors confirm that a Dual-HDMI 1.3 version of the R600 will also come out but at the moment we can't confirm anything. However, I like the fact that, unlike the 8800GTS, Ati has managed to produce single slot solutions too. Until the day of the launch, see ya!