14 DAY TRIAL // While ATI's Firestream GPGPU prepares to shatter the CPU/GPU limits, the R600 cards are well on their way to retailers, possibly launching sooner than expected. If you thought the Firestream GPGPU boards were awesome, take a look at the leaked R600 pictures provided by the guys at VR-Zone.
There were all kinds of rumors concerning the R600 design and power. They said it's going to be monstrous and now we get to really see that monstrous daunting look. It doesn't even look like a graphics card anymore. Hoping to squeeze an R600 card into your mid-tower case and keep that 500W power supply? You might want to reconsider.
ATI's R600 cards top out at a record-busting 12.4-inches in length. The Canadians claim that there will be two SKUs for the R600 at launch: the extreme XTX version which features 1GB of GDDR4 RAM and an XT with "only" 512MB of GDDR3. The XTX version comes in retail and OEM versions and what you see in the picture above is actually an OEM prototype, which features a hybrid cooler and the impressive 12.4-inch design that eats up as much as 270W of power. The retail XTX version is supposed to cut the design to a more reasonable 9.5-inch length, while the power requirements should be reduced to 240W. The cheaper XT version matches those latter specs, as well.
Later this year, ATI announced to bring the R600XL versions on, which will hopefully be cheaper and less demanding. Looks like NVIDIA's 8800 GTX with its "longest-ever" 10.4-inch length and beefy 165W power requirements turns out to be no match for the R600 ultimate 3D accelerator. Will there ever be bigger graphics cards for the generations to come? It shouldn't really matter once these cards get outside our PCs and make for a separate enclosure of their own.