14 DAY TRIAL // The Radeon HD 2900 family of graphics processors will soon expand from only one current official chip to at least one more member in a short time. The original plan that AMD's graphics division presented called for no less then four different video cards in that product line. They should have come with several memory configurations like 1GB GDDR-4, 512MB GDDR-3, 512MB GDDR-4 and 256MB GDDR-3 an in order to accommodate all these models four very different PCBs were developed, but later, after promising no less than 10 video cards, AMD's executives canceled just about everything.
So, of the original plan to have 10 products, only two ever came out, while the video card with support for 1GB of memory was recalled from the retail channel and the Radeon HD 2400 and 2600 delayed until the end of the summer. AMD plans to put all 1GB video cards only in fancier and more expensive computer systems, but anyway some separate 1GB graphics cards are sold through retail channels without the producing company's approval and support.
According to the information from TheInquirer, a new product code was recently discovered in the latest Catalyst driver (more exactly a new SKU - Stock Keeping Unit) and it corresponds to the yet to be released Radeon HD 2900 Pro, that should come out around the Christmas season. AMD's graphics division does not plan to release the new R700 video chip until June 2008 because they are expecting the TSMC company to finish their production lines upgrades for the 55nm process that is needed to build multi die chips like the R700. Soon, this fall, AMD will launch a new wave of products, but they will be centered on the low end and mainstream markets and will not pose a threat to Nvidia products that are all high end aimed.
Even the Radeon HD 2900 Pro will not be a groundbreaking product as it will come with 256MB or 512MB of video memory and it should be priced at about $200, being the "middle man" between Nvidia's 8600GTS and 8800GTS.