http://www.beyond3d.com/#news17745Snippets from the story:
...launch their new architecture, the basis of the R5xx series, in the first half of 2005...
...architecture to be based on Shader 3.0...
...GDDR4 memory technology...designed to scale to speeds of 1.2GHz (2.4GHz effective)...
...90nm...
...move from FP24 to FP32...
Sounds nice...and rumour has it that the guys behind the R3xx series (Radeon 9700 etc) are the ones driving the R5xx series...would be very interesting to see if they can come up with a card with as much impact as the 9700 had when it was first released...
However, I'm a bit skeptical...even with the move to GDDR4 and memory speeds of 2.4GHz etc, I'm not so sure that we will see such a radical increase in speeds like we have seen between the 9700 and X800 cards for the reason that they are moving to true 32-bit precision...32-bit is way more intense than 24-bit and I wonder if the increased memory speeds will only cover the precision increase or if it will indeed pan out to make for much faster cards...time will tell I suppose.
I like the especially vague timeframe..."first half of 2005"
Prolly means anywhere around May we should be seeing them pop up. Hopefully the supply will be better this time around...seems it's still hard to find X800 XT PE's in stores...same story with the 6800 Ultra's...can't say that I'm too surprised tho.
