Radeon R600 is the codename for ATI Technologies' unannounced next generation Direct3D 10 graphics processing unit.


Rumors


* The R600 is estimated to be the largest GPU ever made.

* The R600 might have over a 1000 MHz clock, making it the highest clocked GPU ever made.

* The R600 will be the first graphics card faster than a X1800GTO able to do dongleless Crossfire (no master card). The X1800XT, X1900GT, X1900XT, X1900XTX, and upcoming X1950XTX all require a slightly slower master card to run Crossfire.

* 64 unified shader pipelines, 32 TMUs, and 32 ROPs.

* It shares a similar design of the Xbox 360's GPU "Xenos". However, the R600 will not have the 10 MB daughter embedded DRAM framebuffer of the "Xenos".

* The R600 will support the upcoming GDDR4 memory interface with 512 MB running higher than the X1950XTX's memory clock speeds of 1.0 GHz (2.0 GHz effective).

* Possibly built on Taiwan based TSMC's 65nm process , although TSMC has only just begun 65nm of simple designs and is not yet ready for more complex designs, such as ATI's R600.

* The current target release date is December 2006.

* Designed "from the ground up," according to sources at ATI, for DX10, however it will be backwards compatible with DX9.

* Designed for Windows Vista

* PCI-E Interface

* HDMI connector (may have support for Displayport )

* Anandtech reports that the next generation of GPUs will range in power consumption from 130W to 300W. This increase in power consumption will make for higher-wattage Power Supply Units (to the 1 kW-1.2 kW range) and/or the addition of internal, secondary PSUs solely for powering the GPUs.

* If ATI follows their recent naming patterns, the top-end model will be called the Radeon X2800, the mid-range version will be the X2600, and the budget version will be the X2300.