BeHardware - News - March 15, 2007

The future Radeon R600 and products based on this chip are almost impossible to find at CeBit. Fortunately, it is possible to see some products on manufacturers' exhibition stands that do not strictly follow the innocent recommendation of AMD (who has provided the graphic cards for the exhibition) who asked to make sure that "nobody would see them". We were able to take a look at several models from the RV610, entry level, to the R600, high end and several middle line products. It was impossible to take pictures, but some of our colleagues of PC Games Hardware have visibility succeeded in obtaining the authorizations and published pictures of similar same cards.

The first one, based on the RV610 has 128-bit memory bus and a rather simple design and a small GPU. The second one, based on RV630, also has 128-bit memory bus a bigger GPU and hardware CrossFire. Finally, the third one, also based on the RV630, has GDDR4 128-bit memory and a double slot cooling system which is nevertheless simple and light. We saw additional memory spaces but we don't know if they would authorize 256-bit bus or if they are simply here to double embedded memory.

We have observed a R600 in action with a new technological demonstration showing Ruby. This card, based on R600, had a double slot cooling system but had a standard size.

Finally, according to a partner of AMD, the ultra high end version of the R600 equipped with 1GB of GDDR4 might not be released, at least for now. The 512MB is, however, scheduled to be released end of April at 500€ approximately. To finish, we have noted the distance of ATI's partners with the manufacturer official position. They say that the R600 is running perfectly and that the additional delay is only for strategic purposes…