Fudzilla was the most hasty again in disclosing the name of the new high end Radeon branded cards. There won't be a X2000... card, but instead, the name will be HD 2900.... So the first one off the line, that will make it to the market, will be the Radeon HD 2900XT with 512MB of GDDR3 memory.

The website PCINLIFE got hold of more pictures of the OEM R600 yesterday. Thanks go out to Flint who was kind enough to alarm us.
Btw.: The pictures are still there at PCINLIFE but its a real pain to create an account if you can't cope with Chinese symbols.

Fudzilla has managed to snap a picture of the R600 card - this time, with the cooler off. By the looks of it, pictures of the core found on the web a few months ago didn't lie:The card above has 1024 MB of memory and "some dodgy drivers". It is interesting to see the core tilted the way it is. This will disable all current water cooling blocks (and perhaps air heatsinks) from being compatible with the card. An adapter, or a different retention mechanism, could perhaps fix this. Also note that ATI's R600 does not use a heatspreader on the core.

In addition, the card uses 2 power connectors: 1 standard 6-pin PCI Express, and 1 8-pin connector:All of the pictures are from the 12 inch card, which should be identical to the smaller version (except for the heatsink).

Boot Daily been able to confirm pricing on ATI's upcoming R600-series GPUs. The R600, R630XT, R630Pro and R610 will cost $499, $199, $179 and $99 respectively.

AMD's sales chief, Henri Richard, has announced that ATI's flagship DirectX 10 graphics card could be ready to ship today, and has given an interesting new reason for its long delay. Here's what he had to say:

"The R600 will be out in the second quarter. The reason we decided to delay the launch was that we wanted to have a complete DX10-enabled solutions top-to-bottom. A lot of people wrote that the reason it is delayed is because of a problem with the silicon, but there is no problem with the silicon. We are demonstrating it. We can ship it today. But if you think about it, looking at where the market is at, the volumes are going to be in the RV610 and RV630, so it makes sense for us to do a one time launch of the entire family of DX10 enabled products."

So apparently there weren't any technical problems, ATI just wanted to release the entire range at once - interesting when you consider this has let NVIDIA get a lengthy head start with its 8800 cards. Sounds like a poor excuse to me.

At the CeBIT the guys from the PC Games magazin interviewed ATIs Vijay Sharma and because of their tight schedule just focused on a single story first. Sharma said the R600 will be compatible to the AGP to PCIe bridge called Rialto, which means that Add-In-Board (AIB) Partners could manufacture AGP cards based on the R600 family (R600/RV610/RV630).
Now the complete interview was released to the public which is none the less a very informativ read. Head over here if you want to know more about the upcoming R600 family, DX10 and drivers, new Antialiasing modes, memory interfaces and stuff like that.

Some guy at the 3DCenter Forums posted an interesting picture that shows a set of rules how Add-In-Board (AIB) partners should handle R600 systems at this' years CeBIT.

...AIB Partners are not allowed to have pictures or videos taken of the R600 board or the Ruby demo...

As we all know TUL (PowerColor) didn't really stick to these rules and Ruby couldn't be kept in her icy solitary confinement either.
That shows once more: Rules are there to be broken.

On the highly anticipated R600 card, Fudzilla expects the on-board DDR3 modules to work at a modest 1600 MHz. We must however keep in mind that the R600 has a 512 bit memory controller, and that it will therefore have some impressive bandwidth.

As we already know, the GDDR4 version will come later and should have a clock even higher than 2000 MHz milestone. The core of the R600 from ATI will tick away at 750 to 800 MHz.

Last Saturday we brought you the first pictures of a watercooling setup that it's obvious target is the OEM market. Now the VR-Zone reveals two more closeups of this particular card and a few more technical details. The stock air cooler will allow the user to clock the graphics core up to 850MHz, whereas the watercooled one will hit it's limit above that.

VR-Zone brings us a picture from the water cooled version of the ATI R600 video card. The water cooling solution is probably provided by Aavid Thermalloy and coincidentally Aavid is preparing their Turbo Tube cold plates for mass production in May, same time as R600 launch. ATI's AIB partners can choose to use it, design their own or use a 3rd party water-cooler from Thermaltake.

Finally a date appeared at the internet on that the huge launch of AMD/ATI's latest chip, the R600 will take place. And it won't happen anywhere near you I guess because someone decided to let all this happen in the capital of the North African state Tunisia, Tunis. The reason for that is unknown but I guess it makes it very hard for a potential thief to get away with one of the most sought-after graphics card in the world today. Either you have to swim right through the Mediterranean Sea or you end dried up to the bones in the Sahara Desert.
Anyway, TheInquirer still insists that the mass production of the R600 will be in 65nm whereas the GDDR3-cards at the launch were made using a 80nm process.

Note by W1zzard: This will not be the launch date. At this date the NDA press briefings are scheduled, which will be before the launch so press has time to prepare their articles.

There is no day that goes by without news regarding the R600. This time TweakTown managed to convince some people at the CeBIT to reveal the card. Don't be scared by the looks of these pictures. The image quality suffered a lot because there were around 50 labels with the label of the owners on it which had to be retouched.

Fudzilla spoke with dozen of contacts and can now confirm that the R600 is a 80 nanometre chip. It is not 60 nanometre and it won't be 65 nanometre as going from 80 nanometre to 65 requires a complete redesign of the chip.

R600 was and is 80 nanometre and when it launches it will be 80 nanometre. Remember G80, GeForce 8800 series is 90 nanometre and it still runs great.

It looks like the R600 will be re-branded and probably cheaper than everyone expects but its very unlikely that we are waiting for G80 killer.

VR-Zone says that at the current moment, the R600 card scores no more than 200 points above the GeForce 8800 GTX in 3D Mark 06.

Today in the morning I came across an unannounced Ruby R600 TechDemo uploaded to a YouTube Account. I was now very amazed that it's still there, maybe because of it's very shaky nature and the lack of details. It shows Ruby sitting in a Harrier Jumpjet-like aeroplane jumping out into a mountained, snow-covered landscape. As she rides her snowboard down the hill she get's attacked by strangers using something like a very powerful rocket launcher.
Anyway, I don't want to spoil too much. Watch it yourself.

Update: Hexus.TV has a slightly better version online. There you can see that the TechDemo is called 'Whiteout'.

The latest and greatest number - 200 W - is supposed to be the total heat output for the R600 core. Fudzilla states this number as coming from "reliable" sources - and this time, I am inclined to say that I think they are right.

As we know, there are two versions of the R600 card - the "big gun", measuring in at 12.5 inches, and the "pocket sized" 9.5 inch version. The big card will probably be branded as Radeon X2900XTX and will end up with OEMs only. The bigger cooler should prolong its lifespan, and keep it cooler overall. The shorter card has a massive dual-slot cooler with heatpipes.

ATI's Vijay Sharma (Director of ATI's Desktop Discrete Products) was interviewed by PC Games Hardware and he said the whole R600 lineup will be compatible to the PCIe-to-AGP bridge 'Rialto'.
NVIDIA's Product PR Manager Jens Neuschäfer on the other hand told them there will be no future AGP cards made by NVIDIA. At least as long as there isn't an OEM with a sufficient demand.PC Games Hardware 1 and PC Games Hardware 2

The card is not even near any stores and there are plenty of companies showcasing the proper water cooler for it. Yes, I am talking about the R600 that you won't even see at the CeBIT. But the good news is if you decided to buy a G80 based card recently - there is even more cooling gear out for that one. Thanks go out to the ComputerBase which came up with the pictures.Thermaltake G80 and R600
Massive Arctic Cooling R600/G80 Prototype
ASUS AquaTank
Zalman G80 GTX/GTS Solutions

Update: PC Games Hardware have some more details of the AC Prototype.

Everyone who could attend the HIS press dinner yesterday in the evening was surely disappointed afterwards. HIS had to inform the invited journalists that they won't see the R600 at HIS' booth - not even behind closed doors! - I guess GeCube won't show the chip neither, though they promised to do so! - ATI/AMD then let the press people know they will set up a special Tech-Day until the 31st of March and disclosed some new information. The R600 will be produced in 65nm by TSMC and not using the 80nm process because of difficulties (low yield and high leakage current). Daniel Wenzel from the German K-Hardware adds rumours have it AMD/ATI still got issues with the 512 bit memory subsystem. I nearly forgot to add the newly planned release date: Six weeks from now which reads begin of May.

While making my way through all the different press releases from companies like Corsair, Gigabyte, Sapphire and so on which are related to their CeBIT appearance I came across the one from GeCube this morning. But unlike Slobodan Simic from Fudzilla.com I simply missed the best part in GeCube's message to the world where it reads:

*Exclusive GECUBE Product with the ATI World's most powerful Chipset
GECUBE will be unveiling at CeBIT its secret weapon (NDA) for the second quarter of 2007. Using the latest ATI core with support for the new generation DX10 technology, don't miss this chance to witness its jaw-dropping performance for yourself at CeBIT!

So the chances are very high that AMD/ATI will lift the NDA at the CeBIT already and one can see many R600 based graphics cards to be showcased.

If you look around at the notebook market today you will possibly find a solution which features a so called Mobility Radeon X2300 graphics chip. If you think about it this is something odd, the whole R600 aka X2K series is still be announced. Though the XbitLabs reported about one of these (the Asus A8Jr laptop) this January already. Today TheInquirer sheds some light onto the situation. It seems like AMD/ATI are mixing up the brand names of different chip generations. This former mentioned X2300 Mobility chip is in fact a rebranded X1300 chip, so nothing really fast and nowhere near sporting enough to be named in line with the R600 stuff.

Fudzilla is reporting ATI/AMD might have considerable problems with it's fastest R600 variant. The reason behind is unknown, they are now focusing on the 512 MB DDR3 version and this one will be available at the release sometime in May this year.

As you will know from our previous news posts, at an event in San Francisco, AMD demonstrated some R600 cards. ZDNet's David Berlind has managed to snap a good selection of pictures of one of these cards:More images can be found here.

A few weeks ago, sources close to AMD revealed to us that the retail versions of the card are expected to be much smaller than the prototype card AMD has already displayed. Looking at the reverse side of the prototype card, it's apparent that the PCB is much shorter than the humongous cooling solution and thus there is the prospect for retail R600-based graphics cards to be much shorter.

This indicates that the R600 is well under way, with a few working samples in existence. AMD/ATI needs to sort out the cooler, and then the card should hopefully be ready for launch in May.

Many people were disappointed by the recent R600 delay, which saw the release date for ATI's first DirectX 10 card pushed back to the next quarter at the earliest, but ATI has remained in the dark a little bit as to the true cause of the delays. However, I've received information from a reliable source that the delays were linked to problems with the GDDR4 which the top-end R600 cards will use. As of yet there is no more information on the specifics, so sorry for the brief story and lack of technical details, but at least that sheds some light on the matter.

Please note that this information is still unverified and may be wrong

On the presentation show of AMD's first chipset created in cooperation with ATI, the 690G, it flexed it's muscles in presenting a quad core Barcelona based PC system together with a pair of R600 graphics cards. The cards were running in Crossfire mode and the whole system was tweaked not for gaming but for calculating computational algorithms. It could squeeze out 10^12 floating point operations per second which equals a TeraFLOP/s (a term that get's quite popular today). AMD didn't seem to be tight lipped regarding the postponing of R600 at this event.

At least EE Times and The Register have a good deal more information packed into their articles.

At the press center of AMD there is now a press release covering the story.

I just got off the phone with ATI who informed me that the Editor's Day which was scheduled around March 11 (flights and hotels were already booked) has been postponed to the second quarter of 2007.
The reason is that their R600 Series is not where they want it to be yet, so they decided to move the launch to be able to deliver a competitive product. Also I am hearing that at the Q2 launch we will see more than just GPU related stuff, so I would guess Physics or GPGPU computing.

"To better align our strategy with current market opportunities, we've changed the launch plan for R600. We are going to deliver a competitive configuration to market with an extremely attractive combination of performance, features and pricing, targeting a broader market segment in Q2. With the revised strategy, AMD will be better able to capitalize on the broad appeal of 3D graphics and DirectX 10, being driven in part by the growing popularity of Windows Vista ."

"This was a tough decision to make for us, but a necessary one that will ultimately result in bringing a better product to market."

Looks like CeBIT won't be so interesting at all.