ATI RD600 Preliminary Info
HKEPC once again throws caution and NDA to the wind and have posted some preliminary details regarding ATI's next generation RD600 chipset. Based around Intel's upcoming Conroe processor, the chipset supports a 1333MHz FSB, dual-channel DDR2 1066, 48 PCI-E lanes, and have a whopping 3 PCI-E slots. The third slot is supposedly for a third GPU to act as a dedicated physics processor. How fast will that GPU have to be in order to perform on par or better than Ageia's PhysX discrete PPU? Per usual, time will tell and we'll reserve judgment until we have a board in the lab.
Furthermore, it has 48 PCI-E Lanes and supports for 3 PCI-E slots, 2 for CrossFire and 1 for Physics Acceleration. More details for ATi Physics Acceleration will be announced during Computex 2006. For the south bridge, SB600 will be used and it may eventually be coupled with SB650. Now we have no more news for SB650 and RD600 is expected to be launched in the summer.
