R580+ To Remain at 90u
Fudo over at the Inquirer reports that he has confirmed with high ranking sources that ATI's refresh of their R580 GPU will remain at 90u and not be fabbed on a smaller 80u process as originally suspected. Apparently, there will be some design changes beyond just higher core and memory frequencies. Although the current R580 core is arguably the fastest GPU on the planet right now, it is also a massive die that produces a significant amount of heat. With no process change to aid in lowering heat and decreasing die real estate, it will be interesting to see what ATI's engineers come up with this solve these issues and increase performance.
This probably implies a bigger die and a higher clock all with the goal to beat the Nvidia's offering. The rest of the information stands. It is still a Shader Model 3.0 card with Avivo support, native PCIe and a Crossfire support as well. You will still need to bridge this card but this will be the last one that will need an external connector.
