AMD's R600 hasn't even arrived yet and already news regarding its successor, the R650, has emerged. According to a story on The Inquirer, R650 will be a 65nm version of R600, enhanced by AMD private manufacturing techniques, with the ultimate goal of making GPUs more affordable, for both AMD and consumers.
"In short, AMD's CPU manufacturing strategy will be introduced to the world of GPUs. This should result in more affordable and better performing parts. Even though AMD is not using its own manufacturing facilities or facilities that use AMD's own procedure called APM, some elements of it will be used to get flexible manufacturing with GPUs as well."
If this all shakes out, prices for high end graphics cards should come down quite a bit over time. Here's hoping.
Marco Chiappetta
Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com
