ATi scheduled to release Radeon X1950XTX, the new top model, in late Aug. The new chip, codenamed R580+, has no difference with R580 in term of design, production process, and clock speed, but featured at GDDR4 support. It keeps 16 Pixel Shader pinelines, 48 Pixel Shader processors, and 256Bit memory controller; and manufactured by TSMC with 90nm process and clocked at 650MHz. Features at GDDR4 memory, it’s the first card stepped into the era of 2GHz DDR. The price is set at $399. Figure below is the engineering sample of Radeon X1950XTX where the heat sink has improved a lot.

Radeon X1950XTX is the replacement of the old king, Radeon X1900XTX, and there is another version of Radoen X1900XT with 256MB to complete with nVidia Geforce 7900GT. The 256MB version has no difference with the original 512MB version excepts its memory size. It has a lower price ranged from $249 to $299, and expected to be releasing in late Aug.

Together with R580+, new RV570 chipset also bear the name of Radeon X1950 as Radeon X1950 Pro. It’s the replacement of Radeon X1900GT. RV570 has 12 Pixel Shader pinelines, 36 Pixel Shader processors, and 256Bit memory controller. Manufactured by TSMC with 80nm process, it’s clocked at 600MHz with 1.4GHz GDDR3 memory. The heat sink is single-slot designed. Radeon X1950 Pro is the first GPU with build-in Compositing CrossFire Engine, therefore there are nomore master/salve card. With the build-in engine, the die size is similar to R580+ although it has less pinelines than R580. Radeon X1950 Pro is expected to be available in mid October, and priced between $199 and $249.

ATi will be introducing the R580+ models namely Radeon X1950XTX and Radeon X1950 CrossFire edition and a 256M Radeon 1900XT in August 2006.

The Radeon X1950XTX is based on R580+ core and has 512MB GDDR4. The Radeon X1950 CrossFire Edition will also be announced right after the X1950XTX.

In a few more days, ATi will also release a 256M version of the Radeon X1900XT.