While the newly released dual-GPU based GTX 295 from NVIDIA certainly offers very impressive performance and now sits up top of the pedestal as the fastest graphics card in the world, when you look at what AMD/ATI is said to have in the works, it suddenly takes away a bit from the card's awe inspiring attributes.

The folks at Nordic Hardware report that it shouldn't be too far away before we see the first ever dual-die GPU used on a graphics card and AMD will apparently be the ones to do it. While the company's next-gen RV870 single core GPU should shape up well with a speculated 1000 to 1200 shaders and 50-60 texture mapping units, it's the R870 and R800 based cards that will attract the most interest with the use of two RV870 GPUS stuck together to form a dual-core GPU. Where R870 will use one of these GPUs, the R800 is being said to boast two of them, effectively becoming a quad-core (CrossfireX) setup on a single PCB.

Nordic also talk a bit about the (possible/likely?) specifications of the RV870, R870 and R800 cards, but at this early stage the information provided is still very much a rumour and should be treated as nothing more.