One element of AMD's upcoming R700 has remained elusive to date. That could, however, all be about to change, according to information presented in this article from NordicHardware.

We are, of course, referring to the expected clock speeds for the upcoming 'Spartan'. Shrouded in mystery and suspense, the secret is unravelling with claims that AMD will launch its flagship HD 4870 X2 with a clock speed of 750 MHz and 900 MHz (QDR), for the GPUs and GDDR5 memory respectively.

Following on, the HD 4850 X2, with GDDR3 memory, will apparently launch with a clock speed of 625 MHz for the GPUs, married up with 1000 MHz for the memory.

If those details sound rather familiar to you, you wouldn't be wrong. The upcoming R700 iterations are claimed to have exactly the same clock speeds as their, single GPU solution, counterparts.

We could surmise as to why this would be the case and already, judging by the sheer size of the cooling solution and the R700's thirst for power, AMD appears to have had to strike a balance between squeezing every last ounce of performance from the eagerly anticipated R700 SKUs and, giving the R700 a reputation, in all the wrong areas.

If you're sitting out this product generation on the fence, AMD's RV770 successor, unsurprisingly known as the RV870, is supposedly being prepared for launch in 2009. Apparently being lined up for manufacture using either a 40 or 45nm process, the RV870 will be preceded in Q1 2009, by the RV740 GPU to be fabbed on a 40nm process.

For what it is worth, unsubstantiated rumours suggest that the RV770's next generation successor, could feature 1000 shader processors, which in balance, could indicate that a R700 successor, utilising dual RV870 GPUs, may boast up to 2000 shader processors in total.