FireGL V7600 based on R600PRO

With AMD's launch of the ATI FireGL range today (full news will be posted later), the FireGL V7600 was revealed, but this isn't the big news here, instead the interesting story is the GPU that the card is using, the R600PRO. Although it's not yet available as a consumer product, this is at least a confirmation on the fact that it's coming.

However, from what we know, the consumer model will differ from the FireGL V7600 by having only 160 stream processors instead of 320. This means that the consumer model, which everyone assumes will be called Radeon HD 2900PRO, will be a fair bit slower. It will have 8 ROPs and 16 TMUs and a 256-bit memory interface. The good news here is that AMD didn't cut any of the TMU's, as this is the weak point of the R600 design.

The FireGL V7600 is clocked at 600MHz, but we'd expect the Radeon HD 2900PRO to be clocked higher, as the Radeon HD 2900XT is clocked higher than the FireGL V8600-series. The consumer card will use GDDR4 and should be available in 512MB, but we'd guess a 256MB version would also be available as a lower cost option.

Although we can only speculate on what the Radeon HD 2900PRO will be based on the FireGL V7600 specs and some other leaked information, it's looking like Nvidia is going to have to either bring out a card with 256-bit memory interface, or drop the price of the GeForce 8800 GTS again. From another rumor we've seen, the Radeon HD 2900PRO is meant to retail for around US$200-249. Let's hope AMD will launch these cards soon.