TheInquirer reports that ATI's upcoming high end chip is targeting a 750MHz core clock. That would be a 100MHz speed jump from the original, shipping and very available R580, but it could be just enough to make Nvidia's life miserable. This is a magical number, as the G71 runs at around 100MHz faster than the non existent Geforce 7800 GTX 512 MB. An 80 nanometre marchitecture will decrease the chip die by 19 per cent and if the yields are good, it will make them more affordable.

Also, it turns out that the R600 won't be out as early as we all expected. ATI has the flexibility to postpone this chip as there won't be any DirectX 10 API to run the hardware. The original plan was to launch this unified Shader chip in the summer of 2006 but ATI has already informed its partners to be ready for an 80 nanometre die shrink of the R580. The R580+ chip is scheduled for late summer time. ATI won't release two high end chips within a month or two, so this definitely means that ATI will use the R580+ to provoke Nvidia's G80 and it will launch the R600 later. Even if ATI wanted to launch the R600 before Microsoft Vista, it would end up struggling with a non-existent DirectX 10, only available for Vista, and not for XP. ATI has already been in such a situation with R300 when it released the cards in August 2002 and had to wait for the official DirectX 9 for months.

Update:The Inquirer now says its earlier claim that ATI's upcoming R580+ core would be built on 80nm process technology has been contradicted by multiple sources who confirm that R580+ is indeed a 90nm part. R580+ is still expected to reach higher clock speeds than R580, which could be interesting considering the already sizeable power consumption of ATI's Radeon X1900 XTX. Nonetheless, early samples of R580+ cards are expected in July, with final shipping hardware to show up in August.