When the R600 GPU hit the scene last May in the form of the Radeon HD 2900 XT, it wasn't very well received by enthusiasts for a few key reasons. For one, the Radeon HD 2900 XT generally consumed more power and generated more heat than NVIDIA’s already well established GeForce 8800 GTS. In addition, the 2900 XT was also louder, more expensive, and also didn't quite perform as well as the 8800 GTS, not to mention it was missing UVD support. A home run product the Radeon HD 2900 XT was not.
From a technical standpoint, however, the R600 was promising. It had full DX10 support, top notch image quality, gobs of memory bandwidth, and a number of innovations like HDMI output with audio and new anti-aliasing modes. After testing the Radeon HD 2900 XT and watching it mature in the marketplace these past few months, we couldn't help but wonder how the R600 would have been received had AMD built the chips using a more advanced manufacturing process that could help mitigate some of its fundamental shortcomings.
We can stop wondering now it seems. Today is the day AMD has chosen to officially unveil the RV670 GPU, a derivative of the R600, manufactured using a 55nm process. The RV670 will be the GPU that powers the new ATI Radeon HD 38x00 series of graphics cards. However, we should point out that the RV670 isn’t a straight-up shrink of the 90nm R600. In this iteration of the 55nm RV670, AMD has also tweaked the GPU in a few areas in an effort to increase relative performance and efficiency.
We’ve had a quartet of RV670-based cards in house for a short while and have put them through the wringer with an entirely new and up-to-date test-bed running Windows Vista Ultimate and powered by a Quad-Core Intel Core 2 Extreme CPU. Read on for the full scoop...
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