R600 will be ATI’s first DirectX 10-capable graphics circuit for the PC market and is expected to be something really outrageous. The most important thing for ATI is most likely to time the launch so that R600, with its unified shader architecture and DX10 support, is launched in time for Windows Vista, which will be the only operating system which will be truly capable of taking full advantage from the architecture. This will hardly be a problem considering Microsoft’s ever repeating delays and now information/rumors says that R600 will appear during the fourth quarter and not be postponed until 2007, which other rumors have claimed. Until then we should see ATI’s R580+ chip with GDDR4 memory to counter NVIDIA’s own DX10 circuit G80.
