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ATI to ship chipset updates 'by end of year'

Coming sooner than expected?

ATI will release its next members of the Radeon Xpress family by the end of the year.

So internal documents seen by Anandtech indicate. The site suggests ATI will offer the RS485 and RS490 North Bridge parts in the same late 2005 timeframe. The RS485 is said to be a tweaked version of the already-shipping RS482. Both parts incorporate a Radeon X300 graphics core, but the RS485's is clocked higher than the RS482's. The RS485 is said to be pin-compatible with the RS482, ensuring a relatively smooth upgrade path for motherboard makers.

The RS690, the report claims, swaps out the X300 graphics engine for an X700-based model. Again, it's said to be pin-compatible with the RS482.

ATI is also said to be preparing a tweaked release of its SB450 South Bridge chip, to be called the SB460. A version called the SB600 will ship in the same timeframe to support the RS690.

By the end of the year, ATI should also have launched the RD580, its CrossFire-supporting Radeon Xpress part that extends the current product line by adding support for twin 16x PCI Express slots. Other recent reports tend to confirm Anandtech's RD580 timeframe.

Such early release dates calls into question leaks this past summer which claimed the RS485, RS690 and RD580 would ship in Q2 2006 and bring support for AMD's upcoming Socket M2 processor interconnect, which will accompany the debut of DDR 2 SDRAM-supporting Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 X2 CPUs. ®

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