ATI 80nm GPUs given PCI Express thumbs-up

ATI's upcoming RV535, RV560 and RV570 GPUs have been certified as PCI Express-compatible by the PCI SIG, a move that paves the way for the parts' release.

All four chips have been said to be ATI's first products fabbed at 80nm. The RV570 is expected to ship as the Radeon X1950 Pro. It's said to contain 36 pixel processors, and will be clocked to around 580MHz. The RV560, meanwhile, will ship as the Radeon X1650 XT, a 24-pixel processor that connects to memory across a 128-bit bus.

The RV535 is believed to form the basis for the Radeon X1650 Pro's transition to 80nm - the product is currently a 90nm chip. It may also be used to die-shrink the Radeon X1300 XT.

Not yet listed by the PCI SIG is the RV505 part, which is expected to steer some of ATI's value-oriented products over to 80nm later this year. ®