ATI's 5800 series cards detailed

Essential Linkage: ATI's 5-series cards leak.

ATI, ever since the buyout by AMD, is still managing to pull off stellar releases and have done so for over a year - while their 3xxx series cards weren't particularly amazing, the 4xxx series cards smashed through NVIDIA's barriers to offer great performance with a great price.

More than a year after the 4xxx series, ATI are planning a launch of their 5xxx series cards; that will be based on the RV870 'Evergreen' core and support DirectX 11 (as well as all the preceding DX's). It seems to still be based on a 55nm manufacturing process, but the die size doesn't look too significantly increased meaning that 40nm is a definite possibility.

Oddly it is rotated to sit as a diamond rather than a square, but the cards will still be offered in ATI's recent nomenclature. The 5870X2 sits at the top of the pile with two RV870 cores and a US$599, followed by the 5870 at US$379-399 and the 5850 at US$279-299.

This will be priced higher due to conversion rates and extra taxes we pay in Australia, but once NVIDIA get their cards out the door these prices will soon begin to plummet. Knowing ATI's impressive yields on their 4xxx series cards give them a huge price advantage over NVIDIA should mean that this will continue into the 5xxx series, and we can predict some pretty serious competition.

Due to AMD's reliance on ATI's success to carry both companies at the moment (due to the Phenom II stacking up poorly compared to the competition based on pure price/performance), it seems that both will continue to run for quite some time off the back of the 5xxx series - and this can only mean good things for enthusiasts.

As we wait for more details about the cards, head over to the Bright Side Of News to read more about the 5xxx series.