55nm Shrink of HD 2400/2600 in Time for Montevina

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2007/11/19/amd-preparing-55nm-hd2400
http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/13641

Reports are that ATI has a 55nm shrink of the HD 2400 and HD 2600 coming to desktop in January-February and they use 15% less power than the current 65nm versions. What's disappointing though is that the clock speeds for the desktop versions are reported to remain the same, which is too bad, since their performance levels weren't competitive before, although I suppose the price drops will help. The indications are that these 55nm shrinks will come to notebooks a bit later in time to pair with the Montevina platform so that puts them in Q2.

On the nVidia side, they have moved up the G98 to December and the G98 is a 65nm shrink of the 8600M GS, 8500 series, 8400 series, and 8300 series which are currently on 80nm. No word on when mobile versions are supposed to arrive, although if Apple is going to release a ultra-portable MacBook pro in January, a 65nm based G98 version of the 8400GS or 8400GT would be ideal. There is also a G96 which is the 65nm shrink of the 8700M GT, 8600M GT, and desktop 8600 series, it was originally supposed to be out in Q1 and it hasn't been reported to have been moved up with the G98 although you think it would have.

Anyways, if you need a notebook you might as well get it during the Christmas season, since it looks like mobile GPU refreshes are waiting out for Montevina in late Q1 or Q2.

 

That makes sense, it's about when I expected the new ATI cards. I wonder if nVidia will rename the refreshes, or simply release them under the same names?

 

I thought I read some where that ATi is ditching the HD 2xxx series? Still interesting,,,*sigh* the waiting game never ends,,,

 

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/13646

Well the latest news is that the 55nm shrinks are going to be named the HD 3xxx series. There really aren't significant improvements, since they are only going to add DX10.1 support, which mainstream chips are going to be too slow to use anyways with 4x AA mandatory, and support for PCIe 2.0, which I believe is a non-issue for notebooks since I don't think Montevina will have it. It's not like mainstream chips can use the extra bandwidth anyways.