Quote Originally Posted by Helmore View Post
. There are and have been many rumors of a RV740 coming, which would be ATI's first 40 nm. chip, but nobody knows (except ATI and some people whom are under NDA) what the chip will be like. It could simply be a RV730 done on 40 nm., but it just as well be something different.
Rumors on RV740 so far say it has a 128-bit memory bus and 8-SIMDs, which makes it rather similar to a RV730. But those 8-SIMDs could just as well consist of SIMDs with 16 shader execution units per SIMD. Which would mean the card has 640 SPs, unlike the RV730 which has 8 shader units per SIMD and thus 320 SPs. To me the version with 640 SPs seems plausible as this would slightly increase die size to make sure the chip does not get to small to not allow for a 128-bit bus. By that I mean that the current RV730 might get too small to still be able to put the 128-bit memory bus on there if they did a direct shrink. Just my speculation though.
If they add GDDR5 to it then it could become a HD4830/9800GT killer. They should make it 560 SP's instead of 640 to make it competitive with 9600GT instead of their own if they have plans to use GDDR5. later they can make HD5670 with 640 SP's and GDDR5 to replace HD4670. For now these are all my fantasies. We don't even know if they plans for releasing a RV740.