The Inq's got the goods on the next, next generation ATi core, which has already taped out, despite the fact that the "just regular next" core has yet to make it to market. These two cores are being worked on by separate teams, & apparently this time around, the first tape-out was a winner.

"The R580 won't be just a clock speed upgrade. It will be a slightly different chip with some marchitectural differences but we don’t know all the details yet. We don’t expect that it will be just have a different number of pipes, it might have a few changes, here and there."