The Inquirer has some information about the upcoming ATi Video Card core

“Our well informed Spanish lady nicknamed Informationa Digitala told us that ATI’s next generation chip codenamed R520 is taped out. She confirmed that the chip is 90 nanometres. As far as we know it works well, but it’s early days yet.

Nvidia changed its plans to compete with the Fudo R520, indicating that the R520 chip is definitely going to be a good one. ATI still have to live with the fear that the new Nvidia chip might be better.

We have to add that R520 will finally include 32 bit colour precision. Saying that R520 is Shader Model 3.0+ compatible naturally means that this chip actually uses 128 bit colour. Nvidia’s NV40 generation supports 32 bit colour per channel (red green nlue and alpha) and so will the R520. That’s a Shader Model 3.0 requirement.”