Radeon 6000 Family upcomming & It's delayed

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We heard already a couple days ago that AMD announced a new 6 series graphics card, A slide detailing two flavors of the upcoming 40nm Barts chip has sprouted up from two independent sources online, and it shows some appreciable gains between generations. The new HD 67x0 cards appear manifestly speedier than their predecessors -- with faster clocks, more texture units, and more ROPs -- but the fun really gets going when you compare them to the HD 5870 and 5850, AMD's previous high-end cards. Memory bandwidth and pixel fillrate are identical between the HD 6750 and 5850, while the HD 6770 even manages to beat the formerly imperious 5870 in a couple of areas. Of course, this is all still unconfirmed information, but considering that Barts is only an "upper midrange" chip that's already stepping on the toes of last year's finest, we feel safe in expecting some pretty big things from the flagship Cayman silicon when it lands -- which will be soon if all these leaks and rumors are anything to go by

At this point, there have been plenty of rumours floating around about AMD's upcoming Radeon 6000-series GPUs. Until now, though, the consensus seemed to be that the first cards would arrive sometime in October.

However, the latest rumour from DigiTimes suggests that the first GPUs - suspected to be the high-to-mid range HD 6770 and HD 6750 - won't be available to buy until November. It's not clear at this point, but this may also have an impact on the launch of the high-end 6800-series cards. 

The HD 6870 was expected to launch in November, but could now be pushed back to give the lower-end cards some breathing room. At the same time, the manufacturer will surely want to avoid launching products after November 26 - the unofficial start of the American holiday shopping season.

No reason was given for the potential delays. However, AMD may just be waiting for the best possible time to come to market. The company's current generation graphics-cards are still very competitive in both price and performance, meaning that there's no pressure to rush products to market.

The rumour continues by suggesting that NVIDIA might seize the opportunity to regain some market share by reducing the cost of its current GPUs. Only recently - following the launch of the GTX 460 and GTS 450 - has the company been able to turn up the heat on AMD's pricing. A quick price-drop could make the company's cards very compelling and build some much-needed momentum ahead of the upcoming Radeon-onslaught.

With November just a few weeks away, we'll soon know if there is any truth to these rumours. In the meantime, anyone planning to invest in an NVIDIA video-card may want to hold on just a little while longer.