There've been lots of rumors recently about the R600, and derivatives, being the last product to be sold under the ATI name. Those rumors would place the R700 directly under AMD's umbrella. If they turn out to be true, ATI would leave the scene with a GPU that'll surely lose against nVidia's 8800.

It's too early in the game to crown a performance king: drivers are immature, DX10 games must be released and die shrinks could help. In particular, the little brothers (2600 and 2400) will do much better, thanks to they being fabricated on 65nm. But the performance per watt gap is so big that bridging it would be nothing short of a miracle. Not because nVidia's doing great, we said recently that they should put their act together in the energy bill department, but because we have here a 80nm chip that consumes far more power than a 90nm one.

Right now, you can find dozens of articles around the web about the 2900, but if you want reliable power consumption figures, xbitlabs is a must. There, you'll see the 681 million transistor monster eating 131W, while the 700 million behemoth gets "merely" 161W. Some sources place that number between 200 and 250! The graphics card industry still has a lot to learn about the evolution that has taken place in the CPU arena in recent years. AMD is in a better position to exploit those lessons, not so soon though.

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