ATI should finalize the development of „RV870“ 40nm DirectX 11 chip at some point in August. This is what our usually well informed sources have confirmed. We are talking about the cards and chips should already be taped out a while ago.

The real launch and mass production should happen in very late Q3, probably in late September, and real availability is expected in October.

From this point, it looks like that ATI might have a month or two head start, as Nvidia's „GT300“ should show its face in very late Q4 2009. All in all, it will be very interesting Q4 but this also denotes that most of July and at least half of August will be rather graphically boring.