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Radeon 6000-series codenames revealed in latest drivers?

by Pete Mason on 26 August 2010, 11:18

Tags: Catalyst Drivers, AMD (NYSE:AMD), ATi Technologies (NYSE:AMD)

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We heard rumblings that AMD's next-generation GPUs will be released later this year, but exact details are still quite thin-on-the-ground.  Even though the company hasn't confirmed the new cards, it may have revealed their codenames in the Catalyst drivers released yesterday.

Southern Islands

The folks at rage3D went through the driver-files with a fine-tooth comb and found references to some unannounced graphics-cards.  Among the codenames are Cayman, Turks, Caicos, Barts, Seymour, Whistler and Blackcomb.

For those who aren't up on their geography, the first four probably refer to the Caribbean nations of the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos and St Barthélemy - St Barts in English - while Seymour could be Seymour Island off of the Antarctic Peninsula.  Though Seymour Island is certainly southern, the other three are technically in the Northern Hemisphere.

Northern...Mountains?

Whistler and Blackcomb don't seem to fit with the Island-theme as both are mountains - and popular ski resorts - in the Canadian Rockies.  There are also references to Onega, Caspian and Antilles as a part of Turks, Caicos and Cayman families, respectively.  While the latter probably relates to the group of Caribbean islands of the same name, the first two are lakes in Eastern Europe and Russia.

AMD has also thrown in a few other words to keep things interesting.  Alongside the usual XT and PRO suffixes are a good number of GL versions - including GL PRO and GL XT - as well as Gemini variants.  What these mean is unclear, but they could point to mobile, dual-GPU or workstation components.

There obviously isn't a lot of information that we can gather from these codenames, but it does give weight to the rumours of an impending announcement.  Feel free to contribute your own speculation as to their meaning in the HEXUS.community.



HEXUS Forums :: 7 Comments

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Stop it! All these leaks and rumors are making my decision of buying a gtx460/5850 harder and harder.

Do i buy a 460? Or will the price drops of the 5850 due to the 6000 series releasing affect it more than like 10%? Will the 6000 series provide a host of new improvements and actually be a lot better than the 5000 or the gtx 400 series!.

OMG, AMD please release the details and benchmarks already! So i can actually decide :P.
Hicks12
Stop it! All these leaks and rumors are making my decision of buying a gtx460/5850 harder and harder.

Do i buy a 460? Or will the price drops of the 5850 due to the 6000 series releasing affect it more than like 10%? Will the 6000 series provide a host of new improvements and actually be a lot better than the 5000 or the gtx 400 series!.

OMG, AMD please release the details and benchmarks already! So i can actually decide :P.

There will always be something better just round the corner… just buy a 460, they're good cards.
kingpotnoodle
There will always be something better just round the corner…

Exactly. And even if you do know the release date, it'll probably be pretty much a paper release, with heavy price gouging for the first few months…
Sure buy one, if you think you won't regret it. Fact is, if you wait less than 2 months, both the 460 and 5850 will be cheaper after these new cards are released so if you think you will regret it…I'm sure you can hold on another 2 months because after that we're talking at least a year before anything else new arrives.
If the HD6000 series is being released soon then I would wait as it should hopefully mean price cuts on existing graphics cards if it is faster. I am interested to see how fast the replacement for the HD5770 will be.