Taiwanese insiders revealed to DigiTimes last month that NVIDIA was preparing AGP versions of its GeForce 7600 graphics cards for a release some time this quarter. NVIDIA has yet to make any such announcement, but The Inquirer now has word that ATI may also be planning to refresh its mid-range AGP lineup. The site says ATI is readying a new AGP graphics card based on its upcoming RV560 GPU, which other sources suggest will be introduced at $ 199 as the Radeon X1700 later this year.
According to The Inq, the AGP RV560 variant will have a 450 MHz core clock and 256 MB of 650 MHz GDDR3 memory pumping data through a 128-bit memory bus. Previous info from X-bit labs suggests the vanilla RV560 will sport 24 pixel shader processors as well as eight texture units, and DigiTimes heard last month from its graphics card manufacturer moles that the chip will be one of ATI's first 80 nm parts. X-bit labs's sources said the RV560 will launch during the back-to-school season, but The Inq believes the AGP flavor won't show up until October.
