ATI To Challenge Fermi With Trillian New ATI High-End Card Simply Overclocks Existing Card, Not A New GPU

Rumors are coming out that some in the computer hardware press are
receiving review copies of a new ATI graphics card, which is codenamed
Trillian . Despite likely being under NDA, leaks are reporting that the
new Trillian cards will be ATI's answer to NVIDIA's upcoming Fermi GPUs,
which'll be marketed as the GeForce GTX 400-series.

It's worth noting that the Trillian card isn't a new GPU architecture
like the Fermi is. Instead, it's simply a new card in the Radeon HD
5000-series that has a higher factory clockspeed. Those who've got their
hands on the Trillian card are reporting that it's very similar to the
existing Radeon HD 5800 cards, which were codenamed Cypress .
Site Fudzilla is speculating that the Trillian card is simply a factory
overclocked 5870, which ATI will sell as the Radeon HD 5890. They did a
similar thing last year with the Radeon HD 4870 and 4890, Fudzilla
reports. Early benchmarks (albeit, ones provided by NVIDIA at this
point) have the GeForce GTX 480 looking like it could take the crown of
best graphics card from the Radeon HD 5970.
As you can imagine, when a new card takes the top spot, there is a lot
of excitement and mindshare shift in the enthusiast community. It makes
sense that AMD would try to steal some of the spotlight and sales with a
new high-mid-range card.
Even if the GeForce GTX 480 is the new top dog in the graphics card
arms race – it's worth noting that the $600+ bleeding edge
graphics cards of every generation make up a small percentage of total
sales for the manufacturers, so a high-mid-range card, could sell better
against the GeForce GTX 480, assuming they'll both be released around
the same time.Read | Or scroll down for further on topic reading.