We’ve confirmed something that we’ve heard a long time ago, but we could not second it. Now we know that RV770 design concepts are the guidelines for the design of ATI's upcoming chip that well all keep calling RV870. This Evergreen generation chip has the same design concepts but you can expect faster speeds and more shader units.
The shader units are changed in order to accommodate DirectX 11 needs as this is the big focus of the chip. The chip is still scheduled for late Q3 2009 introduction, most likely Septemberish time and it will undoubtedly be the first Direct X 11 chip on the market.
Nvidia’s GT300, a next generation chip that also carries another codename but all keeps calling it GT300, is as far as we know the new architecture, something better than GT200 and you should expect some radical design changes.
