Josh spent his weekend pondering what we know about the upcoming RV790 architecture that will take the Radeon series into it’s next iteration.  The big question is whether it shall be simply a speed optimized RV770 chip, or if it will truly be a change from it’s predecessor like the RV770 is a huge improvement from the R600 even though it is very similarly constructed.  Read his full article for a look at AMD/ATI’s past and it’s possible contributions in the near future.
I do not think we will see a massive increase in stream units as we saw going from the RV670 to the RV770. I think we will see an increase to 960 stream units (divided into 12 SIMDs), but the amount of RBEs will likely be unchanged (though AMD would include another texture unit per SIMD, adding another RBE would sort of upset the orthoganality of the setup). Considering the current texturing and AA performance of the HD 4870, those changes are likely not needed in the new chip. Performance increases in pure pixel fillrate and texturing will be improved from the clockspeed increases as well as further internal optimizations into these units.”

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk