New 28nm desktop graphics chips will come in January, at least when it comes to AMD. There was some hope that we will see 28nm parts come in September, then October, and most recently in December, but multiple industry sources are now saying that they will launch in January time.

The new Tahiti series should end up with Radeon HD 7xxx branding and as it will come in XT and PRO flavours. It’s kind of safe to assume that Radeon HD 7970, codename Tahiti XT will be the fastest single chip card from AMD while the Radeon HD 7950 will be codename for the Tahiti PRO product.

These two chips can be matched together and the dual GPU version should appear at a later date, possibly in the first half of 2012.

Some partners believe that new AMD CEO Rory Read means business and that it can turn things around, at least to some extent. However, AMD didn’t have much trouble in the graphics department anyway. The new generation should be good and it will have to face Kepler, Nvidia’s 28nm GPU that will definitely pose a serious threat.

At least from today’s point of view, it looks like AMD will be the first to launch 28nm graphics and as you can imagine Radeon HD 7970 ends up significantly faster than Radeon HD 6970, the current flagship single-GPU in AMD’s stable.

Hopeful 2012 will be a bit more interesting in the graphics world, as 2011 will probably go down in history as one of the most uneventful years since the nineties.

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