ANova said:
How exactly is it different? It's built on the same architecture as the R420, which in turn is built on the R300. The only difference is in the fact that it will support SM3 and above and offer a modest core clock increase. I doubt it will feature more then 16 pipelines and it will definitely not be three times faster, more like 20-50%.
If the hints and rumors turn out to be true, then there will be certain
circumstances where the 520 architecture is a significant improvement over anything else on the market today. The branching capability in the NV4x architecture, for example, while functional, isn't particularly robust / fast. ATI's been dropping hints that they will have a better solution for it.
We'll just have to wait and see.
I could see, at most a 2x increase in "general throughput" though, with 50% being more realistic.