ATI RV740 to be a sub-$100 40nm RV770LE?

VR Zone claims the upcoming ATI RV740 won't be a successor to the RV730 but a 40nm version of the Radeon HD 4830 (RV770LE) series. The site claims the 40nm RV740 will arrive in Q2 2009, and that it will have 640 stream processors, 128-bit memory bus and 512MB GDDR5 clocked at 3600MHz.

RV740 cards with GDDR2, GDDR3 and even GDDR4 may also appear on the market. These cards will have a much lower power consumption than the Radeon HD 4830 and will allegedly cost less than $100.

RV740 is often misunderstood as the successor to RV730 which in fact is far from it. RV740 is expected to take the market by storm by Q2 next year as the best value/performance chip from AMD. It is AMD's first 40nm GPG chip with all IP being re-designed and characterized for 40nm. Due to its 40nm process, power consumption clearly will be much lower than HD 4830 yet faster. Performance of RV740 is estimated to be between HD 4830 and HD 4850.