ATI R580 to feature GPU socket?

AnandTech spoke with a few add-in-board manufacturers about ATI's upcoming R580 GPU. Foxconn already claims it has design kits for the R580 sockets but pipe and clock information isn't firm yet.

However, your ATI video card will most likely come with a socket flip chip from ATI. Unlike the NVIDIA socket prototype we commented about yesterday, the R580 socket is geared specifically for a PCIe graphics adaptor, rather than a motherboard-housed GPU socket.

Another interesting rumour is that ATI may be planning to counter AGEIA's PhysX card by using a dedicated scaler mathematics processor on their graphics cards.

However, it may take until March before we'll see the first R580 based cards. More info at AnandTech.