ATI Technologies is set to introduce its much-anticipated next-generation product lineup in twelve days, according to the counter at its web-site, which presumably counts time to go till the formal introduction of the products. ATI has promised that the first graphics cards based on the new chips would come to store shelves in late September.

The countdown on the web-site of ATI Technologies points to the 5^th of October, 2005. At press time it was about 12 days to go till the introduction. Officially, the countdown does not explain its predestination.

ATI’s highly-anticipated VPUs code-named R520, RV530 and RV515 will officially be called RADEON X1800, RADEON X1600 and RADEON X1300, respectively.

While the company has not released any peculiarities of the forthcoming visual processing units, from the previous comments made by the firm’s executives and sources close to the company it is known that the new VPUs will have entirely new architecture that supports Shader Model 3.0, next-generation high definition H.264 video decoding, new memory controller and other improvements. A corner stone of the new graphics family by ATI is TSMC’s 90nm manufacturing process that allowed to clock the chips “around 50% higher than products manufactured on older processes” while increasing functionality and complexity of the processors.

The new product family based on the latest graphics processors is likely to boost ATI’s revenues and profits in the ongoing quarter after several times the Markham, Ontario-based graphics chip designer missed its original revenue estimates. Still, it is likely to take some time for ATI’s new products to become popular among consumers.