The Inquirer is reporting on some "known" information about ATI's next generation graphics chip which is said to be code-named R420 (and not 400), although the chip is still about a year away from real distribution (and so this could be pure speculation), a paper launch is expected much sooner.

The R420 is said to be a PCI Express native chip, unfortunately support for the platform won't come until the second quarter of next year with the introduction of Intel's Grantsdale chipset... the Inq dares to hint that ATI is going to develop a PCI Express to AGP bridge so that boards could be used on existing AGP 8x mobos... I would imagine some performance cost will be involved in the adaptation.