AMD has tacitly confirmed past claims that its next-generation GPU, codenamed 'RV670' and the company's first graphics chip fabbed at 55nm, will debut in the middle of November.

Speaking at AMD's financial results conference, President and COO Dirk Meyer said: "We will launch the RV670, the world’s first 55nm GPU in the fourth quarter."

Later, he added: "When we launch the [RV670] product, we anticipate doing so with cards available in channels and therefore, we will drive revenue in the quarter. Obviously, with a mid-quarter launch and on a quarter-billion revenue basis, that’s not going to contribute materially to the quarter." [our italics]

These comments cement earlier claims that the part will launch on 19 November.

RV670 is said to be a DirectX 10.1, Shader Model 4.0 chip designed for PCI Express 2.0 boards. It's said two versions will be offered, respectively codenamed 'Revival' and 'Gladiator' - appropriate monikers given Meyer's talk of RV670 driving AMD's loss-making GPU division back to profitability.

Revival will be clocked at 750MHz and paired with the 256MB and 512MB of GDDR 3, both running at 1.8GHz. Gladiator sports an 825MHz GPU and is intended to ship on cards with 512MB of GDDR 4 on board. The memory is clocked to 2.4GHz.