There is a big chance that the R700 generation will carry the Radeon HD 4000 generation name, but there is also a chance that ATI will lose the HD prefix or completely change the name. Since the Radeon HD 3870 is already out, the new R700 marchitecture at 45nm would deserve a much higher number, and that is likely to happen. It is still too early for a final conclusion, as ATI likes to play around with the names, but at least there is a big change. AMD internally toyed with that name, but they did the same with Radeon HD 2950 as a possible name for RV670. And look now we have the Radeon HD 3800 series. But the Radeon HD 4x00 sounds quite nice, doesn't it? - FudZilla

AMD's R700 Series to Carry a Radeon HD 4000 Name

There won't be any RV7x0 chips anymore, as the entire R7x0 generation is now based on the R700 mini core. It is quite simple, a single core on a single die is low-end, two cores on a single die is mid-range, while four or more cores on a single die is high-end. ATI will have to put these R700 cores together and we still don't know how they are going to make the chips talk to each other, but it will use the same architecture chip but multiplied in the mid and high-end market. Sounds interesting doesn't it? It also explains why ATI is pushing so hard for a Quad CrossFireX driver, so show of their Quad-GPU power.

So, from what we've seen, the R700 is a small single core and if you want a high-end you will have to put more of these together. With lower dissipation and 45 nanometer it will be possible to have four, or even six, smaller cores. The R700 single core will be similar to what we seen in the guise of the RV670, but it is still too early to have too many details. The new chip will support DirectX 10.1 and Shader Model 4.1, among other things. Imagine a chip that can have three or even more times performance of the current RV670, and this might give you a glimpse of what is coming in a not so far future...

The next generation of ATI's latest greatest multicore chip has a chance to be close to or to even break the 2 teraflop mark. The RV670 XT chip is close to 500 gigaflops, while the R700 XT might even get as fast as 1.9 teraflops, if not even more. Depending on the final clock the new card might even do 2 teraflops, and this will certainly speed up games or GPGPU calculations, up to four times. Imagine if you put two of these in CrossFire, you might even get to 4 teraflops, but now we are really pushing it.