AMD might not be finished adding new cards to its Radeon HD 6000 series, but that doesn’t mean the next generation is all that far away. The folks at DigiTimes say they’ve gotten word from sources at graphics card makers that the Radeon HD 7000 series, a.k.a. Southern Islands, will hit mass production next month.

The site doesn’t reveal too many details, although an earlier story by SemiAccurate hinted that the first Radeon HD 7000-series cards would have 28-nm GPUs derived from the same architecture as Cayman chips inside current Radeon HD 6950 and 6970 cards. SemiAccurate expressed doubt about TSMC’s ability to deliver the 28-nm parts in volume, however, saying retail cards might arrive some time between July 2011 and July 2012.

In other AMD graphics news, DigiTimes says three budget Radeons will hit retail shelves in about a week’s time: the Radeon HD 6670, 6570, and 6450. We already reviewed the Radeon HD 6450, but a quick search at Newegg currently shows no matches for that card outside of a pre-built HP system. I haven’t heard about the 6670 and 6570 before, though; perhaps those cards are based on the Turks GPU we saw in AMD’s 2011 roadmap last year.