Liddypool
03-06-03, 07:08 AM
Eighteen-months ago, if you were to say that ATI would be the “king of the graphics” world, many – including this reviewer – would’ve quickly dismissed it as “hype”. However, with the release of the 9700 Pro last year, combined with NVIDIA’s inability to execute the delivery of their NV30, ATI came out on top. Regardless of useless amounts of marketing kool-aid from NVIDIA like their recent press release of how they won “technology of the year” for the year 2002, the reality is that they’ve lost this round and are doing nothing from here on out but marketing damage-control. Who can blame them? To best surmise the analogy of the two companies, I offer the following.
If you’ve ever been driving along and accidentally ran-over an animal which jumped out in front of you – you’d like to know for sure that it’s dead. If you looked in your rear-view mirror, however, and noticed that it was still limping around like a fish out of water, the only proper thing to do would be to back-up over it a couple of times to ensure that you’ve ended its misery. While this may be an offensive visual to some, it’s one of the better analogies to describe what ATI is doing to NVIDIA this week with the announcement of three new cards, the 9200, 9600 and most notably, the Radeon 9800 Pro.
ATI’s self-proclaimed “Hat Trick” of releasing three new products is a first in the graphics industry. The 9800 and 9600 series offer DirectX 9 support across a whole range of prices – so even those on extreme budgets can enjoy the benefits of future DX9 games. Just as importantly, they also are the first cards to support the upcoming OpenGL 2.0 standard to which the likes of Doom III is based upon. There’ll be no question as to which technology you’ll want to own when that game comes out.
The 9800 Pro will also be released in a 256MB version next month. Both the Pro and standard 9800 are the exact same feature-wise and will undoubtedly quickly be established as the cards to own for the enthusiasts market. It uses a core clock of 380MHz and a memory clock rate of 340MHz (680MHz DDR) – coupled with 8 pixel pipelines and a 256-bit memory interface, these cards are aimed squarely at the high-end gamer.
If you’ve ever been driving along and accidentally ran-over an animal which jumped out in front of you – you’d like to know for sure that it’s dead. If you looked in your rear-view mirror, however, and noticed that it was still limping around like a fish out of water, the only proper thing to do would be to back-up over it a couple of times to ensure that you’ve ended its misery. While this may be an offensive visual to some, it’s one of the better analogies to describe what ATI is doing to NVIDIA this week with the announcement of three new cards, the 9200, 9600 and most notably, the Radeon 9800 Pro.
ATI’s self-proclaimed “Hat Trick” of releasing three new products is a first in the graphics industry. The 9800 and 9600 series offer DirectX 9 support across a whole range of prices – so even those on extreme budgets can enjoy the benefits of future DX9 games. Just as importantly, they also are the first cards to support the upcoming OpenGL 2.0 standard to which the likes of Doom III is based upon. There’ll be no question as to which technology you’ll want to own when that game comes out.
The 9800 Pro will also be released in a 256MB version next month. Both the Pro and standard 9800 are the exact same feature-wise and will undoubtedly quickly be established as the cards to own for the enthusiasts market. It uses a core clock of 380MHz and a memory clock rate of 340MHz (680MHz DDR) – coupled with 8 pixel pipelines and a 256-bit memory interface, these cards are aimed squarely at the high-end gamer.