ATI to launch RV250 and R300 chips on July 17

[Tanaban]

That's tomarrow!!!
:ph34r: :ph34r: :ph34r:

Article from:
DigiTimes dot com (http://digitimes.com/NewsShow/Article.asp?datePublish=2002/07/15&pages=04&seq=24)

Charles Chou and Emma Wang, Taipei; Christy Lee, DigiTimes.com [Monday 15 July 2002]


ATI Technologies is set to launch two RV250 core-based graphics chips, the Radeon 9000 and Radeon 9000 Pro, and one top-end, DirectX 9-supporting chip, the Radeon 9700 (codenamed R300), on July 17. With the earlier product rollout, ATI is expected to enjoy stronger sales during the summer vacation season than rival Nvidia.

Hampered by the progress of the 0.13-micron fabrication process at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Nvidia’s NV18 and NV30 chips, which were scheduled to hit the market in the third quarter, will not be able to appear on store shelves until the end of the third quarter or early fourth quarter. ATI, on the other hand, has been producing chips on both 0.15 and 0.13-micron processes to secure an earlier product release time. According to the company’s schedule, it will shift its high-end chip production gradually to 0.13-micron fabrication by the end of 2002.

Lacking new products for some time, the graphics card market is expected to be able to be boosted by ATI’s latest chips. The ATI-camp graphics card makers predict that they should enjoy rather good sales from the RV250 products at least until September. However, card manufacturers said that they are also facing a challenge in positioning their products, as the performance of the RV250 chips is not particularly greater than that of ATI’s older Radeon 8500.

At present, Nvidia’s GeForce4 Ti 4200 chips report the best shipment performance in the high-end market, while ATI’s Radeon 7500 poses immense pressure on its rival’s GeForce4 MX series given its highly competitive price.

Industry sources said that ATI’s latest Radeon 9700 is expected to have a significant impact on Nvidia’s GeForce4 Ti chips in the high-end market. However, considering the chip’s overly top-end market positioning and its pin counts, which reaches as high as 1,176, they plan to observe the market acceptance before entering mass card production.

Besides cultivating the clone market with a series of new chips, ATI has been actively expanding its presence in the OEM sector. According to sources, ATI landed RV200-based graphics card orders from Dell Computer and outsourced the production to its partner Foxconn Electronics in the second quarter. Shipments for the orders have already started.

[docbaily]

Sounds great. The R300 should give the GeForce4 Ti 4600 some stiff compitition.

[Tanaban]

Should blow the Ti4600 out of the water :P

[JC Denton]

At what price to the consumer though :rolleyes:?

[Tanaban]

The hardcore ATI I people would shell out more money than any NVidia f3@k anyday!

[JC Denton]

Originally posted by Tanaban@Jul 17 2002, 01:33 PM
The hardcore ATI I people would shell out more money than any NVidia f3@k anyday!
If they're hardcore. At times I've seen ATI's latest more than NVIDIA's and vice versa.

[MP3Chuck]

It depends ... I have a feeling the 250 may be a GF4 competition, edging just ahead. The 300, on the other hand, should be quite a spectacle.

[JC Denton]

Well according to NVIDIA their new chipset is coming out in August. Three hundred for the Ti4600 is probably worth it, but not right now. My logic is when the new goods come out within the next month the GF4's price will drop to something decent.

[MP3Chuck]

Sheesh ... NVidia needs to slow down. By the time people realize they want a GF4 they've got new video cards coming out...

[EyePoker]

I want a geforce 12 plz.

[JC Denton]

Heh, well "some" people can actually afford to buy new peripherals every month. Unfortunately "most" of us cannot. Gotta stay with the market I guess.

[Tanaban]

Although some of us can afford to upgrade every few months, I am going to refuse to upgrade till I can't take it any more. I lub my R200. Till the frame rates start feeling like a Geforce 256 on RtCW I refuse to buy.

[Tanaban]

http://hardocp.com/images/news/1026895703Irl9osWEce_1_3_l.jpg (http://hardocp.com/image.html?image=MTAyNjg5NTcwM0lybDlvc1dFY2VfMV8zX2wuanBn)

The Redeon 250 will be in your local store on 8-18-02 WEEEEEEEEE :D :lol:

[MP3Chuck]

Suggested retail $150??! Wow :o

[JC Denton]

Originally posted by MP3Chuck@Jul 18 2002, 01:58 AM
Suggested retail $150??! Wow :o
One word, BULLSHIT. $150 for a card that punches the GF4 Ti4600 @ $350? No way.

[Tanaban]

I shit you not! Hard ocp got that one.

[MP3Chuck]

Hey, don't shoot the messenger LOL

[JC Denton]

Holy crap, finally a card that doesn't cost more than a CPU :lol:!

[MP3Chuck]

Well if it really does sell new at that price then I'm pre-ordering mine now B)



<!--EDIT|MP3Chuck|Jul 17 2002, 06:55 PM-->

[JC Denton]

Something smells fishy about this. Do we have a complete feature list yet? It's gotta be lacking somewhere if they can sell them at $150!

[MP3Chuck]

Good point ... come to think of it, I've seen the feature list for the R300, but not the 250...

[MP3Chuck]

Well ... here's some info I found on the R250. I'm not sure how accurate it is, though. I got it from the Tweaktown Forums

http://forums.tweaktown.com/showthread.php...15&pagenumber=1 (http://forums.tweaktown.com/showthread.php?s=643df99bfef9415911fe7383baca1f28&threadid=3313&perpage=15&pagenumber=1)

R8500 MAXX

Features
Truform™
Smartshader™
AFR™
DirectX 8.1® support
OpenGL® 1.3
Smoothvision™ Anti-aliasing
Hyper Z™ III
Charisma Engine™ II
Pixel Tapestry™ II
Video Immersion™ II
High Performance Memory Support
Dual Display Support
Integrated Transformation, Clipping and Lighting
Triple Cache Architecture
SuperScalar Rendering
Single-Pass Multi-texturing
True Color Rendering
Triangle Setup Engine
Texture Cache
Bilinear/Trilinear Filtering
Line & Edge Anti-aliasing
Full-Screen Anti-aliasing
Texture Compositing
Texture Decompression
Specular Highlights
Perspectively Correct Texture Mapping
Mip-Mapping
Z-Buffering and Double-buffering
Emboss, Dot Product 3 and Environment bump mapping
Spherical, Dual Paraboloid and Cubic environment mapping
Fog effects, texture lighting, video textures, reflections, shadows,
spotlights, LOD biasing and texture morphing
Dual 400Mhz RAMDACS'

A popular rumour about the ‘Radeon II’ was that it would feature two
Radeon256 GPUs, like the Rage Fury MAXX. As you know ATI brought out the
Radeon 8500, which I think you will agree is a much better GPU than the
Radeon256 and featured a lot more performance than two Radeon256 GPUs.
However, with the R300 in development, and the Radeon 8500 doing so well, it
makes sense to release a dual Radeon 8500 board. A Radeon 8500 MAXX if you
will, so we have more time to spend on the R300 where as the R250 isn’t
going to be as much as an architectural change as the R300 will be. With the
improved AFR™ technique used, we can almost double performance, without any
of the negative effects attributed to SLI. This is the biggest new feature
of the Radeon 8500 MAXX, but there are a few tweaks to the Radeon 8500 GPU.

The card has updated Hyper Z™ to make more effective use of available memory
bandwidth. It now is 100% effective at removing hidden surfaces. Also as
part of it we have given it an extra cache (hence the Triple Cache
Architecture). This third cache stores the Z-Buffer coordinates of the
previous scene; I can’t go into detail on it, but it effectively compares
the cached Z-Buffer to the new one, this in conjunction with our new HSR
algorithm allows for much quicker removal of hidden surfaces. For example in
UT2003 you may be walking down a path, and in front of you is a large
structure. No matter, which way you look, you can’t see the inside of the
structure, only the front. With HSR, the polygons you don’t see are chucked
away before they are rendered. With the help of the cache, it will be easier
to see that those polygons are still behind the front and can be chucked
away straight away, before using our complex algorithm to see fully if the
polygon can be removed, thus saving a lot of computational power, and
leaving more room for the actual rendering of the game. (We had begun
optimising this further but the development of the drivers was
problematic...they might just sort out for the planned release date.)

The dual 400Mhz RAMDACS are integrated in the Radeon 8500 GPU, but only one
in each. The primary GPU houses the primary RAMDAC, and obviously the
secondary GPU houses the secondary RAMDAC. This allows for all Radeon 8500
MAXX boards, regardless of manufacturer, to support dual 24” monitors. With
the R300 we managed to integrate the 2D filters into the GPU as well, that
way we can ensure all R300 boards have the best 2D quality available to
users, regardless of who makes the card. The reason for this is a lot of
customers have expressed their desire for much sharper text at high
resolutions, as well as more vibrant colours. (my emphasis: We have managed
to gain some improvements from this, but its still not great.)

We also have a daughter card that will be made available. This daughter card
will feature full VIVO functions, expanding the features of the MAXX. The
way the daughter board will be attached to the Radeon 8500 MAXX is currently
still to be decided.

A prime concern with customers was texture quality. The devs at ATI have
taken this very seriously, and have taken great lengths to make the texture
quality of the Radeon 8500 MAXX the best of any other 3D product, and from
working development cards it is noticeable better than the 8500. Only other
comments I will give on the R300 are 8 pipelines, and DirectX 9 support.

[MP3Chuck]

I should note that another website states that the R250 has no new features above and beyond the R200, contradictiong other statements of DX9 support amongst other things.

[K]

I doubt the cards using the R250 are gonna be much better (if at all) than a Ti4600...

But then, the R300 in the Radeon9700 blows the 4600 away. Badly.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MzMw
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1656

400 bucks for the 9700. A Ti4600 killer, don't you just love Competition :D

[JC Denton]

How much is the 9000 running for? Was that the $150 card I heard about? If it's on par with the 4600, that is one helluva buy.

[MP3Chuck]

There are official press releases on ati.com if you can get the pages to load. The R9000 is in fact $150. I didn't see technical specs, though, only features.

[JC Denton]

Originally posted by MP3Chuck@Jul 19 2002, 04:30 AM
There are official press releases on ati.com if you can get the pages to load. The R9000 is in fact $150. I didn't see technical specs, though, only features.
Damn man, I'm gunna get me one of those then. If it truely can compete with the GF4 Ti series, then NVIDIA better worry at that price.