Dave Baumann
24-Feb-2002, 00:00
Xbit-labs are reporting that ATi will introduce Radeon 8500XT, a 300MHz R200 based board with 128Meg of DDR SDRAM, at CeBit in March, and also choose this opportunity to debut an 350MHz Rv250 chip.
Rv250 appears to be shrouded in mystery seeing as nobody knows exactly what it is. The assumption is that this is a slightly higher end chip than R200, with a few optimizations for speed. However the Rv250 belies this as the v usually equates to ‘Value’ in ATi’s chip names; if the chip is based on the same manufacturing process as R200 and is high end then I can hardly see this as being a ‘value’ chip.
If the chip is high end, and designed to take on GeForce4 head to head then its going to be interesting to see what optimizations ATi will make, if any. Currently ATi seem to behind the curve in terms of their memory controller in comparison to nVIDIA and this would seem the most likely candidate for an overhaul (although their Hierarchical-Z Buffer appears very effective, when in operation).
Xbit also mention that ATi may be ready to show R300, their supposedly DX9 compliant part, in May.
Read the Xbit-labs report here (http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1013384864)
Rv250 appears to be shrouded in mystery seeing as nobody knows exactly what it is. The assumption is that this is a slightly higher end chip than R200, with a few optimizations for speed. However the Rv250 belies this as the v usually equates to ‘Value’ in ATi’s chip names; if the chip is based on the same manufacturing process as R200 and is high end then I can hardly see this as being a ‘value’ chip.
If the chip is high end, and designed to take on GeForce4 head to head then its going to be interesting to see what optimizations ATi will make, if any. Currently ATi seem to behind the curve in terms of their memory controller in comparison to nVIDIA and this would seem the most likely candidate for an overhaul (although their Hierarchical-Z Buffer appears very effective, when in operation).
Xbit also mention that ATi may be ready to show R300, their supposedly DX9 compliant part, in May.
Read the Xbit-labs report here (http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1013384864)