ATI Technologies is going to launch its RADEON 9500 derivative from RADEON 9700 graphics processor sometimes in October. The former is rumoured to support all the features the latter does, but provide less graphics performance, for instance, it will have only four rendering pipelines and two geometry engines.
Unofficial sources now tell that the Canadian VPU developer will unveil two versions of RADEON 9500 based solutions. There will be RADEON 9500 PRO for $219, with higher clock-speed and, maybe, with more memory onboard, and there will be lower clocked version with 64 MB of DDR SDRAM for $179, called RADEON 9500. Of course, companies like Sapphire or Gigabyte, may also launch their own products with specific features, like VIVO, that will be priced between these two limits.
As far as we know at the moment, the actual launch date is not yet set, since ATI and its partners have to sell their RADEON 8500 based solutions, which now can cost of up to $199 in certain retail stores. In the worst case we will see the actual graphics cards based on the RADEON 9500 VPU by the end of October.
In fact, ATI is going to have the most competitive line of graphics consumer’s boards this Fall, see yourself:
Professional graphics cards:
FIRE GL X1: 256 MB DDR SDRAM; Dual DVI; Stereo; AGP 8x; DirectX 9.0.
FIRE GL M1: 128 MB DDR SDRAM; Dual DVI; Stereo; AGP 8x; DirectX 9.0.
High-end gamer’s 3D-accelerators:
RADEON 9700 PRO: 325/620 MHz core/memory; 128 MB DDR SDRAM; D-Sub; DVI-I; TV-Out; AGP 8x; DirectX 9.0; Price now: $320.
RADEON 9700: 300/600 (275/275?) MHz core/memory; 128 MB DDR SDRAM; D-Sub; DVI-I; TV-Out; AGP 8x; DirectX 9.0; Recommended price: $299.
Mainstream graphics cards:
RADEON 9500 PRO: D-Sub; DVI-I; TV-Out; AGP 8x; DirectX 9.0; Recommended price: $219.
RADEON 9500: D-Sub; DVI-I; TV-Out; AGP 8x; DirectX 9.0; Recommended price: $179.
Inexpensive graphics solutions for gamers:
RADEON 9000 PRO: 275/550 MHz core/memory; 64 MB DDR SDRAM; D-Sub; DVI-I; TV-Out; AGP 4x; DirectX 8.1; Price now: $77.
RADEON 9000: 250/400 MHz core/memory; 64 MB DDR SDRAM; D-Sub; DVI-I; TV-Out; AGP 4x; DirectX 8.1; Price now: $66.
ALL-IN-WONDER series:
ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 9700;
ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 9500; (Not confirmed)
ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 9000;
Keeping in mind very flexible ATI’s pricing policy, even provided that NV30 is much more powerful and feature rich VPU compared to the RADEON 9700, the archrival Nvidia will hardly be able to decline ATI’s market share in all sectors.
