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Right along side the Radeon
9800 Pro Flagship product that ATi is announcing today, they
have also lined up 2 other families of products to flank it
in the "Performance Mainstream" and "Value Mainstream"
market segments. These products, as with the 9800 and
9700 , will supercede Radeon 9500 and Radeon 9000 product
lines.
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The
New ATi Consumer Graphics Roadmap |
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1 for each market
segment, starting today... |
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Since a
picture is typically worth a few thousand words, here's
ATi's current roadmap, which shows you the product
positioning and their relative feature set.
Radeon 9600 and 9600 Pro (coming in April)
So, as you can see, all the way back to
their $149 Radeon 9600, this new line of Radeons will
support AGP 8X, DX9 and OpenGL 2.0 with unlimited shader
instructions. Let's have a look at the speeds and
feeds of the various boards and a few from NVIDIA, just for
reference.
A few notables should be
highlighted here. First, theoretical Fill Rate for the
Radeon 9800 Pro versus a GFFX 5800 Ultra, is 3 Gigapixels/sec
versus 4GP/sec with the NVIDIA product. However, it
remains to be seen as to whether the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra
is actually an 8 pixel pipe machine or a 4 pipe setup, or
even something in between, depending on the rendering load.
Also, note the lower
overall Fill Rate of the Radeon 9600 Pro versus a Radeon
9500 Pro. That's because the 9600 Pro is a 4 pipe
engine versus the 8 pipe 9500 engine. However, the
clock speed on the 9600, is nearly twice as fast and the
memory took a shot in the arm as well. Additionally,
don't forget about the new Z-Cache and AA/Memory Controller
optimizations that were made in the 9600 or "RV350" VPU, as
we now know it. Plain and simple, the nomenclature
suggests a Radeon 9600 Pro is faster than a 9500 Pro.
More on this when we get that card in the lab however.
The rest is pretty self
explanatory, so slice and dice this data anyway you see fit.
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More DX9 Eye
Candy |
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Tech Demos galore... |
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While NVIDIA brought you
the nubile renderings of their Naughty Nymph "Dawn", ATi
took a significantly more primitive approach with their new
tech demo, showcasing Direct X 9 3D Rendering and Animation
techniques.
While frankly we're more
partial to Dawn the Pretty Pixie (and what red-blooded male
computer geek wouldn't be?), Sushi the Chimp here is easily
as impressive as the NVIDIA effort. The scenes
rendered here are beautiful and complex. The wire
frame shot on the top right is indicative of the level of
complexity here. We've seen this demo running live and
with complete fluidity on the Radeon 9800 Pro. The
facial expressions of the monkey are very impressive with
almost naturally human, or shall we say "primate",
mannerisms.
Drivers, Test Setup, And Anti-Aliasing |