News ATI introduces top-to-bottom family of PCI Express graphics cards

Press release from ATi

RADEON™ X800, RADEON™ X600 and RADEON™ X300 cards deliver best-in-class graphics and native PCI Express support

Tuesday June 01, 2004
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MARKHAM, ON – ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX: ATY, NASDAQ: ATYT) today launched its RADEON™ X800, RADEON™ X600 and RADEON™ X300 Visual Processing Units (VPUs), the first PCI Express graphics chips in the industry. ATI’s new RADEON X-series products are built using leading-edge process technologies and deliver the best graphics performance at every price point – from the best entry-level performance with the RADEON X300 to the absolute best performance with the RADEON X800.

As the PC industry prepares for a widespread transition to PCI Express, which replaces both PCI and AGP, the legacy interconnect standards, ATI is launching its RADEON X-series of graphics cards. They deliver industry-leading DirectX® 9 performance, stunning graphics and great value for the entry-level, performance and ultra-high-end segments of the PC market. The RADEON X-series is now shipping to customers to help them prepare for the worldwide launch of PCI Express systems.

The RADEON X300 is the industry’s first graphics processor built using the advanced 110-nanometer silicon process from TSMC. This allows ATI to deliver a quad-pipe, DirectX 9 architecture with exceptional value and with excellent performance in today’s advanced DirectX 9 games – a first in the industry. The feature-rich architecture includes support for fast multisampling anti-aliasing, full-speed, full-precision shaders and delivers twice the performance of previous entry-level offerings.

Both the RADEON X600 and RADEON X800 are built using TSMC’s low k, 130-nanometer silicon process to deliver high-speed, high-performance visual processors for home or office use. Featuring advanced image quality and performance enhancing technologies originally found only in high-end VPUs, the RADEON X600 is perfect for the high-volume mainstream and performance segments of the market.

For enthusiasts and power users, the RADEON X800 enables high-definition gaming through its award-winning performance and exclusive features such as 3Dc™, ATI’s new image enhancement compression technology. 3Dc easily allows game developers to create better-looking games by using high-resolution normal maps. The RADEON X800’s highly parallel, scalable architecture, high-speed GDDR3 memory and high engine clock speeds makes the RADEON X800 products the fastest on the planet.

“It has been our focus and commitment, since the early development of PCI Express, to be the graphics card of choice for OEMs and system integrators at this critical transition,” said Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President Marketing and General Manager, Desktop, ATI Technologies. “Our customers wanted native PCI Express for their systems and we delivered. As OEMs and system builders announce their new systems over the coming weeks that will be apparent.”

ATI’s RADEON X-series visual processors use a full, native 16-lane PCI Express bus interconnect to transfer data between the VPU and CPU in both directions simultaneously. They offer flexible support for multi-display configurations including VGA, DVI and TV out. The RADEON X-series of products are supported by ATI’s CATALYST suite of software which includes a unified display driver and Hydravision, ATI’s multi-display management software.

ATI and its worldwide board partners will offer several configurations of graphics boards based on the RADEON X800, RADEON X600 and RADEON X300 VPUs. Initially ATI and its board partners will focus on supplying products to OEMs, system builders and channel distributors to speed their introduction of PCI Express systems. As the upgrade and built-it-yourself market develops, both ATI and its partners will offer RADEON X800, RADEON X600 and RADEON X300 products in various configurations through retail.

ATI’s partners include ABIT, ASUS, Celestica, Club 3D, Connect 3D, Diamond, Elsa, FIC, Gigabyte, Hightech Information Systems, Info-Tek, MSI, Sapphire, Tul, VisionTek, Xpertvision and Yuan.

System integrators and OEMs will begin to announce new PCI Express systems, including ATI VPUs, later this month.

For additional information regarding ATI’s PCI Express efforts and other newly introduced PCI Express products for the workstation and notebook markets please visit www.ati.com.

 

man, i've not had internet access for a while, and my first day back i read about pci express finally being here! it's crazy!

 

If i'm wrong i'm going to make one *** of my self but.

ATI announced the Graphics cards.

I have heard jack crap about any motherboards though.

/me attempts to put a X800 in an agp slot using a hammor and a

 

Hmmmm, i noticed no pictures

 

i think its only a soft release (all on paper) i could be wrong