ATI's new bowl of chips

Like a steamroller, ATI's RADEON cards have flattened NVIDIA's GeForce FX. And now the semi-trailer has arrived to make sure NVIDIA is kept on its face.

We're sure everyone is just about recovered from the impact of the R300. Wow, now how good was that chip. . . heck, the little blighter's still churning throught the polygons, chucking them all over shop better than NVIDIA's latest.

Amazing to think it's all on a 0.15-micron process. But that's super-efficient, top-of-the-class engineering for you. And you can't slow that sort of development down. Not even with a sledge hammer through a prototype.

And that's why we've got this unbelievably unbelievable piece of juicy news -- ATI is set to release, rather soon in fact, the R280, R350 and, if you can comprehend it, the R400.

Now that's an accelerated product cycle.

The RADEON 9200/9200 PRO (R280) is a toasty little card set for release in April. It'll be a DX 8.1 compatible card with AGP 8x. It looks to be a refresh for the 8500/9100 range of cards.

Next is the RADEON 9800 PRO (R350). Now this sucker's going to rock. Expect it around April/May, carrying a DX 9 compatible chip, flogging the polygons at 400MHz, and storing textures at 375MHz.

Word is that the 9800 currently smacks the GeForce FX by 45% in 3DMark03, and 55% in Unreal Tournament 2003. Narly, narly and narly. With some luck, we'll get our hands on some solid bench scores.

Finally, the as-of-yet unannounced R400. No proper name for it yet, but apparently it'll sport a 450MHz or above core and a memory speed of at least 400MHz, and goes to show you don't need 1GHz to make fast chip. With DX 9 support and AGP 8x, it'll be hard for this future creation to step wrong.

So, there it is. Some nice drooly specs and three extra things for our wishlist. It's times like these you really need a time machine. Or Christmas every day of the year.