ITotals: October`2002
Video
In October ATI looked again noticeably better than NVIDIA: the former was launching new products while the latter still remained mysterious about the due time of its NV30. ATI introduced in October its so long-awaited Radeon 9500/9500 Pro and 9700, thus making the DirectX 9.0 accelerators closer to users and strengthening its positions on the higher mid-range market - a 9500 Pro based graphics card will cost around $199 and a 9700 based one can be available at $299. The price/performance ratio thus looks very attractive taking into account that the average scores of the Radeon 9500 Pro in the tests are higher than those of the GeForce4 Ti4600. No wonder ATI is still thriving on the OEM market - only Radeon 9700 Pro and 9000 are currently used in dozens of PCs from most majors.
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro
I must say that ATI goes in the right direction: it's ceasing production of its own graphics cards and switching to the NVIDIA's business model. Reportedly, Radeon 9500 and 9700 based cards will be produced exceptionally by ATI's partners who have already announced them (as well as the 9500 Pro; such cards are also going to be produced
by ATI). Moreover, the company stops selling cards under its own trade mark on the retail markets of China and Taiwan except FireGL and All-in-Wonder including the latest model All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro. It will be cutting its share further on the OEM and retail markets of finished video cards. And they will focus on the relations with the card makers, in particular, using the quality control program "Certified by ATI".
GV-R9500
At the moment NVIDIA has enough to worry about: the month was started with price cuts for OEM for the mid-range chips, MX440 and Ti 4200 (a little later ATI made the Radeon 7500 and 9000 Pro less pricey as well), and at the end NVIDIA said that the demand for MX440, Ti4200 and Ti4600, the most popular lines, exceeded expectations. The company wasn't ready for the Xmas season. But this takes place today, and the tomorrow's outcome depends on the chips which debut today. In this respect NVIDIA has nothing to
boast of in October except the GeForce4 460 Go, the senior model of the NVIDIA's mobile line sporting 1 Gtexel/s.
The long-awaited NV30 must come out onto the scene very soon, at least, as a sample - Comdex will begin on November 18 and no doubts NVIDIA will announce its chip there. The latest rumors have it that it will use DDR-II clocked at 1 GHz, but the memory bus will be only of 128 bits, i.e. twice narrower than that of the Radeon 9700. ATI can easily switch over to the DDR-II taking into account that the Radeon 9700 integrates such controller. Besides, TSMC won't be able to finish the work on the 0.13 micron technological process by the first quarter of 2003, hence the consequences with the mass production of the NV30. The video cards will reach the stores in February, at best.
However, today nobody suffers a shortage of graphics solutions based on the current chips: in October there was an ocean of cards on the 8Õ chips of NVIDIA , which is not
surprising, like first announcements of Radeon 9700 and 9500/9500 Pro based cards. The number of cards is growing also because of new players on the market - Crucial, QDI, DFI and reincarnations - Neue ELSA (old ELSA) and BFG Technologies (successor of Visiontek).
ASUS V9280S (Ti4200-8X)
The world beyond has some other news for us: thus, at the end of October Matrox announced the 256 MB version of its Parhelia. Well, $600 for a card with unclear performance and quite weird capabilities... In its roadmaps for the near future the company has not less strange solutions - a 64 MB version of the card, AGP 8X, and 0.13
micron chip full compatible with DirectX9, advanced Fragment Anti Aliasing, redesigned memory controller and rendering pipelines and higher clock speeds.
Another ghost is Imagination Technologies Group, developer of the PowerVR architecture which is now known mostly as KYRO. Some time ago Intel licensed the PowerVR MBX
core (which might soon be seen in the Springdale) from the company and it let us hope that Imagination wasn't going to leave the scene. Moreover, the company is now developing new things. At least, they refused to finish the PowerVR Series-4 created for STM architecture and switched over to the PowerVR Series-5 which is a 0.13 micron chip with the tile architecture, programmable pixel and vertex shaders etc. The release is expected in 2003.
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