ITotals - December `2002
Video
As is seen these days, ATI is an indisputable leader of the industry. This is especially astonishing since after the GeForce FX official announce it's NVIDIA that should be in the limelight, but...
First, there are two turncoats who catch the eye: the newly established ELSA, who early in December declared the change of orientation towards ATI, promptly released as many as five video cards built on ATI chips, from Radeon 7000 to Radeon 9500 Pro, with Visiontek joining in the middle of the month. Interestingly, in both cases the change of directions occurred immediately after the two companies found themselves standing on the brink of a precipice. What was that - an attempt to catch at the last straw or the augmented ability to assess the market on getting into a scrape? Look at Gigabyte's experience - the company was so concerned by the direction that decided to detach its video cards manufacture into a separate division, headhunted the former C.P Technology (PowerColor) vice-president and appointed him director.
The list of video cards produced covers quite a range from Radeon 7500 and Radeon 9000 Pro up to the classical samples based on Radeon 9100 and Radeon 9700 Pro. The former case is most notable for the fact that PowerColor and Sapphire presented boards built on the latest ATI's Low-End chip, while the latter is remarkable for the Sapphire video card, unique of the kind, where the Radeon 9700 Pro is cooled by passive radiators only!
Anyway, ATI consumers and partners are having an exciting time: The immense demand for Radeon 9500 has caused its shortage, not to mention the Radeon 9100 whose demo samples have just been released for public awareness; and that's not yet all - the company is currently at the cutting-edge RV350 whose pre-production models have already been received from ATI. The situation with this new generation of ATI chips is quite confusing: the higher-end R350 is going to be manufactured using the well-tried 0.15 mk process technology, while its lower-end brother, RV350, a 0.13 mk version of today's R300, will be manufactured by TSMC using the 0.13 mk process technology. Interestingly, both these chips will be released simultaneously - this coming spring. Therefore, we are drawing the conclusion - TSMC is indeed having problems with the 0.13 mk process technology, and even if it solved them, its capacities would not be enough for ATI this spring.
In fact, we can stay assured things with ATI are going to be better in this quarter than in the previous: the $5 mln net profits (you won't believe it, but in the previous quarter it ran into $32.2 mln losses) are indicative of improving positions because the line currently offered by the company looks balanced enough, and the backing from partners is strong as never before. This remains to be seen though: for any IT company, the first quarter of the year is not a bed of roses.
This fully applies to NVIDIA either for whom the recent quarters have not been as successful as before. In this quarter, the company may revert to the positive, which is not yet certain though: mind you, the Ti4200-8X is of course a hit but not enough to keep the sales afloat. Apart from it, nothing else is there: the yet undeclared Ti4800 and Ti4800SE are in fact AGP 8X versions of Ti4600 and Ti4400, and by no means are suitable for being a hit. There is also the MX440-8X, but the AGP 8X support is unlikely to add much to the good old and popular MX440. All this is expected in January-February, and in February-March first GeForceFX-based video cards from MSI, Leadtek and 3D Club will start hitting the retail at prices around $600-700. Doesn't look like a successful experiment, does it?
A good thing for NVIDIA is the release of DirectX 9.0 including the high-level shader language HLSL by Microsoft, and soon we can expect first DirectX 9.0 benchmarks to run smashing demos under GeForce FX: albeit a sham, isn't it time we had DX9 application accelerators? If you look at the synchronism at which the DX9 and NVIDIA's Cg Compiler 1.0 were released in December, you are getting thrilled to see what will come of it in about half a year or a year from now.
Enough with the major players - let's turn to the minor contenders of the graphics accelerators market, among them SiS with its Xabre 600 (a 0.13 mk version of Xabre 400) whose supplies started in November, which resulted in Elitegroup's release of Camelot Xabre 600 based on the same chip; and S3 Graphics with its so long-awaited Columbia core renamed into Delta Chrome X9. Judging by the declared specifications, it's going to be some sort of today's Radeon 9500/Radeon 9700. That is, S3 Graphics is definitely not a contender for the major league. Next comes Trident who is most unlikely to aspire to the tops especially after publishing its XP4 tests: the performance is several times lower than in Radeon 9000 Pro. Despite Trident's promises to keep the prices for XP4 video cards under $100, Radeon 9000 Pro cards are just in that price range already:
On the whole, nothing has changed: ATI and NVIDIA, plus the hopeful SiS. Petty players don't count.
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