One more rumor has just come from Taiwan (the exact source hasn’t been reported, but we suspect that it is someone from TSMC). We received a word that the new ATI chip aka RV250 will be announced next March.
In general, ATI is the most "muddling" company in the world. Sometimes they manage to obscure the issue so greatly that even the specialists can’t make out what they meant. Not to mention the regular users. For instance, it is hardly evident for an unsophisticated user that RADEON 850 is RADEON II and 7500 – RADEON I, and that RADEON 8500 are available at different frequencies (though now this problem no longer exists). Yeah, there was a great lot of issues… Maybe it is once of the reasons why many users regard ATI products with so much look-out.
So, if ATI is the most "muddling" company, then RV250 is "the most muddled chip of the most muddling company". Not because we don’t know a lot about it. On the contrary, there is too much info circulating about it: 0.15micron manufacturing technology, 4 rendering pipelines with 2 TMUs each, 300MHz-350MHz chip frequency, DDR SDRAM or SDRAM memory chips working at 230MHz or 300MHz respectively, 32MB/64MB memory size, 128bit/64bit DDR SDRAM interface or 128bit SDRAM interface, HyperZ II and TrueForm Unit, adaptive FSAA, Vertex Shader Unit, HydraVision, DirectX 8.1.
In other words, it is a fully-fledged modified RADEON 8500 (R200). However, what does the latter "V" ("Value") in the codename of the chip stand for? As we know, it is typical of low-cost solutions such as RADEON 7500 (RV200). There is no R250 chip in ATI’s plans, but there is R300 chip due in Q2 2002. Anyway, things may change before March comes, and RV250 may lose this letter easily. And maybe nothing will get lost and ATI, as usual, will make some indistinct press-release devoted to the launching of another RADEON XXXX, which will be then translated into normal language with the help of other unofficial sources.