In the end of summer, when ATI announced its All-In-Wonder RADEON 8500DV multimedia combine based on the new 3D chip, they promised to start selling it in the fall. In fact, today is the last day of this fall and the promised combines haven’t arrived yet. Nevertheless, it seems that ATI is still going to start shipping them in the nearest future. At least we think so because some web-sites managed to get AIW RADEON 8500DV samples for review.
However, we have just discovered one very unpleasant thing about the working frequencies of AIW RADEON 8500DV chip and memory. ATI used to claim that the working frequencies of its new AIW RADEON 8500DV will be lower than those of the regular RADEON 8500. But they turned out to be even lower than those of RADEON 8500LE. According to 3DGameMan, the working frequencies make 230MHz for the chip and 190MHz for the memory (380MHz DDR).
Right away the question arises: why did they slow down the core and the memory so greatly? The first idea that occurred to us about ATI trying to get rid of the slower chips remaining in stock seems to be absolutely ungrounded. If it were the case then it didn’t make any sense to use slower memory on n AIW RADEON 8500DV anyway. The supposition about ATI’s possible desire to reduce the cost of its new combine, because reducing the cost of the $500 graphics card at the expense of the memory doesn’t make any real sense.
Therefore, ATI was most likely forced to reduce the chip and memory clocking because of the very complex PCB layout, which didn’t allow the components to work at higher frequencies. Especially, since AIW RADEON 8500DV is not only a 3D graphics accelerator, but also a TV-tuner, IEEE1394 controller, and a means of video capturing and DVD playback with Dolby Digital support.
Nevertheless, the fact that AIW RADEON 8500DV is slower than RADEON 8500 in 3D games doesn’t make this solution any worse. Today this is undoubtedly the coolest multimedia combine. Now we should only have patience and wait for the first retails pieces.