ATI Technologies now targets a lot of different market niches and their product portfolio is definitely the largest among the developers of graphics chips and solutions. Since the company’s market share has grown, the drivers for PC graphics cards improved greatly and the execution seems to be a lot better than before, the company’s future now can de described as “promising”. By the end of the year, ATI is going to prove its strong market position and introduce numerous interesting devices to target appropriate market sectors.

In the very near future, perhaps in a couple of weeks or even less, the Canadian company will unveil their ALL-IN-WONDER graphics card based the RADEON 9000 series GPU. Not much is known about the upcoming graphics card, but keeping in mind that the GPU it is based on is aimed in the mainstream sector, I can assume that the AIW RADEON 9000 will be the successor of the famous AIW RADEON 7500. Another multimedia graphics card that is set to come this year is the ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 9700 which is going to become the most feature-rich solution on the market. The product will utilise the latest graphics processor from ATI and will come with 128MB of memory and bundled with ATI’s radio-frequency remote-controller. I have no idea if ATI also built-in IEEE1394 controller as in case of the AIW RADEON 8500DV, however, given that the RADEON 9700 chip consumes a lot of energy, probably more than AGP can provide, I do not think that it will be so easy to design a board that spots an additional controller.

Quite a lot was told about the upcoming RADEON 9500 graphics processor, though, no one was able to name its specifications. Not because ATI forced its representatives to be quiet about this, but just because even ATI itself was not sure about this chip and its technical specs a month ago. In fact, today I also cannot tell you a lot of information about the novelty, moreover, I am even not very sure about the timeframes I was told as well. The MSRP for the RADEON 9500 graphics card is going to be about $199, currently, RADEON 8500 costs the same amount of money. According to our sources, ATI has stopped to produce the RADEON 8500, so, as soon as the company and most of its partners will sell the stock of these GPUs, the Canadian semiconductor developer will unveil the RADEON 9500 solution. I do not think that this is going to happen in less than a month, hence, those, who want to grab something that offers pleasant price/performance ratio, should turn to the RADEON 9700 that officially costs $299.

Later this year, probably in October or November, ATI will start to offer professional 3D-accelerators based on the RADEON 9700 VPU. It is already a good tradition of ATI to supply two graphics cards of this kind: an expensive device for those who really needs it for any price and a cheaper one for the customers “in budget” and different system integrators. The high-end product will be called FIRE GL X1 and provide 256MB of 2.8ns memory, a pair of DVI connectors and a stereo-output. A cheaper card, the FIRE GL M1, will only differ from the elder one with less size of onboard memory and its clock-speed: 128MB of 3.3ns DDR SDRAM will be clocked at 275MHz. Both graphics cards will feature 256-bit memory bus and AGP Pro connector (AGP 3.0 supported). The liter version will not require additional power connector that is needed for the RADEON 9700 PRO graphics card. Last year ATI also rolled-out Mobility FIRE GL 7800, a graphics subsystem powered by Mobility RADEON 7500 for notebooks, that is intended for use with professional CAD and content-creation applications. I believe this year the company will launch something similar based on the RADEON 9000 core.

Now you know some details about graphics cards which will be launched by ATI this year, you will probably express the great interest in the products NVIDIA will be able to offer. Well, stay tuned.