This autumn should turn very rich in new 3D graphics solutions. We have already mentioned many times the coming announcement of the new NVIDIA NV30 and the beginning of ATI RADEON 9700 PRO sales this autumn. Also we expect new graphics cards based on VIA-S3 Savage XP chip, the announcement of SiS Xabre II and the release of faster Matrox Parhelia-512 modifications. Now we have every right to add one more event to this list.

According to an interview of a Trident representative to Gamers Depot site, the cards based on the recently announced XP4 solution from trident are expected to appear in retail in October. We also read in the interview that Trident will manufacture only chips, and the graphics cards will be produced by third manufacturers. Although the list of companies which agreed to make solutions on a new Trident chip hasn’t been revealed yet. Trident rep said that they would officially announce the names of their partners in September. He also mentioned that XP4 aroused great interest among the notebook makers, because this chip manufactured with 0.13micron technology and built of pretty few transistors boasts very low heat dissipation.

We should also point out that Trident hopes to get beloved by end-users. Their major trump, as they think, is pretty high price-to-performance ratio. The faster XP4 T3 solution, which will cost around $100, is expected to be only 30% slower than ATI RADEON 9700, and 20% slower than NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti4600. However, you should definitely bear in mind that the company representatives very often exaggerate the real state of things.