ATI to Revive RADEON 8500: Introduces RADEON 9100

by Anton Shilov
12/09/2002 | 08:11 AM

About six month have passed since the RADEON 9000 and RADEON 9000 PRO were introduced. Initially, ATI Technologies wanted their RADEON 9000 PRO to substitute the lower-end RADEON 8500LE-based graphics cards, while the RADEON 9700PRO and RADEON 9500/9500 PRO should compete in the other market segments. However, something in their plans was not correct. RADEON 9500 and RADEON 9500 PRO were unveiled and started to appear on the market only recently, while the RADEON 8500/8500LE powered devices that are a bit faster compared to the RADEON 9000 and even RADEON 9000 PRO are still in the channel. Furthermore, sources claim that there are still hundreds of thousands RADEON 8500 graphics processors in ATI Technologies’ stock.

In order to sell off the current RADEON 8500 (8500LE) GPUs and not to confuse the market, ATI decided to rename the part to the RADEON 9100. As a result, at the moment ATI and their AIB partners can offer a rather logical line of products with different features and performance. I will remind them all:

• RADEON 9000: 4 rendering pipelines with 1 TMU per each, 1 Vertex Shader processor, DirectX 8.1 support, core-clock: 250MHz, memory clock: 400MHz. Price: $60.
• RADEON 9000 PRO: 4 rendering pipelines with 1 TMU per each, 1 Vertex Shader processor, DirectX 8.1 support, core-clock: 275MHz, memory clock: 550MHz. Price: $80.
• RADEON 9100: 4 rendering pipelines with 2 TMU per each, 1 Vertex Shader processor, 1 T&L unit; DirectX 8.1 support, core-clock: 250MHz, memory clock: 500MHz. Price: to be decided.
• RADEON 9500 64MB: 4 rendering pipelines with 1 TMU per each, 4 Vertex Shader processors, DirectX 9.0 support, core-clock: 275MHz, memory clock: 540MHz, memory bus: 128 bit. Price: $150.
• RADEON 9500 128MB: 4 rendering pipelines with 1 TMU per each, 4 Vertex Shader processors, DirectX 9.0 support, core-clock: 275MHz, memory clock: 540MHz, memory bus: 256 bit. Price: $170.
• RADEON 9500 PRO 128MB: 8 rendering pipelines with 1 TMU per each, 4 Vertex Shader processors, DirectX 9.0 support, core-clock: 275MHz, memory clock: 540MHz, memory bus: 128 bit. Price: $190.
• RADEON 9700: 8 rendering pipelines with 1 TMU per each, 4 Vertex Shader processors, DirectX 9.0 support, core-clock: 275MHz, memory clock: 540MHz, memory bus: 256 bit. Price: $260.
• RADEON 9700 PRO: 8 rendering pipelines with 1 TMU per each, 4 Vertex Shader processors, DirectX 9.0 support, core-clock: 325MHz, memory clock: 620MHz, memory bus: 256 bit. Price: $290.

Although the line-up now looks better than the one with the RADEON 8500/8500LE involved, there are still a lot of things to consider for ATI and its partners. For instance, there are three graphics cards to cover $150-$200 market segment, according to PriceWatch, but there are no graphics cards to compete with the lower-end GeForce4 Ti4200 models that cost from $110 to $150 depending on the model in the USA. Moreover, it seems that the RADEON 9500 64MB is not as fast as some of the GeForce4 Ti4200, hence, should be priced at about $125 in order to compete with them successfully (in fact, the RADEON 9500 is faster than the GeForce4 Ti4200 with anisotropic filtering enabled, moreover, it can support the DirectX 9.0 features and offers numerous other advantages).

Well, to sum up, ATI solved the problem with product branding. Let us wait a bit until the market itself will solve the price-related issues.