by Anton Shilov
05/01/2007 | 11:49 PM
Even though both ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, and Nvidia Corp. plan to ramp up DirectX 10-supporting chips rather quickly, both have reportedly landed additional orders on low-end DirectX 9-supporting with United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) contract manufacturer.
ATI/AMD has reportedly filed a rush order for 10 thousand of 300mm wafers for its code-named RV505 and RV516 graphics processors produced using 80nm process technology. The aforementioned graphics chips are used for ATI Radeon X1300-series graphics cards. If the die size of these chips is about 81mm², then each wafer contains about 790 of such chips, which means that in case all 100% of such processors are fully functional, there are 7.9 million Radeon X1300-series graphics cards coming in.
Meanwhile, according to the Chinese-language Commercial Times news-paper cited by DigiTimes web-site, Nvidia has filed orders on code-named G72 chips produced using 80nm fabrication process with UMC as well. While the number of wafers is unknown, additional orders also mean that Nvidia GeForce 7300-series graphics cards are not going to disappear despite of Nvidia GeForce 8300-/8400-/8500-series graphics processing unit launch.
The demand towards DirectX 10-supporting graphics cards will rise tangibly later during the year when DX10-compatible applications emerge and Microsoft Windows Vista operating system becomes widespread. Nevertheless, in order to get “Vista Premium” logotype computer makers only have to used DirectX 9-compliant graphics adapters, which means that low-end DX9 graphics cards will be in demand for quite some time.