by Anton Shilov
02/17/2003 | 05:17 PM
We all are very curious about the final and approved specifications of ATI’s up and coming RV350 and R350 code-named graphics processors because it will be the second time ATI manages to outstrip NVIDIA both in terms of time-to-market and performance in popular 3D-applications. Given that the novelties are rumoured to be unveiled at CeBIT, there is not a lot of time left till the actual products based on the forthcoming VPUs appear in stores.
For instance, this Chinese web-site published a very nice picture of a couple of graphics cards from ATI Technologies that was taken at a hotel in London. <%BANNER[article]%>
The green graphics card is marked as 109-A03400-008, while the red one is marked as 109-A07500-00A. No idea about ATI’s new PCB versions nomenclature they introduced with the RADEON 9500 PRO graphics cards, but all around the web it is believed that the red card is the famous R350, while the green is the RV350. Well, at least, now we know how they look like ;-)
What seems to be more important for the majority of you is that according to this French hardware web-site ATI is going to lower the prices on its graphics cards and processors in March. Honestly speaking it is not a big surprise for me: ATI always adjusts its pricing in Spring. The source claims that the company will lower the prices by 15% on the RADEON 8500 and RADEON 9xxx product lines. The information looks logical, but I assume that some prices may be reduced even more significantly just in order to lower the inventory in order to flood the market with newer products such as code-named RV280, RV350 and R350.