X-bit labs

Friday, September 23, 2005

No Feature-Set Cut of ATI's Next Generation Products – Representative. ATI's Rene Froeleke Answers Tough Questions

The year 2005 has not been easy for ATI Technologies, as the company faced tough competition from the arch-rival NVIDIA Corp. in the high-end, ran into some issues with the 90nm process technology and also had to delay its multi-GPU technology dubbed CrossFire due to stability problems. But the troubles are nearly over, says Rene Froeleke, who is technical marketing manager for ATI’s European subsidiary, who was interviewed by CdrInfo web-site.

These days ATI is gearing up for a number of hardware launches, which include CrossFire as well as RADEON X1800, X1600 and X1300 graphics chips, a lot of rumours and speculations concerning the products arise. As a consequence, Mr. Froeleke had to answer some uneasy questions regarding delays of the multi-GPU tech as well as possibilities of feature-set cuts of the next-gen chips in order to improve time-to-market.

“We came across some issues during our QA testing, and as we wanted to supply the most complete dual-GPU solution, we wanted to make sure that we understand the root cause of these problems. Once identified, we had to test it against all possible combinations of graphic adapters,” Mr. Froeleke explained the delays of the CrossFire.

“We did not have to remove any features from the R520 or any other of our upcoming products. While this was suggested by some rumors, cutting the feature set of our next generation products was never up for discussion,” stated Rene Froeleke.

• CdrInfo.com: Interview with Mr Rene Froeleke of ATI.

NVIDIA’s GeForce 6100 Leaves Behind ATI’s RADEON XPRESS 200 – Web-Site. NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Performance Level Unveiled

Earlier this week NVIDIA Corp. has released a lineup of dual-chip core-logic sets which addresses entry-level markets and bring a new level of functionality and performance for value computers. The new platforms consist of the GeForce 6100 and 6150 graphics processing units (GPUs) as well as nForce 410 and 430 media and communication processors (MCPs). The main question was whether the new products from NVIDIA can outperform ATI’s year-old RADEON XPRESS 200.

AnandTech has unwrapped performance level of the GeForce 6100, a chip aimed at the low-end market, along with that of Biostar TForce 6100-939 mainboard. The platform was compared to so-far the most robust integrated graphics product on the market, ATI’s RADEON XPRESS 200.

“Our first benchmarking tests indicate that buyers have some reason to be excited about NVIDIA’s new 6100 Integrated Graphics chipset family. Despite the fact that serious gamers would find any integrated graphics board far too limiting, the great majority of boards that are used in systems are integrated graphics boards. In our head-to-head competition with the ATI RS480, the current integrated performance king, the bottom-of-the-line 6100 outperformed the ATI in almost every benchmark,” AnandTech has written in the article.

The GeForce 6100 GPU features two pixel processors, one vertex processor and is fully compliant with Shader Model 3.0 specifications. This integrated graphics solution is clocked at 425MHz and uses system memory as a frame-buffer. The processor is made using a 90nm process technology. NVIDIA will also supply more advanced GeForce 6150 chip.

• AnandTech: First Look at NVIDIA GeForce 6100 Performance.