ATI's New Radeon X850 and X800 Lines: A Smorgasbord of GPUs

Final Words

To sum up what we've seen today, ATI is announcing 5 new products, 4 of which are currently viable (the X850 Pro given its current clock speeds/price point just doesn't make sense). There are some very intriguing offers on the table among what's left:

- Radeon X850 XT and X850 XT PE are the extreme gamers cards. They lead in performance and if there's no budget, put this up there with the 6800 Ultra. Of course, ATI says we'll be able to find these on shelves in time to put them in gift boxes for the holiday season, which would tip the scales in ATI's favor, especially if 6800 Ultra cards are still going for extremely high prices and the new X850 XT and XT PE debut at MSRP.

- Radeon X800 XL is an interesting price point. It hits a spot between the current X800 Pro and the 6800 GT. ATI really needs a $400 price point offering, but dropping something between 300 and 400 may help out consumers who don't have the budget for anything more.

- Radeon X800 will take the place of the X700 XT and really negates the need for anything else at a $250 price point. This is a good answer to NVIDIA's 6800 non-ultra product, if they ever make it into the same platform space.

Ideally, we would have liked to see ATI stick with a single slot cooling solution, but if ramping clock speed is important then that's what's got to be done. It is a shame to see ATI lose the single slot advantage they held over NVIDIA, but now both companies are on an equal playing field in that arena.

Of course, as ATI moves to the cooler 110nm solution, they will be able to pull away from the hefty cooling solution. Unfortunately, they're still attracted to the low-k dielectric option TSMC offers on its 130nm process. ATI has seen good success in ramping clock speeds using the 130nm low-k process and they don't want to give that up until they're sure they can surpass that.

In the end we felt that ATI has improved their lineup somewhat, but they have quite possibly done much more to confuse the end user than they did to improve their gaming performance. Looking at the high end X series lineup after today we have the following: X800SE, X800, X800 Pro, X800 XL, X800 XT, X800 XT PE, X850 Pro, X850 XT and X850 XT PE, regardless of how you cut it, that's one confusing lineup. Hopefully we will see most of those cards phased out in the coming weeks/months, but right now we can understand if you're a bit overwhelmed by this seemingly simple launch.

Availability is what will truly determine the success of this product launch - the past year has seen entirely too many attractive GPUs on paper and far too few on store shelves. ATI is claiming that will change here and now and NVIDIA did the same with their 6600GT AGP launch, only time will tell from this point on.