ATI X1000 Series Released.

[Cova]

I can't believe this hasn't been posted here yet...  ATI launced the X1000 series of cards today - X1300, X1600, and X1800 in various XL, XT, Pro, etc. varieties.  Reviews posted at ... pretty much all of the hardware sites.



http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q4/radeon-x1000/index.x?pg=1 has decent benchmarks (they rate the ati cards a little lower than most sites - I've skimmed over about 10 reviews now just comparing graph numbers), and very good writeups on the new features/stuff.



And this news-post from the same site has links to like 10 other reviews, go there and pick more reviews if you want a better and broader view of things.   http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/8865

[Mr. Analog]

I dunno, from what I've read it seems kind of weak, considering this was supposed ta be the next big generation...

[Shayne]

MrA says it exactly like i was thinking it. "underwhelmed".  Not only has nVidia had theirs out for like 6 months now, ATi is just playing catchup.  Heck ive read that availability on these is gonna be sorta rough for yet another month.

[Darren Dirt]

...and what about driver stability...  :?:

[Cova]

1. It is the next generation - of cards from ATI.  It is significantly faster and supports more features than the X800/X850 previous card that was their top-end.  Yes - nVidia made it to market first with their 7th-gen card, known as the 7800 / G70, now ATI and nVidia are competing on reasonably even hardware again.  It was never supposed to be the generation after the 7800 if thats what you're getting at.



2. I'll complain about availability when it's been supposed to have been available for a while, and isn't yet.  Seeing as it's a day old, I don't see un-availability as a problem yet.  I don't believe anything I read about X1K availability (except online-store inventory status) because every's still whining about crossfire unavailability - since R520 GPU's and crossfire compositing engines are completly different chips, I prefer to wait a wee bit and let availability speak for itself (and then I'll complain, cause I want one of these).



3. IMHO ATI's had the best drivers around for a few years now.  Since around Catalyst V4 they've been very good about monthly driver updates, they're all WHQL certified, and they also have better Vista support so far.

[Cova]

Availability seems to be not so much of a problem...



http://promotions.newegg.com/ATI/101105/index.html



2 days after announcement isn't really all that bad.