Officially: ATI RADEON 9800 XT and 9600 XT. ASUS ships ATI-based products
ATI Technologies has just posted an official message about the release of new RADEON 9800 XT and RADEON 9600 XT. So, the new chips that will become top-end for some time have been officially announced at last.
It´s hard to add anything to the information already posted. But let´s just resume the facts. Essentially both models are actually the version of Radeon 9800 Pro and Radeon 9600 Pro GPUs with higher clock speeds. Radeon 9800 XT (ATI R360) will have 412/730MHz DDR GPU/memory clock speeds (vs. 380/700MHz Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB), Radeon 9600 XT –500/600MHz DDR. Both models will be manufactured at ATI´s production partner, Taiwanese TSMC.
R360 naturally has all features of R350. But besides clock speeds, there´s another important difference from Radeon 9800 Pro: 9800 XT bases on a new PCB and has a larger copper cooler that however doesn´t occupy the neighbouring slot (below is a photo froTech Report).
ATI Radeon 9800 XT with 256Mb of 256-bit memory bundled with a free copy of Half-Life 2 should be shipping in limited amounts already with MSRP of $499. Radeon 9600 XT cards should become available in October priced $200 for a 128Mb model.
ABS, Alienware, CyberPower, Elite PC, Falcon Northwest, IbuyPower, MDG, Velocity Micro, Voodoo PC, and ZT Group already announced shipments of systems on ATI Radeon 9800 XT and Radeon 9600 XT. As for ATI´s partners, new cards will be available from Celestica, Connect3D, CP Technology, GeCube, Giga-Byte, Hercules, Hightech Information System, Sapphire, VisionTek, and Yuan.
It´s interesting that ATI along with the announcement specially posted that ASUSTek Computer selected ATI Radeon GPUs for its new graphics card series. This proves all our previous news as well.
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