ATI and Nvidia's Same-Day Mega-Launch Mayhem

Introduction

Over the past six months, we have seen the discreet card market saturated with great products on all fronts. New technologies, revisions of existing cards and falling prices make this a fantastic time for those looking to upgrade. Do we need to say it is a buyer's market?

Today, Nvidia unloads both barrels at ATI with the debut of the GeForce 7900GTX and 7900GT based on the G71 chip design for the extreme performance market and the 7600GT based on the G73 for the mid- to high-end graphics experience.

Anticipating a launch, ATI did not want to be pushed out. Today, it answers back with a product launch of its own. Using a scaled-down version of the R520, ATI is introducing the Radeon X1800GTO, which falls into roughly the same performance category as that of Nvidia's 7600GT.

Indeed, this is a crazy time with alternatives coming at us from all directions, whether they are AGP, single- dual-, mid-range or extreme high-end cards. With so much hype going around about which is the biggest, fastest and most-advanced graphics hardware, let's cut through all of the hoopla and see what these cards can do.