ATi Presents Its PCI Express Product Line

Continued

The last new product is the already known X800 with no changes to the specs so far. All cards offer a native or bridge-less PCI Express interface to ensure the full usage of the new PCI Express bus interface. ATi is confident that they are on a better way than NVIDIA is with their HIS PCI Express bridge solution .

The PCI Express connector of the GeCube X600 XT.

The RV380 graphics processor - bridgeless PCI Express interface.

The GeCube X600 XT stripped.

It's unclear yet how ATi will handle future AGP models. It seems that ATI will continue to use the Radeon 9600SE, 9600, 9800 and X800 for the current AGP product line. Since ATi is not using a bridge solution like NVIDIA - or just didn't announce it yet - they will have to tape out two versions of every new chip. One for the AGP model and one for the PCI Express. One other speculation is that ATI will use a bridge solution for future AGP models. That's the way NVIDIA will go in the future with native PCI Express chips and bridged AGP models.

No doubt, PCI Express will replace AGP in the long term. But the platform is still not officially launched by Intel or others and available on the market so AGP will still be a very important factor for the next 6-12 months, at least in the retail market.

Overview of the new ATI PCI Express card series:

* Specs not announced yet - speculation