Ready For The Winter Games: ATI Radeon 9800 XT

Introduction

The summer is coming to an end and this means that the peak season of computer games is about to start. The chances for an exciting fall and winter time look very good. There are many very interesting titles in the pipeline.

With the beginning of DirectX 9 generation games, many users will find their graphics card at the limit, although it did a good job in DirectX 8 games. But that's not enough for DirectX 9 games if you don't want to lose too much fun in terms of effects and quality. Yesterday, the card's fill rate and memory bandwidth were the most important factors of a graphics card - tomorrow the factor shader performance is becoming a new and increasingly important coefficient.

Upcoming and already released DX9 titles

On time for the start of the new gaming season, the Canada based 3D chip manufacturer ATI is extending its top graphics product and presents the Radeon 9800 XT - it's not called Radeon 9900 or 10000 as some sites on the web speculated the past weeks - the name is XT, Radeon 9800 XT. The letters XT stands for "extension" or "extended". And this is how ATI wants this product to be understood. It's not a replacement but an upwards extension of ATI's current line of cards. The Radeon models 9800 and 9800 Pro will still be present in the ATI product range. But we expect that all ATI board partners will replace the Pro with the new XT model in the near future.