ATI, always on the lookout to spoil one of nVidia's parties, have just announced that they are shipping the Radeon 9800 PRO with 256 mb of DDR II memory. But the Canadians were not content with just that and also announced that they will be previewing the new board running Half-Life 2 at E3 this week. ATI is now shipping its RADEON 9800 PRO visual processing unit (VPU) with 256MB of fast DDR-2 (double data rate-2) memory. The RADEON 9800 PRO 256MB will be available in limited quantities to OEM, retail and online customers.
The RADEON 9800 PRO 256MB delivers full quality at full speed all the time. Built on the highly successful RADEON 9800 PRO architecture, the chip features eight full precision pipelines that provide the brute force and agility needed to render real-time, Hollywood-caliber graphics. The additional memory provided in this new board significantly increases performance at the highest resolution and quality settings. The RADEON 9800 PRO 256MB sets a new standard in 3D entertainment, allowing users to experience cinematic rendering on their PCs.
ATI continues to blaze the trail in the graphics industry, says Rick Bergman, Senior Vice President, Marketing and General Manager, Desktop, ATI Technologies Inc. We were the first to support full Direct X 9.0 and OpenGL 2.0, the first and still the only VPU provider to offer eight dedicated pipelines of rendering power and, with the RADEON™ 9800 series, we became the first to bring second-generation VPUs to consumers. ATI keeps offering consumers greater power and features.
The RADEON 9800 PRO's 256-bit memory interface provides the bandwidth for real-time 3D graphics and ensures that high-resolution textures and characters are rendered precisely. Exquisite image quality is not at the expense of performance.
The RADEON 9800 PRO 256MB graphics powerhouse is available for USD 499.
ATI and Valve, creators of Half-Life, Counter-Strike and other award-winning PC action games, today announced the first public showing of Valve's Half-Life 2 will take place at next week's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, CA. The product will be shown on ATI's RADEON 9800 PRO 256MB, the highest performance 3D card currently available, in a state of the art theater located in ATI's booth (South Hall, 646).
Half-Life 2, published by Vivendi Universal Games, will be demonstrated by Gabe Newell, Valve's co-founder and Managing Director, every half-hour. The original Half-Life was launched to tremendous reviews in 1998, won over 50 Game of the year awards worldwide, and launched a franchise with over 8 million units sold.
Half-Life 2 is pushing the envelope with contextual AI, simulated physics, characters that rival any digital actors in Hollywood, and advanced rendering capabilities, said Newell. When we reviewed all the platforms available for use in the public unveiling of HL2, ATI's RADEON 9800 PRO was unquestionably the choice for showing Half-Life 2 at its best.
This is the most significant game of 2003, said Rick Bergman, General Manager Desktop and Senior Vice President, Marketing, at ATI Technologies Inc. Half-Life 2 will be huge, and the amazing technology Valve has put into the game engine means we'll see a tidal wave of gorgeous-looking products from Valve and others, such as Troika, who chose Valve Source technology as the base for their next generation products.
