I am actually surprised to hear that the creation of the 512 MB unit card was not really that much of a challenge for ATI. The new ATI RADEON X850 XT card will definitely give those gamers the edge that they are looking for. Speaking for myself, I am quite content with old 128 MB ATI card. Being I don’t play many games on PC (outside of UT), it does the job for me just fine.

ATI Technologies showcased on Thursday its first graphics card with 512MB of GDDR3 memory, especially noticing that the design challenge about the actual board was not that serious. Still, it is yet unclear whether and when such products are projected to emerge in retail.

“I wouldn’t think this would be a substantial rework, certainly not like designing a new board design from scratch,” ATI’s spokeswoman Patricia Mikula said.

ATI RADEON X850 XT 512MB graphics card looks similar to ATI’s RADEON X850 XT 256MB flavour: both have nearly the same power supply circuitry, coolers, etc., the actual difference is in memory layout.