ATI’s Radeon X1900 Heats Up With 48 Shader Units

As some of us already realize, ATI was not the card company of the year last time around thanks to games like Battlefield 2 and NVIDIA’s chipsets. This year on the other hand, ATI might just come back swinging…

At the weigh-in before his title fight, the words “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” would become engrained into the minds of millions. After beating Sonny Liston, Cassius Clay became Mohammad Ali, “The Greatest.” Okay, this is only about graphics cards and not the lives of men in the ring, but the heavyweight battle for gaming hardware has never been more contentious.

At the end of last year, NVIDIA unleashed the 7800 GTX, which came out of its cage with claws and teeth ravaging everything in its path, including ATI’s X850XT Platinum Edition. In October, ATI answered with the long awaited R520, in the form of the X1000 series. The X1800XT took a few good shots, just enough to retake the overall single card crown. Then in October, NVIDIA answered the challenge and released GeForce 7800 GTX 512, basically featuring more memory and higher clock speeds. NVIDIA took both the single and dual titles away from ATI. ATI returned with Crossfire X1800’s on December 20th. Are you starting to see a pattern here? This back and forth competition is getting to the point of insanity. [Read the rest]