Tuesday 30 November 2004, 09:33
ATI PLANS TO fight Nvidia's 6600GT with its Radeon 9800PRO cards. Of course we are talking about AGP cards as there is no such thing as 9800PRO PCIe. It's a chimera.
Regardless of ATI's dreams, we know there is a huge shortage of 9800 PRO cards in both shops and through distributors.
Oddly, an Asian source tells us that there's no shortage in Mr Raffle's little colony, Singapore. In fact there appear to be floods of them over there.
Many sources close to ATI and the ones that are actually selling those cards tell us that you can of course place an order but it will take quite a few of what we call in the trade "weeks" before you see the cards.
With 6600GT AGP already available, ATI's partners might be in trouble as they need all the 9800PROs that they can get. Or not get, as is the case. We hope that the situation is going to change but in the last few commercial weeks remaining in this year of delays, things don?t look too bright in the northern hemisphere.
Yields on 9800PRO, after more than a year on market "should" be good but bear in mind that the 9800PRO was once a high end chip and has now been wrenched back to the mainstream.
Usually a graphics card company redesigns a high end core and releases it into the mainstream, but this time ATI just used the same core. That might be the essence of its problem.
We hope that the Rialto ATI bridge to Babylon comes soon, very soon we would suggest. I believe that Rialto can help ATI to make a difference. It might also help its stock price. (ticker: ATIW).
