ATI to ship Radeon 9600 early

[Justintime]

By Tony Smith
Posted: 02/04/2003 at 13:16 GMT

ATI has brought forward the release of its Radeon 9600 chip. The part will now ship "later this month", the company said today - well ahead of the original late May target that it was talking about in the run-up to the chip's launch.

The 9600 is essentially a 0.13 micron die-shrink of the 0.15 micron 9500, with updated SmartShader and SmoothVision technology. It also runs faster than its predecessor. The mid-range part supports up to 128MB of DDR frame buffer memory via a 128-bit memory bus. It features four parallel rendering pipelines and two parallel geometry engines. It will ship in standard and "enhanced performance" Pro versions.

The change to the release schedule we gather no less a source than ATI senior marketing VP Rick Bergman, in comments made today when the company announced that the Radeon 9800 Pro has started to ship (see Reg Kit Watch).

For the reason, look no further than Nvidia's plan to introduce its next part, the NV35, in May, claim sources cited by DigiTimes. NV35 is expected to ship as an updated GeForce FX 5800, and deliver significant performance improvements over the current version of the chip, aka NV30. ®

the register

[wonderinguy34]

Any word on Pricing for the 9600 and 9600Pro compared to the 9500/Pro pricing?

[Captain Amazing]

Sill very curious to see how 9600 stacks up against 9500 in benchmarks. A lot of the 'announcement' coverage focused on the 9800 performance. Price news would also be nice too.

[evetsrim1]

I am interested in the performance difference between the 9600 and 9500 pro and whether a version of the 9600 will have 8 pipeline rendering like the 9500pro has, also in how much the 9700 drops in price, in the last week it has dropped from $223 to $215.

[MuFu]

Originally posted by evetsrim1
I am interested in the performance difference between the 9600 and 9500 pro and whether a version of the 9600 will have 8 pipeline rendering like the 9500pro has...

Nope. There's a product coming in the summer which is most likely an 8 pipe, 0.13u ASIC (R390) using some RV350 tech, but that is an ultra high-end part so will have Hi-Z buffering, more VS throughput, possibly an additional TMU per pipe etc etc. I guess it might be called "Radeon 9900 Pro".

MuFu.

[Jeffy79]

Hopefully by then their drivers will be better.. I doubt they are still full proof, since some people have had problems even with the newer drivers.


Jeff

[Dr. Data]

Originally posted by Jeffy79
Hopefully by then their drivers will be better.. I doubt they are still full proof, since some people have had problems even with the newer drivers.


Jeff

Some people have problems turning on a computer, that doesnt stop me from wanting one

[ol' man]

Originally posted by Jeffy79
I salute the men and women fighting for our freedom, and for our rights. War was not present, then 9/11 happened, let the war on terror Rein on!

I guess we do agree on things other than computers.

[MuFu]

Only a week to go now until the release. I would guess that the 9600 Pro (400/300MHz) will have an MSRP of $179-199 and the 9600, $129-$149. 128MB models of course - there will be a lot of discrepancy once you account for AIBs/64MB models. I suspect the 9600 non-Pro will be available for under $100 almost immediately.

MuFu.