14 DAY TRIAL // Advanced Micro Device's graphics division ATI has managed to sell quite a large number of its RV770 based cards, about 2 million to be more specific. Since the market was until not long ago dominated by NVIDIA's cards, this number comes as proof of the great performance capabilities ATI’s products brought to users.
ATI's RV770 chip caught NVIDIA off guard, as it delivered much higher performance levels than the green GT200 with 192 shaders, known as GeForce GTX 260. RV770 helped ATI move up and all the cards featuring the chip were able to bring NVIDIA's similar cards to their knees, as they feature, besides increased performance, more power efficiency.
The reign of ATI's cards might be ended by NVIDIA with the release of its latest GeForce drivers. Even so, ATI might still have some chances to keep the leading position, mainly due to the already announced launch of its future Catalyst 8.12 drivers in December; they are said to bring a good amount of performance improvement to the red team's cards. The latest release of the Catalyst drivers was mainly focused on the addition of features, while the improvements were postponed.
Nevertheless, ATI managed to ship about 2 million RV770-based cards, although it is not known whether the Radeon HD 4870 X2 cards were counted in, or the number included only the Radeon HD 4870/4850 cards. Also, ATI benefited a lot from having aggressively priced its boards, as most of its solutions are cheaper than the NVIDIA counterparts. This could be considered a second hit for the green company, which was forced to dramatically lower the prices for its products, driving it to massive losses.
Since the two companies are known to move towards the most advanced 40nm process technology in early 2009, we may witness a new graphics card battle at that time as well.