14 DAY TRIAL // ATI has always been nVidia'a understudy, struggling to come up with better products and better pricing, but with every attempt ATI ended being badly beaten by the master. That's until ATI came up with DirectX9 and a graphic chip that did better than Geforce TI 4600.
That's when the scales tipped in favor of the Canadian company for the first time and ever since the state of balance between the two is ever so fragile.
ATI gained ground and in 2004 became the world's biggest discrete graphic supplier, with a 27% market share. The numbers are supplied by market research outfit Mercury Research. nVidia is getting back in the fight though, getting three percentage back up to 18 per cent.
ATI can finally ship X800 cards based on 110 nanometer architecture and it can offer X850 cards in limited numbers. Another big hit is the Catalyst Control Center 3D Preview Enhancement, which allows users to preview all 3D settings for the following cards: - RADEON X850, RADEON X800, RADEON X700, RADEON X600, RADEON X300, RADEON 9800, RADEON 9700, RADEON 9600, RADEON 9500.