14 DAY TRIAL // ATI's next step in the high-end graphics solutions domain is related to the launching of the R520, which is scheduled for this year's June. However, according to the information "leaked" from ATI's roadmap for 2005. And it seems, shortly after this card is released, we will be bombarded with two new offers: RV530 and RV515.
From a presentation slide, it turns out the new campaign ATI is launching to promote these solutions is called "Regaining channel leadership", which points out the company is aware that it's no longer leading the market. We have also found out that the high-end chips will be compatible both with PCI express interface and the old AGP. Currently, ATI is offering separate versions of the X850 cards for the two technologies and the "Rialto" solution allows the PCI-Express interface to be connected to the old AGP 8X slots.
The R520 is the first card graved with 90 nanometer technology and it takes even further the performances of the X850, X800 and X800 XL cards. RV530 is derived from the X700 Pro, and the RV515 has its roots in X300 and X300SE.
RV530 is announced for the second quarter of this year, and for the RV515 the company has decided the period between the third and the fourth quarter.
R520 will also include the solution that competes with Nvidia's SLI technology. ATI's model will have 32 rendering pipelines, but not all of them will be active when the card is launched. The chip will support DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 and GDDR3 memory operating at 1.8 GHz.