VIVA LA ATI! Welcome back ATI

For those who happened to read my earlier blog on graphics cards, more so on NVIDIA, should have noticed that I had continuously praised NVIDIA for its foresight and performance and shrugged its only competitor, ATI. I brought out this point because a shakedown is in order, ladies and gentlemen. Finally, ATI has just come up with not one, not two, but three winners – its 4800 range of cards (the Radeon 4850, 4870 and the 4780 GX2) which may boost the chances of the laggard PC game industry in reviving itself.

Competition is great (for gamers)
The past seven months have seen NVIDIA dominating the graphics card market in the mid-range and high-end cards segment through its 8800 (featuring both 90nm and 65nm dies) and 9800 series of cards. Needless to say, the high-end cards were exorbitantly priced by NVIDIA when they were released – from $500 to $700! The new 9800 series didn’t have a high price tag as its predecessors, but it was the only high-end solution available for a gamer at one point of time. In addition, NVIDIA recently unleashed the 200 series in the form of GTX 260 and GTX 280 (with old price tags of $400 and $650, respectively) which are the next generation of graphic cards in the market and provide roughly 40–50% more performance over the 9800 GTX (NVIDIA’s most affordable high-end card in the market with an old price tag of around $350). There were often times when gamers and the PC game industry must have wondered whether ATI was ever going to challenge NVIDIA. Enter the Radeon 4850, 4870 and the 4870 GX2 – it will give me immense pleasure and I’m sure to many gamers around the world that ATI has finally released three great cards that are not only challenging the 9800 GTX and the ultra-high-end NVIDIA cards (GTX 260, GTX 280 and 9800 GX2) in terms of performance, but prices as well. Consider the 9800 GTX that is retailing currently around $200 (down from $350), which is the same as Radeon 4850. The Radeon 4870 which provides similar performance in case of most of the games compared to the new GTX 260 (and close to GTX 280) is priced higher at $300. Now let’s focus on the Radeon 4870 GX2 – it has brought down the price of the GTX 280 to $500 (from $650), which is competition at its best. Absolutely divine!

Technology dissected
ATI has gone ahead and implemented DDR5 in its new range of cards. Many of the gamers may question their use because it doesn’t provide a big leap in terms of performance compared to high-end NVIDIA cards which use DDR3. AMD is sticking to a 256-bit memory bus while NVIDIA has moved to a 512-bit memory bus with the GeForce GTX 280. AMD has gone narrow on the bus but has included fast memory (GDDR5). On the other hand, NVIDIA has gone for a wide memory bus and slower memory (GDDR3). The same memory bandwidths can be achieved on both configurations depending on the frequency of the RAM modules. But, DDR5 being the next generation in RAM has the potential of hammering out better performance in future. A narrow 256-bit bus should not act as an impediment to the new generation of ATI cards.

Gazing into the crystal ball
Yes, we agree that ATI has revived the good old days of competition in the form of better products and prices. Not only has it brought the prices down, but has also introduced DDR5 to graphics cards. Speaking of prices, it’ll no wonder give some relief to a lot of gamers who had almost given up on ATI as well as on a sluggish PC game industry, which is reeling under the cloud of piracy and high hardware prices. Pricewaterhouse Coopers has estimated that the PC games sector will fall 1.2% a year from $3.8 billion in 2007 to $3.6 billion in 2012. It’ll be interesting to see how ATI challenges the current kings of the high-end graphics segment – the twin chip-based 9800 GX2 and the 240 stream processors behemoth, the GTX 280. The 4870 GX2 has shown a lot of promise in terms of performance. However, there is one key factor in which NVIDIA scores over ATI – power consumption. A high-end machine equipped with a 9800 GX2 consumes 120–140 watts less than that of a machine with a 4870 GX2. This is one of the critical areas that ATI needs to focus upon. Well, the conclusion you might ask? One thing is crystal clear – the smiles are back in the geeky corridors of ATI’s offices and needless to say, in ours too.

By Dipankar Mohanty