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ATI announces cards with mucho memory

by: John -
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You've got Doom 3 right? And you want to use the highest resolution textures but heard you need a 512MB video card. Well, you can now get a card with that much memory as ATI launches the Radeon X800 XL 512MB. It doesn't have the fastest settings but it's close and it does sport that large amount of memory on it.
ATI’s Radeon® X800 XL 512 MB Graphics Card Delivers Better Performance and
Image Quality For Top Games

Developers hail introduction of 512MB graphics cards allowing them to push
the limits and make next-gen games look even better

MARKHAM, ON – May 4, 2005 – ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX: ATY, NASDAQ: ATYT)
today launched its powerful new Radeon® X800 XL 512 MB graphics card,
allowing gamers to run today’s top games at the highest image quality
settings possible, at very high speeds, delivering an amazing gaming
experience. Further, the introduction of 512MB graphics cards allows game
developers to raise the visual quality bar for their next-generation games
currently in development.

The Radeon X800 XL 512MB is currently being used by today’s top developers
including BioWare; Crytek; Digital Extremes; Funcom; Gas Powered Games;
Grin; id Software, inc; Juice Games; Lionhead; NCsoft; Remedy and Valve.
Hungry for new advanced platforms to drive development, industry pioneers
are already praising ATI’s advancements powering the shift to High
Definition gaming.

“New games are intensely realistic and graphics-heavy and the Radeon X800
XL 512MB is designed to maximize their impact by delivering amazing visual
quality and performance,” said Rich Heye, Vice President and GM, Desktop
Discrete Products, ATI Technologies Inc. “With the Radeon X800 XL 512 MB,
gamers will be able to max-out their image quality settings and render
highly realistic images without having to compromise on performance.”

“ATI is allowing us to raise the visual quality bar and deliver a new level
of realism never seen before in real-time video games,” said Andrey
Khonich, Senior R&D programmer, Crytek.

“The new 512 MB cards from ATI will allow us to increase the visual quality
of our games and take graphics in forthcoming games to an unprecedented
level,” said Jørgen Tharaldsen, Product Director, Funcom.

“When we received the new 512 MB video card from ATI, we got final,
absolute confirmation that the future of PC gaming was not only bright, it
is undoubtedly going to lead the way to next-generation gaming experiences.
ATI totally gets it and is leading the charge!” said Chris Taylor,
CEO/Creative Director, Gas Powered Games.

"ATI gave us the head start we needed to develop for the new generation of
512 MB platforms. Developing on the absolute edge of what a PC can do, 512
MB hardware has really allowed us to increase both visual quality and
speed. Gamers should be really excited by what a doubling of memory can
do,” said Bo Anderson, CEO, Grin.

"No matter what the shader model, having the space to store the best high
definition textures local to the VPU is critical. This is particularly
important in true next generation development, with complex materials
requiring concurrent access to multiple high definition source maps. That,
along with techniques using multiple render targets for deferred rendering
components and demand for high definition, anti-aliased back buffers mean
that the new 512MB development platform from ATI offers us important new
degrees of freedom," said Ian Moran, Lead Programmer, Juice Games.

“The 512MB of memory on ATI’s card makes our games run at high frame rates
even on scenes with very high amounts of textures,” says Tim Rance, Chief
Technical Officer, Lionhead Studios. “Our games run more smoothly in these
cases because everything can be stored in video memory with no thrashing of
the texture cache.”

“We developers always like getting more of everything to play with and 512
MB of memory allows us to push visuals much further. With such an immense
amount of memory at our disposal, we can get closer to realizing Remedy's
vision of cinematic gaming,” said Markus Maki, Director of development,
Remedy.

"The Radeon X800 XL 512MB has both immediate and long-term advantages,"
said Gary McTaggart, Graphics Architect, Valve. "Texture thrashing during a
frame render is drastically reduced or eliminated. This is even more
beneficial in the case of High Dynamic Range rendering (HDR), which we are
in the process of releasing for the Source engine, where environment and
light maps are eight times as large. Further down the road, memory hungry
technologies like 3D textures, used in things like procedural noise for
detail textures, some fog algorithms, and color correction, will benefit as
well from the capabilities of this new card."

Radeon X800XL 512MB will be available in May, with an MSRP of $449 from
ATI’s board partners including:
*
* ABIT
* Connect3D
* Gigabyte
* HIS
* Info-Tek
* MSI
* Sapphire
* TUL
* VisionTek

For more information on this or other ATI products please visit
www.ati.com.