ATI has now officially released its X1K range of products, in a design which brings so many changes to the company's line-up that it becomes hard to keep up. ATI may have been left behind by nVidia this summer but the Canadians are back and they want top spot.
ATI's new cards have been known as R520 and as Fudo but none of these names have helped them turn up on time for the company. Initially expected in May/June 2005, in time to compete with nVidia's GeForce 7800 GTX, the cards were delayed. Rumors that the 90nm process had been causing ATI engineers sleepless nights or that part of the XBox 360 deal with Microsoft stipulated a delay of the R520 until X360 was ready have been dismissed by the graphics giant. The company claims, instead, that a simple circuit bug kept clock speeds down and resulted in a revision of the design causing the delay. Conspiracy theorists however, insist that there was no way that ATI could have the Xenos chip for X360 using the 90nm process ready on time and already in mass production but still claim that the R520 was facing design problems. Whatever the reasons behind the delay the fact remains that ATI lost valuable ground, to arch-rival nVidia, in the battle for graphics supremacy and the pressure is now on the X1K range to produce a winning performance for the company.
