ATI radeon X1900 XT

ATI Technologies and NIVIDIA Corporation are the famous companies for the manufacture of processessors, known as GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) which operate the video cards. ATI Radeon X1900 is an upgrading of its predecessor video card having 256 MB memory while the upgraded version; ATI RadeonX1900XT, has a memory of 512 MB. Every thing remaining same, it is the memory size, which has impacted the price of the two versions. The former costs about $ 279 while the later costs $ 350.

What is ATI Radeon X1900 XT?

ATI Radeon X1900XT is a rectangular video card with many contacts on the bottom and ports for connecting video displays, USB and other devices, on the sides. It installs in the expansion slot of a mother board. There are three types of video cards; which are:

PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect); accommodates modems, sound cards and video cards, PCI Express is intended for use of powerful video cards and AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) is slot for exclusive use of video cards.

What are the features of ATI Video Card?

Salient features of X1900 XT are as following

Architecture; R 580, Manufacturing Process 0.09, Pixel Shader Pipelines; 48, Vertex Shaders; 8, Texture units; 16, Clock Speed; 625, Memory Clock Speed MHz; 1450, Memory Size  MB: 512.
How Does X 1900 XT compare with other X1900 video cards?

In addition to X1900 XT, there are three other X1900 Products; A1W X1900, X 1900 (Crossfire) and X1900XTX. A comparative evaluation of all these reveals that

• Same architecture; R580 has been used in all of them
  
• Same Manufacturing Process (0.9) has been used in all of them.
  
• Pixel Shader Pipelines (48) are same in all.
  
• Vertex Shaders (8) are same in all
  
• There is no difference in Texture Units (16)
  
• Clock Speed is same in cross Fire and X1900XT (625), while it is 500 in A1WX1900 and 650 in X1900XTX.
  
• Memory is different in all, being 1000 in A1wx1900, 1450 in X1900XT,1425 in CrossFire X1900 and 1550 in X1900XTX
  
• Memory Size MB is the smallest in A1WX1900, while it is larger (512) in all the rest of X1900 video cards.
  
• A fair Idea of price is $ 499 for A1WX1900, $549 for X1900XT, $ 599 for CrossFire  X1900 and $ 649 for X1900XTX

The competition; is it healthy?

NVIDIA and ATI, both being in the same business of manufacturing video cards are natural competitors, but a critical analysis of the product development and launching from both, seems to be a little exaggerated if not superfluous. On one hand the competition has kept them fully alive, to the situation and day to day developments, while on the other hand it hurts them both. The disadvantage of the competition is manifest in the form of reduced product cycle. All products do have their own life and they fade out from market even if there is no competition, yet there is difference in their natural fade out and terminating them through unsolicited competition.