Web Site: www.ati.com
Price: $399
Availability: mid-September

Look out, NVIDIA. There's a new kid in town... In fact, there are a few. Today, ATI Technologies, Inc. unveil their three newest graphics card, introducing one for each of three major product lines. For high-end enthusiasts and gamers looking for loads of detail at high framerates, they give us the ATI RADEON 8500, the card that we've known as the R200. Those looking to save a few bucks, but still get a solid mainstream processor may opt for the ATI RADEON 7500, also known as the RV200. And for graphics workstations, the new Fire GL 8800 will be the way to go. This preview, however, will focus on the higher-end of the consumer cards, the RADEON 8500, and also introduce the 7500 (sorry, Fire GL fans).

All three cards will be available for retail purchase in mid-September, 2001. And for those of you who may be expecting nothing but marketing hype this early in the game, we're pleased to announce that ATI chose Sharky Extreme to be one of only four sites that would receive review samples of these two cards. And considering that the cards that are still in testing and using alpha drivers, we were impressed with the results.

But before getting to the benchmarks, let's go over the details of these two cards and the features they bring to the table. And at this point, I should note that the bulk of what you'll find in this preview is based heavily on marketing materials and on the presentation we got when Eric Grevstad, of Hardware Central, and I were invited by the good folks at ATI to preview these new cards.