ATI will axe prices in face of Nvidia tsunami

Nvidia is to introduce its GF4 and GF4 MX, so wearing the performance crown once more.

A further aggravation for ATI is that the NV17, known in the argot as the Geforce3 MX, has been through the transformation scene and suddenly become Geforce 4 MX - the number four obviously being a vast improvement over three, unless you're talking debts, of course.

It seems to us that with this product tsunami rolling into ATI's bay, it doesn't have much chance of competing unless it slashes the prices of its current products.

So the Radeon 8500, LE and 7500 will now become significantly cheaper to stay in the game with Nvidia's new challenge. The 7500 will cost $149 and the fresh 8500 should cost $299. Don't forget that we are talking about Dual View + S video and a juicy 128 MB DDR card.

In retail stores the prices are likely to be even cheaper, but ATI does have some cards up its corporate sleeves.

The RV250 is a card expected to arrive at CeBIT in Hannover next month, and we're hearing from ATI developers they think the card is a winner.

They're suggesting that the card will be faster than the Geforce MX4, seeing as ATI suggests the RV250 is 1.5 times faster than the R200.

But when will it be launched, and when will it be available in the shops? If ATI does not introduce these babies very soon and have them in retail very fast indeed, Nvidia might well clean up.

R300 is a puzzling chip. It's a DirectX 9 part that includes pixel and vertex shader 2.0. ATI had its Radeon 8500 in retail when the Geforce 3 was out, but where's ATI's Geforce 4 killer?

If Ati made R300 available soon Nvidia might have a big problem but judging from the past, the chance of that happening are very slim. µ