ATI re-introduced the X800 and said it would ship an upgraded X800 XL part for the $250-$350 price segment, according to one analyst. ATI claimed that the X850, meanwhile, would offer 20 percent higher performance than the fastest part from Nvidia Corp., ATI's rival. All of the parts are designed for the PCI Express bus.

ATI typically introduces brand-new architectures in the spring, then refreshes the parts in the fall with architectural tweaks and speed enhancements.

ATI representatives did not return calls for comment by press time. A statement released by the company did not include the clock speeds of the new chips, but reports placed the X850 line at core clock speeds of 520 to 540 MHz, and memory speeds of between 1.8 GHz and 1.2 GHz. The architecture will use a 16-pixel pipe and a 6-vertex engine. The X800 revisions will use a core clock of 400 MHz, and memory speeds of between 800-MHz and 1.0-GHz. The X800 and X800 XL chips will use 16- and 12-pixel configurations.

"Whether playing one of today's blockbuster titles like Half-Life 2, or any of the hundreds of other games currently available, gaming on a system powered by ATI's Radeon X800-series cards delivers the ultimate high definition gaming experience," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager of the PC Business Unit at ATI. "The new Radeon X800-series cards reach new heights in performance and new lows in price – an unbeatable combination."

According to Andrew Root, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, the new X800 is manufactured on TSMc's 0.11-micron fabrication lines, a shrink of the process technology which will enable faster speeds or lower power consumption. It will also alleviate some of the supply constraints that Nvidia is currently suffering from, Root wrote in a note to clients.

Click here to read ExtremeTech's in-depth testing review of the ATI X850

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