ATI's answer to Geforce 6200 TC...

ATI has an answer for Nvidia's 6200 Turbo cache marchitecture. ATI went public with its architecture where it can address system memory and use it for a graphics card, but so far it hasn't launched a card supporting it.

ATI calls it "Hyper Memory" and its X300 chips are capable of supporting this marchitecture. It's not so big a deal for the noisy high end market, but all OEMs and system integrators just adore it. It gives them the power and right to say that a graphic card actually has 128MB of memory, even if the real graphic card has only 16MB or real dedicated graphic RAM.

When you go to PC World or Media Markt, mostly you will see machines powered with low end cards with X300, X300SE or 6200 or 6200TC, when that becomes available. Some of the machines are powered with faster cards of course but the clear majority comes with cheaper low end, entry level cards.

OEMs and SIs now have the right to tell people that graphic cards have more memory than they actually have. It's true to say that, in a way, the graphic chip will use up to 128MB memory but if the graphic card has 16MB of graphic marchitecture, the rest of the 96MB will be addressed from your system memory, that is to say from your common or garden DRAM.

So ATI will join the club soon, and boost its sales with X300 SE Hyper memory. Many OEMs are already selling X300SE and X300 like crazy hot cakes, and the even cheaper X300 Hyper Memory will only help that trend. We expect it either this or next week.


Source : TheInquirer