Sidney

If you recall, we've reviewed a PowerColor X800 PRO Limited Assassin Edition back in October of 2004. It was based on ATI's R420 ASIC. The card featured an AGP bus and 12 pipelines. At the end of 2004, ATI had launched refresh parts and brought their mid-range market up a notch by releasing a R430 chip on 0.11µ silicon process. ATI's main focus was to fill the gap with a card that would compete with GeForce 6800GT. It was a successful move to introduce X800 XL (R430) with 16 pipelines.
On the other side of the coin we have the high-end cards. ATI did a refresh in this sector as well by releasing R480 which is really an updated R420 chip on 0.13µ low-K silicon process. The problem (if you can call that) was the newly released parts targeted the PCI-e segment only. It took ATI a few months to realize the AGP market is still huge and that they need to have a better support for it. Having said that, AGP users are still getting love from ATI when it comes down to high-end cards.

http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=789&8038

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lazyman

Opteron 165 (2) @2.85 1.42 vcore AMD Stock HSF + Chill Vent II