Introduction

Just under 6 months ago, ATi had started shipping the Radeon 9800 Pro, which was the successor to the also highly popular Radeon 9700 Pro. Having set the standard with the Radeon 9700 Pro, many gamers wondered if ATi could outperform itself.

ATi took these concerns and threw them all out the window when benchmarks started to crop up. In nearly every case, the Radeon 9800 Pro beat the Radeon 9700 Pro handily. Now, ATi is attempting to repeat that feat with the Radeon 9800 XT.

5 months ago, ATi had started shipping its Radeon 9600 Pro part, which was the successor to the also-popular Radeon 9500 card. Economically, this transition made a lot of sense, as the Radeon 9600 Pro was much cheaper to produce than the Radeon 9500 Pro was. However, from a gamer's standpoint, the Radeon 9500 Pro was superior as it was the higher performer in many of the benchmarks. The Radeon 9600 Pro only started to get more popular as stocks of the 9500 Pro started running out and the 9600 Pro prices started to drop. With the 9600 XT, we hope that ATi will (at the very least) beat the 9600 Pro and hopefully beat the Radeon 9500 Pro as well.