Excellent info! I'm just a bit dissappointed that the X1600 won't be available right away, that was the one card that looks to have a good price/performance ratio but it might be in time for the holiday season.

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Jason Silverman

The 256MB version of that card does look to be an excellent value. I have yet to see any substantive comparrisons. There are some big questions that should be answered soon. For example, "What's the real performance impact of the new memory control and 512bit ring?" and "How much advantage does 16 shader engines provide over 12?" I'm very eager to see the benchmarks and read the reviews of real cards.

I still can't understand the cost of these cards. I shelled out the $$ for a Nvidia 6800 ultra last year, the card is nice, but you can buy a complete gaming console for half that. Can someone clue me in? What drives these prices so high? Is just rich kids, or middle age addicts like myself?

Has ATI done anything about tech support or simplifying driver updates? (haven't tried on for years)

id like to just see patches released every month instead of a new driver set each month.