Sapphire, ATI's 100% partner
Author:
Date: 19.10.2005 |
|
3DNews.ru: So, we have got to the most dainty part – Sapphire's graphic cards. However, before we move on to the elaboration of current line of 3D cards, we'd like to ask a few more marketing questions. In particular, we'd like to hear your estimation of the marketing appeal for the ATI CrossFire product line. Will the product line be a niche offering, or it will gain a wider occurrence rather than NVIDIA's SLI for example?
A. Thompson: No doubt, such powerful and far not the cheapest solutions like ATI CrossFire series are always aimed at a certain sector of the buyer's activity. I would not call a niche offering - it's rather a stable target group of enthusiasts always fluctuating within 5% to 10% of the overall demand for graphic cards.
As regards the appeal of the ATI CrossFire product line, I'd like to note that these solutions offer support for most varied rendering modes of load balancing between two video cards - the SuperTiling, Scissor, and Alternate Frame Rendering modes, including support for Super AA (8x, 10x, 12x, and 14x AA). Along with that, you should not forget that to use the ATI CrossFire mode, you don't have to buy two special cards - the second card may be a regular mass solution of the same class as the master card with the CrossFire Compositing Engine chip.
It is still premature to talk about the wide occurrence of such solutions, but we at Sapphire are confident in that the CrossFire technology will be widespread significantly. Signs of that are seen from the powerful support for ATI CrossFire by manufacturers, and consumers showing a permanent interest to that.
3DNews.ru: It is very interesting to know about the fate of super-quiet Sapphire video cards with classical technologies of passive cooling. What is the demand for these technologies, and what interesting is expected in that in the nearest future?
A. Thompson: We at Sapphire are happy about the volumes of demand for our super-quiet graphic solutions. The success of introduction of passive cooling technologies is seen from the fact that many players on the 3D graphic market have started mastering these promising technologies. Currently at Sapphire new cooling technologies are being developed by a dedicated team of engineers, and in due time we'll definitely demonstrate new generations of super-quiet cooling systems.
3DNews.ru: Quite recently, Sapphire presented entirely new overclocking-friendly 3D cards - X800GTO ULTIMATE and X800GTO FIREBLADE. How have the buyers estimated the release of these novelties?
A. Thompson: Sapphire can afford to develop and release unique graphic solutions of the class X800GTO ULTIMATE and X800GTO FIREBLADE, since first of all we work in close contact with ATI in terms of solving engineering issues, and secondly, we have unique developments aimed at providing operational safety of high-end video cards, e.g. due to the overclocking utility TRIXX.
The video cards Sapphire RADEON X800GTO ULTIMATE 256MB GDDR3 which use noiseless cooling system based on a heat pipe offer standard clock speed 400 MHz for the core and 490 MHz (980 MHz) for the memory.
Using the bundled Sapphire TRIXX overclocking utility, these clock speeds can be increased to 520 MHz/500 MHz or even higher depending on the overall system performance.
The version Sapphire RADEON X800GTO Fireblade equipped with a standard 2-slot and a fan removing hot air outside the housing, offers 256 MB of 256-bit GDDR3 memory of 1.6 ns access time and similar clock speeds: 400 MHz/490 MHz (980 MHz).
On this model, the TRIXX utility can increase the clock speeds to 550 MHz/540 MHz and higher.
Another model, Sapphire RADEON X800GTO 128MB, is equipped with 256-bit DDR1 memory in BGA packages, offers standard clock speeds 400 MHz/350 MHz (700 MHz DDR). This card is interesting for its competitive price, and using the overclocking utility the clock speeds can be raised to 520 MHz/380 MHz.
No doubt, the emergence of X800GTO ULTIMATE and X800GTO FIREBLADE cards has found wide response among overclockers and confirmed gamers, especially because concurrently with supply of these models Sapphire launched the Sapphire Select campaign shipping retail versions with a marvelous collection of games where the end user himself chooses the games of interest. Each card is bundled with a DVD with a selection of games by leading manufacturers. The user can play each of the games within an hour before deciding upon which ones to use and use activation codes. The package bundle of Sapphire Select is also up-to-date with cards of ATI Radeon X1000 series.
3DNews.ru: Here we got to the key event of this autumn - emergence of graphic cards based on the most recent generation of ATI's 3D chips - Radeon X1000. What are the features of implementation in this generation of graphics by Sapphire, will the dates of shipment be different from those announced by ATI?
A. Thompson: Releasing a new series of Radeon Х1000 graphic accelerators onto the market, Sapphire Technology traditionally didn't restrict to replicating the reference design and offered its unique development for each of the new product lines. The table below lists the main specifications of the novelties.
 |
Content: |
 |
|
|
Top Stories: |
|
 |
|
MoBo:
|
|
|
|
VGA Card:
|
|
|
|
CPU & Memory:
|
|
|
