Well, ATi has let the cat out of the bag. Well, I should say the R350 GPU anyway...Basically, ATi is already with their newest chip before nVidia can put out the GeForceFX which is the main competitor to the 9700 Pro. Well, I should mention that the Tech-Report has a review up of th 9800 Pro card for you to drool over. Here's a clip: Maybe it's just me, but this scenario seems like deja vu to me... kinda like what happened to nVidia's main competitor a few years back: 3dfx.
why would ati release a graphic card before their competitor when they already have the most powerful one ? Apart from power ? Is there anything more to it ? Like compatibility with future DX releases or something like that ?
ATi is just keeping up so as to not get behind. That's what killed 3dfx---well one of the things. It's faster than the 9700 Pro, by how much depends on what its running. If you already have a 9700 Pro, you'd be foolish to jump to the 9800 Pro as the extra performance probably wouldn't be noticable or enough to make it worth shelling out another $400.
yep I just read the review on hardocp, the image quality is the exact same for both radeons, but better than the FX card. $400 is quite a lot of money though. And even IF you could sell your 9700 pro for $300, would the upgrade worth $100 ? imo, if ati had waited, people would have still bought the 9700 pro, and then ati could have released something a lot more performant, to drive the 9700 pro owners to buy the very new one. I find it hard to understand that ati currently has 2 cards in the very high-end of the market.
The 9700 prices should drop some is my guess. Also, the 256MB version will be nice. With 128MB and 256MB versions of the 9800 Pro, there will be a price difference.
