It sure took a long time coming but the R520 from ATI that is officially labeled as the x1800 is finally here. ATI representatives say that the delay was caused due to a problem with current leakage in transistors and trying to find that is about the same as trying to find a needle in a haystack considering the millions of transistors present in the core. The good thing that came out of this extensive problem solving sessions is that the design of the R520 kept getting better and better and because of this, the final production sample of the core is clocked almost 150MHz higher than what ATI had originally planned.

Now, unlike the 7800GTX from nVidia which is simply a more efficient and enhanced version of the 6800 series, the x1000 family of cards is based on a completely new architecture. The last time ATI did this was with their 9700 series which went on to become the 9800 and then the x800 and x850.  Its also the first discreet GPU to be based on the 90nm process which gave ATI lots of die space to work with. What all this means is that there is plenty of room for growth within the x1000 series for the next few quarters.

Another thing that has traditionally never been done is the launch of an entire family of products. Normally with the announcement of a new GPU, the highest-end version is initially introduced and then some months down the road, the mid-end and budget cards based on that GPU are introduced. ATI is launching cards targeted towards all three segments right away. Below, is a table of all the new cards announced by ATI along with their specifications and recommended price.

Radeon X1800XT	625MHz	1.5GHz	256MB/512MB GDDR3	$499/$549
Radeon X1800XL	500MHz	1.0GHz	256MB GDDR3	$449
Radeon X1600XT	590MHz	1.38GHz	128MB/256MB	$199/$249
Radeon X1600 PRO	500MHz	780MHz	128MB/256MB	$149/$199
Radeon X1300 PRO	600MHz	800MHz	256MB	$149
Radeon X1300	450MHz	500MHz	128MB/256MB	$99/$129
Radeon X1300 HyperMem	450MHz	1.0GHz	32MB/128MB HyperMem	$79

The X1800 family features twelve shaders processors and is meant to compete with the 7800GTX/GT cards from nVidia while the X1600 features four shader processors and is meant to compete with the 6800 and 6600GT cards from nVidia. Finally, the X1300 is meant to compete with the 6600 and 6200 cards from nVidia. Features are same across all cards meaning even the X1300 series will offer SM3.0 and AVIVO capabilities. Due to some time constrains, today, we're only looking at the X1800XT from ATI.