ATI Technologies, a leading supplier of graphics processors, is intending to introduce a special graphics product for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and system integrators (SIs) that will have Radeon X1900 brand-name, but a bit lowered performance. The part will be available in relatively low quantities and will hardly make it to the retail, sources close to the company said.

The Radeon X1900 GT will sport a cut-down version of the Radeon X1900 graphics processor with 36 pixel processors and 12 texture units. While some of the Radeon X1900 GT parts will sport ?fallout?R580 chips that do not have 48 pixel processors fully-functional, quite a lot of such products will feature fully-fledged R580 chips with some of execution units halted.

ATI and its arch-rival Nvidia Corp. are known for releasing special editions of their products to OEMs and SIs. For instance, back in 2004 ATI introduced Radeon X800 SE product targeting system builders and very few of such boards leaked to the retail market eventually. The Radeon X1900 GT is also likely to have similar destiny: there will be only 25 thousand units available to computer makers worldwide only.

For mass performance-mainstream market the company will offer its code-named RV570 graphics chip with 36 pixel shader processors, 12 texture units and 256-bit memory bus later during the year. The product will be branded as the Radeon X1900 GTO and will be targeted at below $299 segment. The RV570 is planned to be released commercially for back-to-school season, in the meantime, users seeking for graphics cards priced at about $300 or below should pay attention to the Radeon X1800 XT 256MB, Radeon X1800 XL 256MB and Radeon X1800 GTO.

Markham, Ontario-based graphics chip designer is also mulling Radeon X1900 XL introduction, a product that will have performance a bit higher compared to the Radeon X1800 XT 512MB. So far no concrete decision has been made, even though some suppliers of add-in cards have openly discussed the product's market positioning.