ATI Technologies said Tuesday it reconsidered the manufacturer suggested retail pricing (MSRP) of its RADEON X1600- and RADEON X1300-series graphics cards in a bid to make them more competitive when compared to rivaling offerings from partners of the company's opponent NVIDIA Corp.

From now on, the suggested retail pricing of the RADEON X1600 XT 256MB will be $179, RADEON X1600 PRO 256MB will cost $129, RADEON X1300 PRO will be available for around $99 and the model X1300 will be quoted at about $79 or so, according to the developer of visual processing units. Earlier the aforementioned graphics cards were more expensive, for instance, the RADEON X1600 XT 256MB cost $249 originally.

The RADEON X1000 graphics family members X1800, X1600 feature completely new architecture that supports Shader Model 3.0, next-generation high definition H.264 video decoding, new ?ring bus?memory controller, a special arbiter processor that assigns workload between arithmetic logic units (ALUs) and other improvements. A corner stone of the new graphics family by ATI is TSMC's 90nm manufacturing process that allows clocking the chips at up to 625MHz. The chips support DDR, GDDR2, GDDR3 and GDDR4 memory types and are designed for PCI Express interface.

At press-time two U.S.-based online stores offered ATI RADEON X1600 PRO and X1600 XT graphics cards for $129 and $179 without shipping. The lowest RADEON X1300 PRO price, according to Pricewatch search engine at press time, was $101, whereas the lowest quote on the RADEON X1300 was $97. At press time the availability of the aforementioned products was not broad.

?The new RADEON X1600 XT is a multimedia powerhouse of features and customers expect a level of visual realism, stability and performance that is nothing less than stunning,?said Rich Heye, vice president and general manager, desktop discrete products, ATI Technologies Inc. ?Get ready, because affordable digital entertainment and 3D games on your PC will never look the same again.

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