ATI Announces The RAGE XL(TM) And The RAGE XC(TM) Graphics Card

TORONTO, Jan. 11 /CNW-PRN/ - ATI Technologies Inc. (TSE:ATY, NASDAQ: ATYTF) today announced the RAGE XL™ and RAGE XC™ general purpose graphic accelerator chips. The two new .25 micron graphics chips will provide, at the lowest price-points on the market, high-quality, full AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) 2X acceleration, as well as industry-leading 2D, 3D and video acceleration for corporate computing systems.

The RAGE XL is the world's first volume graphics chip with an integrated Transmission Minimized Differential Signaling (TMDS) transmitter, to support digital flat panels using the P&D, DFP or DDMG industry standards. TMDS provides a direct digital link from the computer to the flat panel, with no need for digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital conversion, saving the necessity and cost of an external transmitter. RAGE XL support for TFT panels extends to 1280x1024 resolution, and use of Ratiometric expansion technology ensures that images can be scaled to any screen size.

``The high quality of RAGE XL's and RAGE XC's 3D acceleration, coupled with the DVD capabilities and chips' low cost, will enable millions of corporate systems to quickly transition to the latest in graphics and video technology,'' said Philip Eisler, director of component marketing, ATI. ``In addition, the RAGE XL will drive mass market adoption of flat panels, because OEMs can include flat panel functionality for no additional cost over the price of the graphics subsystem.''

The RAGE XL and RAGE XC are software compatible with all RAGE PRO designs, and pin compatible with the newly announced RAGE 128 chip. The RAGE XL and RAGE XC allow OEMs to pursue the most cost-effective chip migration and product transition strategies, particularly in the Build-to-Order (BTO) market. The new chips also feature full VESA DPMS and EPA Energy Star power management compliance.

General purpose 3D acceleration and efficient CPU utilization
For 3D acceleration, the RAGE XL and RAGE XC feature an integrated 1.2 million triangles/second set up engine that reduces CPU utilization and bus bandwidth requirements. Comprehensive AGP support, including 2X timing, SideBand Addressing and AGP texturing, further reduce CPU and bus bandwidth requirements. ATI has ensured that the RAGE XL and RAGE XC are optimized for the latest value-oriented CPU's, including Intel's Celeron and AMD's K6 processor.

Also included on the new chips is a 4KB on-chip texture cache and support for Gouraud shading, single-pass bi-filtering, and Direct 3D texture lighting, among other 3D features. ATI offers maximum memory flexibility for the class with the RAGE XL and RAGE XC, with support for 4MB or 8MB of SDRAM and SGRAM at up to 125MHz, providing bandwidths of up to 1 gigabit/second across a 64-bit interface. For low-end systems, the chips also support SDRAM or SGRAM at up to 150 MHz across a 32-bit interface.

``New business-oriented 3D software, such as Portola's Coronado, is bringing graphical query and data analysis capabilities to mainstream corporate users,'' said John McGraw, President, Portola Dimensional Systems. ``ATI's RAGE XL and RAGE XC are the perfect price/performance graphics accelerators for these new applications and will provide corporate users with the hardware needed to make the most of these new productivity tools.''

• Great corporate computing with comprehensive 2D acceleration, and
• integrated DVD hardware decode for highest quality DVD playback
• For 2D acceleration, RAGE XL and RAGE XC provide hardware acceleration of Bitblt and Line Draw, among other functions. ATI's graphics accelerators also support corporate network manageability tools such as Desktop Management Interface (DMI).

Motion video acceleration features of the new ATI chips include hardware DVD decode through M/C (Motion Compensation) and IDCT (Inverse Digital Cosign Transformation) functions which provide full frame rate playback of DVD content, even on lower performance, value segment processors. Image quality is further enhanced through smooth video scaling and 4-tap horizontal and 2-tap vertical filtered scaling techniques which provide full-screen, full speed video play back.

Key corporate applications, such as videoconferencing and remote video training are supported by functions such as multiple scalers for multi-stream video acceleration, bi-directional bus mastering, and full YUV planar mode support.

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