Further, the introduction of 512MB graphics cards allows game developers to raise the visual quality bar for their next-generation games currently in development.
The Radeon X800 XL 512MB is currently being used by today’s top developers including BioWare; Crytek; Digital Extremes; Funcom; Gas Powered Games; Grin; id Software, inc; Juice Games; Lionhead; NCsoft; Remedy and Valve. Hungry for new advanced platforms to drive development, industry pioneers are already praising ATI’s advancements powering the shift to High Definition gaming.
“New games are intensely realistic and graphics-heavy and the Radeon X800 XL 512MB is designed to maximize their impact by delivering amazing visual quality and performance,” said Rich Heye, Vice President and GM, Desktop Discrete Products, ATI Technologies Inc. “With the Radeon X800 XL 512 MB, gamers will be able to max-out their image quality settings and render highly realistic images without having to compromise on performance.”
“ATI is allowing us to raise the visual quality bar and deliver a new level of realism never seen before in real-time video games,” said Andrey Khonich, Senior R&D programmer, Crytek.
“The new 512 MB cards from ATI will allow us to increase the visual quality of our games and take graphics in forthcoming games to an unprecedented level,” said Jorgen Tharaldsen, Product Director, Funcom.
“When we received the new 512 MB video card from ATI, we got final, absolute confirmation that the future of PC gaming was not only bright, it is undoubtedly going to lead the way to next-generation gaming experiences. ATI totally gets it and is leading the charge!” said Chris Taylor, CEO/Creative Director, Gas Powered Games.
“ATI gave us the head start we needed to develop for the new generation of 512 MB platforms. Developing on the absolute edge of what a PC can do, 512 MB hardware has really allowed us to increase both visual quality and speed. Gamers should be really excited by what a doubling of memory can do,” said Bo Anderson, CEO, Grin.
“No matter what the shader model, having the space to store the best high definition textures local to the VPU is critical. This is particularly important in true next generation development, with complex materials requiring concurrent access to multiple high definition source maps. That, along with techniques using multiple render targets for deferred rendering components and demand for high definition, anti-aliased back buffers mean that the new 512MB development platform from ATI offers us important new degrees of freedom,” said Ian Moran, Lead Programmer, Juice Games.
“The 512MB of memory on ATI’s card makes our games run at high frame rates even on scenes with very high amounts of textures,” says Tim Rance, Chief Technical Officer, Lionhead Studios. “Our games run more smoothly in these cases because everything can be stored in video memory with no thrashing of the texture cache.”
“We developers always like getting more of everything to play with and 512 MB of memory allows us to push visuals much further. With such an immense amount of memory at our disposal, we can get closer to realizing Remedy’s vision of cinematic gaming,” said Markus Maki, Director of development, Remedy.
“The Radeon X800 XL 512MB has both immediate and long-term advantages,” said Gary McTaggart, Graphics Architect, Valve. “Texture thrashing during a frame render is drastically reduced or eliminated. This is even more beneficial in the case of High Dynamic Range rendering (HDR), which we are in the process of releasing for the Source engine, where environment and light maps are eight times as large. Further down the road, memory hungry technologies like 3D textures, used in things like procedural noise for detail textures, some fog algorithms, and color correction, will benefit as well from the capabilities of this new card.”
Radeon X800XL 512MB will be available in May, with an MSRP of $449 from ATI’s board partners including:
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