ATI Radeon X1900 family

Value and Availability

As we mentioned from the offset, ATI have matched NVIDIA's recent performance in hard launching both X1900 cards. Stock is available for order today, and retailers can start selling from 2pm GMT.

The MSRP is US$549 for the 512MB X1900 XT and US$649 X1900 XTX. In the UK, the pricing is £349 and £399 respectively, but this is excluding VAT. By the time you add Gordon Brown's 17.5% you're looking at £411.19 and £469.94.

All the major ATI partners have come to the party. Discounts may vary slightly from retailer to retailer, but for now it appears that the MSRP is holding no matter which brand you buy. The choice, then, is down to the specific in-box bundles offered by each partner.


When you compare ATI with NVIDIA, the story gets interesting. For the sake of argument, we started with the GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB. We found the same EVGA card used in this review, in stock at Scan, for a whopping £586.27 inc VAT. The XFX 7800 GTX 512MB is slightly less, at £528 from OCUK but this is still a clear premium over the new X1900XTX, which we have shown to be an overall faster card.

One question worth asking is how the £470 X1900XTX, and indeed the £410 X1900XT, stacks up against the regular 256MB GeForce 7800 GTX. Sure, the latter is "missing" the additional 256MB of RAM but it is also anything up to £150 cheaper depending on the exact model.

The reality is that if you have £300-500 to spend on your graphics subsystem, there is a lot of choice: ATI or NVIDIA? 256MB or 512MB? Single card or SLI / CrossFire? Stock or pre-overclocked? We hope to address some of this confusion in a coming article.