ATi will take on Nvidia on big time by introducing an R300 that will have DirectX 9 support. The card is an NV25 killer while ATI"s lower market model the RV 250 which many assumed to be an NV17 killer now has large speed advantages over Nvidia"s offering.
While clock speeds are still under waraps, the RV250 will be spawned from the R200, currently branded as the Radeon 8500.
Whle Nvidia is readying its cards for launch in the next fortnight or so, as revealed on Friday, it is still to finish its work to take advantage of DirectX 9.
Samples of the R300 will go to ATI partners in the next two weeks and R&D teams are preparing their card designs.