WE"VE BEEN ASKED many times why ATI hasn"t announced its X800XT PE (Platinum Edition - Press Edition) for PCI-E platforms and we finally have the answer. It simple didn"t want to deal with angry customers as they could not deliver them earlier in any reasonable quantities. Now when yields for X800XT PE chips running at 520 MHz are much better, ATI is very close to share this new card with the world.
I guess that at this time both ATI and partially Nvidia earned some bucks only through PCI-E OEM and SI deals. Retail availability of Intel chipsets, motherboards or any PCI-E graphic cards is still minor so it would not make any impressive margin from its sales anyway. Now when this platform becomes much more mature and available, ATI feels confident to jump in with its Ultra high end product market. As always it"s heavy politics when exactly this going to happen. The card will be clocked at 520/1120 MHz just as its AGP sister and once it"s announced you should be able to buy it. That would be a refreshing change.