Yesterday ATI launched three new chips. I don’t know if you paid close attention to their specs, but Radeon X1300 XT and Radeon X1650 Pro are actually a Radeon X1600 Pro and a Radeon X1600 XT with new names.

While all other members of Radeon X1300 family have 4 pixel shader engines, Radeon X1300 XT has 12, just like Radeon X1600 Pro. Radeon X1300 XT and Radeon X1600 Pro run at the same clock rate (500 MHz) and access memory at the same bit rate (128-bit). The only difference between them is the memory clock rate, which is 800 MHz on Radeon X1300 XT and 780 MHz on Radeon X1600 Pro – a 2.5% increase, which is completely negligible and probably won’t even be measurable on reviews.

Almost the same thing happens between Radeon X1600 XT and Radeon X1650 Pro. Both have 12 pixel shader engines and access memory at the same bit rate (128-bit). Radeon X1650 Pro runs at 600 MHz while Radeon X1600 XT runs at 590 MHz – a ridiculous 1.7% clock increase –, while the new model accesses memory at 1.4 GHz against 1.38 GHz on Radeon X1600 XT – 1.45% increase. We bet that Radeon X1650 Pro will achieve the same performance as Radeon X1600 XT on reviews.

So, what is the point of releasing these “new” cards? Just to say “hey, we want to make you believe that we have something new”? Simply ridiculous.

Radeon X1950 XTX, however, is definitely a new product. While it has the same specs of Radeon X1900 XTX, it accesses memory at 2 GHz using the new GDDR4 technology (Radeon X1900 XTX accesses its memory at 1.55 GHz).