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ATI rolls out X300, X800 mobile GPUs

Both PCI-E, but only one is a latest-generation part

ATI has extended its PCI Express-based mobile graphics processor line-up further upmarket and downward with the addition of high- and low-end chips to its Mobility Radeon X series.

The X800 tops off the range, providing 12 pixel processing pipelines and six vertex shaders. The part is fabbed at 130nm using low-k dielectric insulation. It provides a 256-bit memory interface supporting up to 256MB of G-DDR 3 SDRAM.

Unlike the Mobility X300 and previously released Mobility X600, the X800 is based on ATI's most up-to-date Radeon architecture and is equipped the HD versions of ATI's SmartShader, VideoShader and SmoothVision technologies. In that sense it has more in common with the Mobility Radeon 9800 that the other X-class GPUs - what defines the latter is PCI-E support rather than latest-generation technology.

The X300 and X600 utilise SmartShader 2.0 and SmoothVision 2.1 - so there's no 3Dc support, for example. Unlike the X800, both ship with 32MB and 64MB in-package DDR memory options. The X300 provides four pixel pipelines.

All three chips make use of ATI's LCD Enhancement Engine for multiple display support, and PowerPlay 5.0 power management and conservation technology. Each chip is available on ATI's AXIOM PCI-E add-in card format for upgradeable graphics. The two new CPUs can connect to the host notebook's main memory using ATI's AGP-esque HyperMemory system.

The X300 and X800 will ship in volume next month. ATI said it already had commitments from Alienware, Eurocom, Rock and Velocity Micro to offer notebooks based on the X800. It also said the X300 would "be featured in many upcoming next generation mainstream OEM designs", though it could not yet name names. ®

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