HWM was invited to AMD / ATI’s press briefing on the 4800 series of Radeon videocards on June 25, 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand. I expected a more-or-less rote announcement on Radeon’s answer to the recently released GTX 280 / 260, but didn’t expect the palpable excitement clearly evident in the travel-weary yet still pumped AMD/ ATI executives Paul Ayscough and Terry Makedon. This entry will be more of an observation on the current status of AMD/ATI after a short time with them learning of their latest product and their current focus as a company.

It was obvious from the start that this was not a simple marketing or PR act showing the best face of a product; in fact there were numerous positive remarks about the competition, specifically the newest GTX 280 chips coming out from Nvidia. There were also very specific admissions that AMD/ ATI isn’t competing at the high end with Nvidia, nor do they intend to match up to the GTX 280 with a release of their own uber-chip. What’s going on? Although ATI has never admitted to ceding the super high-end to Nvidia, neither have they really protested claims that they do not have a de facto representative at that price point. And during the briefing, we find out that that’s totally fine with them, even after all of the negatively-tinged commentaries about this non-competition.

                                             Fellow journalists from around the region converge on the AMD press briefing. Here, Tran Anh Vu of the Vietnamese Chip magazine is greeted by AMD Thailand's Country Manager.

                                             Zatni Arbi, a columnist for the Jakarta Post, converses with Le Nguyen To Nhu of Vietnam's PC World.

What’s going on is ATI is playing a different ball game on the same field as Nvidia. While as mentioned above Nvidia can rightly claim to be the best, the definition of “best” is being changed to something that fits consumer needs better and coincidentally, matches up better to ATI’s new focus for its products. This focus is on a “targeted design” that equates to engineering efficiency, both concepts boasting of an underlying basis of performance per watt and performance per mm squared of silicon instead of the traditional (and increasingly impractical) massive, monolithic single-chip extravaganzas of power that was the previous generations of ATI chips.

                                             Paul Ayscough, Director for Advanced Marketing for the AMD Graphics Group, makes clear ATI's position in the mainstream.

                                             Terry Makedon, from whose name the code name of the 4850 came from, expounds on the innovations of the 4800 series core.

This translates to ATI releasing a chip in the mid range and building the other videocards in the lineup from there, instead of the traditional super high end release then trickling down the technology to the less expensive chips 6 to 12 months down the road. In this way, the very efficient design of the chip reaches the majority of the most relevant customers in the shortest time possible, and since it was expressly designed to be sold at the mid-level price point, these initially released cards are not constrained by inefficiencies inherent in a cut-down design and are immediately accessible by 95% of buyers. Nvidia of course is still pursuing the mega-chip route, and as our host constantly reminds us, this is by no means a wrong decision; the GTX 280 is truly a good GPU after all, if less efficient power, cooling and performance per square mm – wise. Plus the GTX 280 is expensive – aimed at the ultra enthusiast crowd, it is not meant to reach the common gamer but rather serves as what we call a “halo” product, casting the rest of the product line under it in a good light.

                                             Some slides from the presentation on the 4800 Series chips.

If the previous paragraphs sound like they were lifted from a marketing spiel, it is because it’s difficult to sound any other way when the marketing material contains no exaggeration and the key people acts in a very forthright and honest manner. AMD knows they are on to something here, and the current pricing of the 4850 (and eventually the 4870 and 4870 X2) is a direct result of the “efficient engineering” mentioned above, as well as their decision to concentrate on the mid-level first and all but admit that the GTX 280 is a better chip raw performance wise. So be it hyped-up marketing or not, the pricing on the product, and the performance evident in the countless full-of-numbers-reviews online, speaks for themselves.

                                             The obligatory "press shot".

If we talk about performance when it comes to ATI’s products, their new definition for it includes a “per watt” and “per square mm” condition. Yet one cannot doubt that this is one powerful chip, even if it will not topple the GTX 280 in a “frames per second” contest. ATI’s design yields the most performance possible from its design; even after stating its mid-range placing, it still boasts 800 shader / ALU units (like simpler CPU cores working in parallel), achieves teraflop performance, uses the latest GDDR5 memory, and has support for DX 10.1, all features not found even in the $300 to $400 higher, top of the line GTX 280. The best part of this is, with the new architecture’s excellent performance scalability, accommodating the ultra high-end can be accomplished by simply building up from the excellent foundation of the 4800 series – a lot of configurations is possible; starting from dual GPU on a single PCB, like the previous generation 3870 X2, to multiple cards in a single system for competing with the GTX 280 monster – possible only because of the excellent price/performance balance of the 4800 series to begin with. Future configurations may even contain multiple 4870 X2 cards – a powerful solution that will still clock under the price of a similar configuration from Nvidia.

                                             The interview session gave us the chance to ask more specific and/or technical questions.

                                              Fellow Filipino journalist Jing Garcia films a quick video series.

So it boils down to this: ATI has come up with a different approach to creating the basic building block of their graphics line-up, starting from the middle and then working their way both down and up the line – and by all intents and purposes, this approach seems to be much, much more efficient than the old method of a halo product being worked down to the low end. ATI then combines this basic building block with smart engineering and multiple tech innovations, creating a strong core from which their counter attack on the top-heavy Nvidia empire can start from. The 4800 series press briefing, more than just a product announcement, was a declaration of a new paradigm, one in which AMD/ATI intends to excel in by fielding videocards that make sense both technologically and for the majority of gaming consumers.