ATI, or should we say AMD's graphics group, decided to let its valuable partners to fiddle with their own Radeon X1950 XT cards. The firm won't let its partners mess around with the important Radeon X1950 XTX. That stays DAAMIT baby only. But the final design kits for Radeon X1950 XT 256MB's were delivered to a selected few in middle January, while Radeon X1950 XT 512MB kits are expected in the last few days of this month. This will allow the partners to offer the cards with different memory and we hope that the memory will end up faster not slower on these cards. Quite some liberty is given to these selected partners, who can play with their own design. - The Inquirer

Selected partners customize Radeon X1950 XT cards

This is the last mid to high-end product that ATI plans to launch before the R600 but the partners won't make too much noise about it. In the end it is a good thing as that will allow various versions at a lower price than the Radeon X1950 XTX, which could end up within the same performance range as its bigger brother. A good move, as that would cause NVIDIA some trouble with their GeForce 7950 GT accelerators which are trailing behind the XTX. In the end NVIDIA will not care that much as their GeForce 8 series does well and is really for a new battle. Bring on the goodies and let the games begin...