ATI has continued on their roll recently. With the release of their Spring lineup: the 9800 Pro and 9600 Pro, they hold the performance crown for every price point for DirectX 9 cards. Their 9200 Pro will perform fast as well, but is based upon 1.5 year old technology, the 8500 series of cards first introduced in September of 2001.

ATI has released new versions of their AIW (All In Wonder) series of cards with virtually every card release since the first AIW back in 1996. The AIW series takes the core of the current generation video card and adds a TV tuner and other features that normally require a separate add-in card. Features added in the past have included a TV tuner, Firewire, Multiple TV Tuners (mulTView) and others.

Late last year, ATI introduced the AIW RADEON 9000 Pro to the European market. Based upon their mainstream value product of the time, the RADEON 9000, this card hasn’t made it to the United States until very recently. ATI’s lineup of AIW products this spring consists of the AIW 9800 Pro with a MSRP of $449, an AIW 9700 Pro with a MSRP of $399, the AIW 9000 Pro at $199 and the AIW RADEON VE with a MSRP of $129.

The market for video cards that retail under $200 is about 5X that of cards that retail above that. This is why the AIW 9000 Pro and VE are so important to ATI’s bottom line. Sure you can try and convince a larger proportion of the public to purchase $400 cards, but the reality is most of the market about 90 percent spend less than $200 for an upgrade card.