At an event in Mumbai, soon after the completion of the acquisition of ATI Technologies, AMD announced a line of latest Vista-ready ATI Radeon graphic processors.

The new line of processors aimed at harnessing the richness of Windows Vista includes ATI Radeon X1950 XTX, X1950 PRO, and X1650 XT. According to the company, these processors will deliver the best performance, and the most stable Vista experience.

According to Chris Jones, corporate vice president - Windows Core OS Division, Microsoft, "Microsoft will deliver a series of graphics innovations with Windows Vista that provide a customer experience that is second to none. We could not have achieved this without our partnership with ATI. From day one, ATI has played a key role in helping us design and validate the new driver model at the heart of Windows Vista, and ATI has since developed robust and performant drivers that highlight the capabilities of our new operating system."

The ATI Radeon X1950 XTX supports up to 512 MB GDDR 4 memory that results in fast frame buffering. The architecture employs Shader Model 3.0 that enables simultaneous high dynamic range lighting effects and full screen anti-aliasing. The company recommends X1950 XTX card for Vista, as it provides full support for Vista's image-sensitive features, as also enhances gaming, digital photo, and multimedia applications.

The mid-range ATI Radeon X1950 Pro is the first graphic card to make use of new native CrossFire technology, simplifying the multi-GPU experience, eliminating the need for a branded CrossFire Edition card.

The Radeon X1950 Pro is also ATI's first 80nm graphics core, and features 36 pixel shaders, eight vertex shaders, and 12 texture processing units.

The two ATI Radeon cards in the 1950 series, X1950 XTX and X1950 Pro are available at suggested retail prices of approximately Rs 32,000 and Rs 17,900 respectively.

Whereas, the X1650 XT delivers 3D graphics, excellent performance, and other extensive features of a high end-graphic processor. It enables the system to handle the latest games, HDDV (High Defination Digtal Video). However, the new X1650 XT is expected to be available in November at a price of $149 (Rs 6,705) approximately.

Meanwhile, the company will continue to make chipsets for Intel, with motherboard chipsets and desktop graphics remaining available under the ATI brand, and mobility products like Mobility Radeon and Imageon sporting the AMD tag.

In addition, ATI will be working in tandem with several leading companies and academic institutions towards developing a new technology called "Stream Computing" that the company says possesses the potential to impact each and every sector of the market.