I spoke with some people at the ATI booth and they are working on releasing a retail mid-range card for the retail market. This card will probably be the 9600 according to them. The one issue they mentioned to me about retailing the 9600 at this point is that the card (right now) only works in 1/3 of the existing G4s so ATI is trying to figure out how to market the card or make it more compatiable.

I to am in the market for a new card (GF2MX cards suck) and I was looking forward to a retail announcement at Macworld :(

The Retail 9000Pro is a great upgrade for many machines for US$170, but admittedly it is then a big jump upto the US$ 390 9800Pro, I'd have to agree that something inbetween these two cards could well fill a whole in the market.

rather than 3DFX.

I would have hoped ATI would introduce a new card in the $400 spot and drop the price on the existing 9800 rather than simply adding a higher price point. Isn't the cost of these cards, like any other form of computing technology, diminishing with time? Where is the ceiling? Or heck, why not introduce a Mac retail kit for any of their current budget Radeons? Personally, I'm in the market for a new card right now, but my budget for such an item is well below $300, and ATI apparently has NOTHING to offer me. How is this good for business?

The article says that the card is G5 only, that it will be included BTO first, and that we are likely to see it in mid-February. Does anyone else think this might coincide with the speed-bumped G5 revisions? A mid February release of something in the 2.4-2.6 range would keep Apple on track to meet the 3.0 GHz that Jobs promised "in a year".

Its going to be a very good year.

Well it looks like ATI monopolizes the graphic cards for Mac again. So long 3dfx it was nice knowing you. Now they probibly
go back to releaseing new drivers once a year again knowing Mac users have no choice.

Does the ATI 9800 Pro SE include those control panels for enhancing graphics that the retail regular 9800 Pro had?

Bring it on, baby, yeah! 8)