ATI is doing fine in the performance market, the one where cards cannot cost more than $199. And it doesn't have any kind of competition as the TI4200 is hardly a match for this card and FX 5600 Ultra is still only a wish-list item even for reviewers. Not to mention that it's not in retail at least for few more weeks. Still, the Radeon 9500 Pro was great for consumers but not so great for manufactures as it was quite expensive to produce.

Radeon 9500, whether Pro or non Pro, uses the R300 chip, the same one as the 9700 series. That must cost some serious money but this card helped ATI to ship more than million DirectX 9 cards. Of course this was a number before Medion deal so you can easily add 200,000 more cards that it sold in 2 days from release through Aldi and Hofer.

The Radeon 9600 series will definitely mean end of the life for Radeon 9500 series as the 9500 Pro in almost every case outperformed its larger numbered brother.

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