ATI claims its Radeon X1000 series of graphics cards will offer better performance than equivalents from Nvidia.

The family includes the high-end X1800, the X1600 for mid-range users and the budget X1300.

The cards are the first to use a 90nanometre fabrication process, permitting higher clock speeds and use a ‘radically’ different architecture to previous Radeons.

ATI is playing down the importance of pixel shader pipelines in determining performance, in favour of efficient 512bit memory management.

Adaptive anti-aliasing optimises the sampling method per polygon for performance and quality and the cards also allow anti-aliasing in games using high dynamic range (HDR) graphics.

The X1000s incorporate ATI’s Avivo technology, which supports high-definition video playback from Blu-ray or HD-DVD discs.