(Column) - Ah, back to the seemingly age old topic. If it wasn’t for ATI, I doubt we would be talking about this stagnant, yet important, topic anymore. The fact of the matter is people, including the editors and readers, are tired of repeating ourselves and demanding (our requests clearly did nothing) products right when they are launched. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t have mind waiting a week or so for them to become available, but with the past couple of product launches, both ATI and NVIDIA tested everyone’s patience. So now, they either have the products ready for retail right when they officially announce the products, or prepare themselves for frustrating demands from the industry.

As we all know, NVIDIA resolved the problem with its Series 7 line of GPUs by making them available on the launch date, and needless to say, they managed to garner a fair bit of positive reinforcement due to something that would’ve never been an issue in the first place. But hey, who am I to complain? As long as things are back to normal, I’m satisfied and so should you be.

While NVIDIA received praise from the enthusiast community, ATI was still struggling to avail its GPUs. In fact, the situation has gotten so out of control for ATI that the first question everyone asks now is not necessarily related to the product or its performance, but rather about availability. While readers were expressing their thoughts on messageboards, the enthusiast press was ringing ATI for answers, and losing trust in its Public Relations Department at the same time. Thankfully, however, it appears as though ATI is genuinely interested in finding a solution to resolve the latency between the actual launch and availability. Yes, I know. We’ve all been hearing this statement for quite sometime now, but this time, ATI proved it with a definitive action rather than blatant hearsay.

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