High quality graphics chip, high price
Game enthusiasts are excited about chip company AMD's latest graphics card. And while the technology promises to thrill the eyes, the price tag is similarly mind-blowing. Mitchell Hartman reports.
A Radeon graphics chip (techreport.com)
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Scott Jagow: The chip company AMD has come out with a new graphics card for computer gaming. It's the Radeon HD 4870 X2. Apparently, that's tech speak for "totally awesome." Mitchell Hartman explains.
Mitchell Hartman: AMD's new graphics card musters the power of two really fast processing chips. Bottom line: it does mind-blowing 3-D, says Kelt Reeves of Falcon Northwest, which makes gaming PCs.
Kelt Reeves: Say you're playing a World War II flight simulator, and you just bank your aircraft. You've got to render all those other planes in the sky, every bullet, every cloud.
The new card puts AMD ahead of rival Nvidia in the computer graphics stakes. It also redeems AMD's purchase of ATI Technologies, which developed the card.
At $549, the card is not cheap. But Ricardo Torres of Gamespot.com doesn't think it'll slow down sales.
Ricardo Torres: It is perhaps not the smartest thing in the whole world to blow, like, a month or two's rent on a card and a PC. But, they're escapism, they're entertainment.
And, Torres says, the PC gaming business has always appeared somewhat recession-resistant.
I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.
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