ATI's Radeon 9500 Pro - Now Shipping & Faster

Just over a month ago ATI introduced their Radeon 9500 Pro graphics card, a scaled down version of their flagship 9700 Pro. As is the case in today's graphics world, product announcements usually don't coincide with product shipments; this rule of thumb held true for the Radeon 9500 Pro.

The card was announced back in October and it will be in retail by the middle of December, but today ATI is announcing that they are beginning shipments of the 9500 Pro. In order to tide the market over until the 9500 Pro hits the streets, ATI has the Radeon 9500 to fill the gap but as we hypothesized in our first article - the 9500 won't be too competitive of a part.

The reason we're revisiting the Radeon 9500 Pro today isn't to commemorate its shipping status, but rather to look at the influences a redesigned board and shipping drivers will have on the final product. ATI told us at Comdex that the performance of the shipping Radeon 9500 Pro would be noticeably better than what we reviewed last month. How different is the shipping product? Let's find out...