ATI has been around making video cards, motherboards and other computer related equipment for 20 years. Sometimes in this day and age of new companies entering the market place seemingly every day, the longevity of a company making a component is overlooked. The only standalone graphics maker with a longer history is Matrox Graphics, which celebrated their 25-year anniversary a few years ago.
The standalone graphics card industry used to have more than 20 different companies vying for market share like PowerVR, 3dfx, Evans and Sutherland, Rendition, S3, and many others too numerous to mention. Today the graphics market basically consists of Intel and its integrated graphics, ATI and NVIDIA. Other companies like Matrox, Via (S3), XGI make up less than 2% of the market place for graphics in total.
One segment that ATI has really dominated in is the multimedia segment of video cards. The first A-I-W card produced was the ATI All In Wonder based upon the Rage Pro chipset. Subsequent A-I-W cards included the AIW 128, the AIW RADEON, the AIW RADEON 8500DV, the A-I-W RADEON 8500 128MB, the AIW 9700 Pro, the AIW 9600 Pro, the AIW 9600XT, the AIW 9800 Pro, the AIW X600 Pro, and now the AIW X800XT I'm reviewing here.
The A-I-W X800XT was announced late last year. Due to numerous unforeseen circumstances, ATI was unable to release the A-I-W card till this month. In a recent review by my friend Ryszard over at Hexus.net, ATI commented on the various issues bringing the board to release.
