With what was undoubtedly the most awaited moment remaining for the year in the way of milestone hardware releases, the time is finally upon us in which ATI lift the curtains on their new GPU weapons in the R5-series. Making up the new family are three completely new base SKUs in the ATI Radeon X1800, ATI Radeon X1600 and ATI Radeon X1300, respectively using codes R520, RV530 and RV515. There's been much in the way of rumours, discussion, and confusion over the past several months with bits and pieces of information regarding this new family of graphics cards from ATI, but now we all finally get to witness the truth behind just what these new cards bring to the table.

If interested, you can check out ATI's official announcement over at their website, and in a seperate announcement they also make mention of the praise they're already receiving towards their flagship X1800 model from leading game developers.

Naturally there's reviews galore piling up around the web, which you can get to at the following sites. Will update the list as they keep rolling on in folks.

- Noticias3D (Translated)
- PC Perspective
- Tech Report
- Hexus
- Guru3D
- Beyond3D
- Hot Hardware
- TBreak
- Neoseeker
- Hardware Analysis (rant)
- Bjorn3D
- Driver Heaven
- ExtremeTech
- GDHardware
- Hardware Secrets
- The Inquirer
- The TechLounge
- Anandtech (1)
- Anandtech (2)
- FiringSquad
- XBit Labs

We were hoping to have our review up already, but have been held back by a delayed shipment of the samples for testing. We expect to have our own coverage up by the weekend.

MARKHAM, Ontario, Oct 05, 2005 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX:ATY)(NASDAQ:ATYT) today launched a new family of graphics processors (GPUs), the Radeon® X1000 family, that outperform competing products and deliver better image quality in every price category. The top-to-bottom family, built using the cutting-edge 90 nanometer semiconductor fabrication technology, delivers better performance and image quality than ever.

The new family has a GPU that is right for everyone. Competitive gamers and enthusiasts looking for the absolute best will want the Radeon® X1800 -- the fastest graphics processor on the planet. For those getting started in gaming or who are more interested in editing photos and videos, the Radeon® X1600 delivers the best image quality available, for high-fidelity editing and playback. For those who want all of the features and capabilities of the Radeon X1800 and Radeon X1600 but who are on a budget, the Radeon® X1300 will meet their needs for as low as US $79.