ATI demonstrated a first for the graphic card market during the Texas Gaming Festival LAN party - a 512 MByte graphics card! The card was a modified X850 XT, and is a prototype. Commercial versions of the device should be available later this year.

The speeds are the same as offered by the 256 MByte X850XT at 520 MHz for the engine and 540 MHz for the memory. According to ATI product marketing engineer Jimmy Dinh, the memory architecture however was not as trivial as it may sound: "How do you get 512MB onto a board? Many said 'just slap on more memory modules onto the board.' But it is not that simple." Instead, the company needed to move from a single- to a dual-rank memory structure.