ATI, graphics product group of Advanced Micro Devices, reportedly officially confirmed intentions to slash lower pricing of ATI Radeon HD 3800-series graphics cards in order to increase their popularity further as Nvidia launches a competitor for them. The price slash comes considerably later than expected, however, right in time to fight against imminent direct competitor.

At present, AMD sees ATI Radeon HD 3850 pricing starting at $169 and ATI Radeon HD 3870 suggested e-tail price beginning at $189, which is respectively $10 and $30 less than the prices AMD set last year on the aforementioned graphics products. A quick check with U.S.-based retailers revealed that ATI Radeon HD models 3850 and 3870 may indeed be acquired at prices declared by AMD.

Nvidia Corp. is projected to unveil Nvidia GeForce 9600 GT graphics card shortly. The price of the graphics board is expected to be in the range between $169 and $189, whereas its performance should be between ATI Radeon HD models 3850 and 3870, according to a news-story at DigiTimes web-site. Previously Nvidia offered GeForce 8800 GT 256MB and GeForce 8800 GT 512MB priced at $199 and $259, respectively, to fight against ATI Radeon HD 3850 and 3870.

ATI Radeon HD 3000-series GPUs support a breed of advanced technologies, including DirectX 10.1 that is expected to provide enhanced graphics effects in future video games; Avivo HD and UVD (universal video decoding) video engines for decoding and post-processing of high-definition videos from Blu-ray discs, DVDs or HD DVDs; ATI CrossFire X that enables up to four GPUs to work collaboratively; as well as ATI PowerPlay for desktops, which monitors graphics chip’s command processor to determine its actual load and decides its power state and cooling requirements.

ATI Radeon HD 3850 and HD 3870 graphics cards are based on ATI RV670 graphics chip and have 320 unified shader processors (SPs), 16 texture units (TUs), 16 render back ends (RBEs) and 256-bit memory controller. ATI Radeon HD 3850 clocks GPU at 668MHz and sports 256MB GDDR3 memory at 1656MHz, ATI Radeon HD 3870 graphics card features GPU operating at 775MHz and has 512MB GDDR4 memory at 2250MHz.