ATI card woos Mac and PC owners

For those who can't wait for the Apple/Intel transition, you might want to whet your appetite with the new Radeon 9600 Pro from ATI Technologies

Seems graphics chip maker is hedging its bets with the new card, which is the first to support both Mac OS X and Windows XP platforms.

The Markham, Ontario-based company said the $199 card can drive ultra high-resolution monitors like the Apple 30-inch Cinema Display with up to 2560x1600 resolution or better thanks to the card's dual-link DVI display support. That means that you can buy a cheap Dell but make it look really nice in landscape or portrait mode for $2,999. Oh my, what Steve Jobs must be thinking about that.

Eventually, PC users will be able to better crossover to the quality of Apple display products with the transition to x86 chips, so the Radeon 9600 Pro may have a short shelf life.

Still, the new Radeon card includes 256MB of dedicated high-speed memory, has 128-bit memory interface and advanced DirectX 9.0 shader. The card is AGP 2.0 compliant, compatible with both AGP 4X and 8X systems, and can be booted in either platform and software drivers are included for both.