When ATi didn't counter nVIDIA's GeForce4 Ti GPU release with a new product of their own earlier this year many people speculated that trouble was afoot in the same way that Matrox has been faltering. To counter the gossip, ATI publicly stated that they didn't see any value in revising the old R200 (Radeon 8500) core to compete against nVIDIA's new offering. Instead, ATI engineers quietly concentrated their efforts on completing the next generation R300 core. To outsiders this seemed like a bad idea; but when the 'R300' Radeon 9700 Pro was officially announced in July 2002 the world was in store for a shock. Everyone sang the praises of the new R300 graphics core (deservedly), and John Carmack used a prototype to show off Doom III! As if that weren't enough, ATI announced that the retail cards would be available one month after the product officially launched, and they delivered as promised.