Introduction
It has been months down the road since the Radeon X700 launch, and still no X700 XT. At this point, it is very likely that the new mid-range X800 part will push the non-existent X700 XT off the map altogether, but we have other ideas about what ATI needs to do with it. If performance is lower than the newly announced X800 line, ATI have an opportunity to offer a greater variety of price points. What is shipping in volume now is the little brother of the X700 XT, the X700 Pro.The ATI Radeon X700 Pro, clocked at 425 MHz at the core and running 2ns GDDR3 at 432 MHz (864 effective data rate), is ATI's current $200 PCI Express graphics part.
While ATI currently lacks an equivalent mid-range AGP part, we are hearing that they are working on a bridge chip that should be ready sometime next month. It is unclear what parts will make it onto the AGP platform.
Today, we will be taking a look at four different Radeon X700 Pro vendors: ABIT, HIS, PowerColor, and Sapphire. We will also take a quick look at the X700 Pro vs. the 6600GT, just to get everything in perspective before we begin.
UPDATE: The card we received from HIS was apparently an engineering sample. The final version of this board does have the thermal sensor on board. The fan switch is also not included in the shipping product, but is software controlled via their overclocking software which the X700 Pro IceQ will ship with.
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cosmotic - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
Your text ad thing turns "Unreal Tournoment" into a link thats the same color as the table header background so it looks like "2004 Performance". Why do some Anand articles use pretty graphs and some use these relitively harder to read tables?MAValpha - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
I dunno. I have one of these cards (Retail Built-By-ATI 256MB Radeon X700 Pro), and I didn't even try to push it too far. I set it up to run at XT speeds, and it does it with no problems. Performance at these settings isn't anything to sneeze at either, since it more or less matches my 6800 vanilla (within 5%, off the top of my head). Remember that preliminary benchmarks position the 6800 vanilla almost on par with the 6600GT, also.Granted, the two PCs are different, but they are both fairly close to top-of-the-line. One is a Prescott-775 running at 3.8 on i915P, the other is an AXP running 2.4 on NF2 Ultra. While they are understandably different processors, games turn in comparable framerates on both. Everything else is the same in both rigs, right down to the RAM and hard drives.
nserra - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
"For those out there who are die-hard ATI fans and absolutely need to have an X700 Pro solution, we can recommend that you simply head out and find the cheapest X700 Pro available."I do a better one, buy the basic X700, only 25Mhz lower clock and 150Mhz memory, and over clock it. And save 50$.
One thing must be pointed out, if X700 Pro is worst over 6600GT, "regular" X700 is better over "regular" 6600.
#9 My point answer your question or doubt?
ChineseDemocracyGNR - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
What I'd like to see is the $149 non-PRO non-XT X700, which is also non-existant.skunkbuster - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
can anyone tell me why ati's open GL drivers continue to suck? when are they ever going to catch up to nvidia in this regard?stelleg151 - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
I assume that the ATI cards should be considered identical to the Powercolor cards because of same look?bloc - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
Bang for the buck especially in the mid range.If ati priced the x700 accordingly and had some cards to sell, I'd consider it. Cripes I'm waiting for the 9800 pro to come down to $150 US to the 6600 GT's $200. I'd then go for the 9800 pro.
overclockingoodness - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
All I have to say is that NVIDIA's 6600 solutions are to get for mid-range setups.DerekWilson - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
The icon should be fixed -- I'm not sure what happened there :-)slurmsmackenzie - Monday, December 13, 2004 - link
did anyone else stop reading after the head to head with the 6600GT?.... i just assumed everything else was just superfluous details.