ATI Radeon X800 XL - A $299 6800GT Competitor
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 15, 2004 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
System Level Power Comparison
While it's far from the best way of measuring the power consumption of just the graphics card, with only a handful of days to play around with the X800 XL, our system level power consumption tests are the best option that we have. The tests work like this: we take our testbed, an Athlon 64 FX-55, and measure the power consumption of the entire testbed (RAM, HDD, motherboard, CPU, video card and power supply) at the electrical outlet. What this tells us is the total power consumed by the system, essentially the amount of power for which you're billed. Since we're keeping all other components the same and only swapping out the video card, the impact on power consumption is almost exclusively due to the video card - we say "almost exclusively" because a faster GPU will make the CPU work harder and thus, consume more power and vice versa. But in the end, it's a fairly good indicator of what GPUs consume more power (and thus produce more heat) relative to one another.Our first test has our test bed idling at the Windows desktop at 1600 x 1200. The system specs are as follows:
| System Configuration | |
| Motherboard: | ASUS nForce4 A8N-SLI Deluxe |
| Processor: | AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 |
| RAM: | 1GB Corsair DDR400 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA ForceWare 67.02 Drivers ATI Beta Catalyst Drivers 8.08-041111a-019256E (no Catalyst version has been assigned to this package yet) |
| Operating System(s): | Windows XP Service Pack 2 with DirectX 9.0c |
All performance tests were run at 1600 x 1200, some benchmarks were also run at 1600 x 1200 with 4X AA and 8X AF enabled.
Cool 'n Quiet is disabled, giving us the following breakdown in system power consumption:
We see that at idle, there's no big improvement to the 0.11-micron process on the X800 XL.
Then we fired up Half Life 2 and ran through our at_prison_05 demo, one of our most stressful GPU tests to see how far we could push power consumption. Here, we see a slight advantage to the X800 XL, but definitely not as dramatic as we would've thought. Given that we're running at a lower core clock, we'd expect the 0.11-micron X800 XL to impact system power consumption more than it did. We would also expect power consumption to decrease as the 0.11-micron process matures and if/when a low-k dielectric is used in conjunction with the smaller transistor feature size.
The X800 XL does consume less power and thus, will run cooler than the 6800GT, which is a plus for ATI. Given that the 6800GT is already a single slot solution, the power/heat advantage isn't one that is entirely noticeable considering that the X800 XL cannot be run fanless.
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Questar - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Hey nVidia fanboys that want to compare this card to a 6800NU.How bad do you want to lose? That's a 12 pipe card.
flexy - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
21:>>>
The only silicon parts available for my system are the AMD 3500+ and OCZ Platinum memory.
>>>
same here :)
flexy - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
#16:>>>
Another famous hardware review site with the name tom in it has taken a stand for several months now, refusing to review non-existing products. You should elevate yourself to their level in that regard; everyone will respect you for doing so.
>>>
i might agree with you there !
This reviewsing of non-existant products ALSO will greatly contribute to the price-hiking which we see right now. X800XT PE card for $899, anyone ?
Also...recent reviews (eg: Nforce 4) VARIOUS sites, not only AT, reviewed it based on Beta bios which did NOT even yield information about
STABILITY
OVERCLOCKABILITY
PCI-LOCK YES/NO
all these reviews were based on such early products that for the enthusiasts it still remains to guess whether these products actually meet their expectations.
IRONOCIALLY, people seem to be willing to spend $350 on MSRP $180 boards (say: ASUS NF4 SLI)....not even knowing whether these boards, for example, would even be capable of providing a stable FSB/HTT over 217. (If you want these boards to overclock).
From this point of view these reviews are really *worthless*. I could get the same information off a nvidia press-release, just reading the advertized specs.
Aquila76 - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
These friggin' paper launches are killing me. I want to build a nForce4 SLI with twin 6800GT's. I was hoping to have some of my wishlist of parts 'Christmased' to me, but looks like that ain't gonna happen. The only silicon parts available for my system are the AMD 3500+ and OCZ Platinum memory. What's the point of there's nothing to plug them into?My other question on this is how are these companies keeping on track for their fiscal projections if they have no available new products?
Keyser0804 - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
How come they did not compare it against the 6800 vanilla? Isn't that the competitor or am I missing something?Momental - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Has ATi ever given a reason as to why their cards are in such short supply? Is it really just a matter of, "the demand far exceeded our production schedule!"? It's not like they, or nVidia, are new to the whole phenomenon of people like us clammering for their product.It just seems as if this time around, both companies have completely dropped the proverbial ball when it comes to making GPU's available to us. Susan, back over to you in the studio. :)
cnq - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Yeah, you're right. But the tom folks at least kept their original stand, which was not to review the nvidia 6200 when it was paper launched.LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Note that the "famous hardware site" that took the stand is reviewing the same ATI products today...and like Anandtech, they left the vanilla nVidia 6800 off the benchmarks.It seems that everyone who wishes to "take a stand" does so with words...but their actions fail to back them up.
cnq - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
Anand,Congrats on your intro. It's ABOUT TIME you took a stand against paper launches. But then, you didn't take a stand, did you? You still did the review on a non-existent product, with bugs everywhere (couldn't overclock). This does the buyer absolutely no good.
Another famous hardware review site with the name tom in it has taken a stand for several months now, refusing to review non-existing products. You should elevate yourself to their level in that regard; everyone will respect you for doing so.
DeathByDuke - Wednesday, December 15, 2004 - link
X800 at $200/£170-200. killer. specially GF6600GT killer... be prepared to watch 9800 Pro/XT prices skydive when AGP X800 comes out in Jan (a few other sites stated that fact). most are still near £160-200. oh, yeah, I bet nvidia panic price drops as a response if they _did_ cancel NV48. If they didn't, well.... gotta love compettition ;)