ATI's Radeon X800 XL 512MB - A toe in the 512MB pool
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 4, 2005 9:27 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
256MB vs. 512MB - The Real World Performance Difference
More local GPU memory is never a bad thing, but it must be taken advantage of to be worth its high cost. That means we need games with larger textures and higher detail levels to truly require 512MB cards, but given that the majority of gamers still have 64MB or less on their graphics cards - it's going to be a while before 512MB is necessary. Game developers are notorious for developing "for the masses" and thus, will spend very little time on that which can only be taken advantage of by owners of $500+ graphics cards, today's 512MB card included.ATI's own marketing literature claims that the X800 XL 512MB offers up to a 40% performance increase over the 256MB X800 XL...at 1600 x 1200, with 6X anti-aliasing and 16X anisotropic filtering enabled. The problem is that at such high resolutions with AA/AF cranked up, the X800 XL doesn't have the fill rate or the memory bandwidth to offer reasonable frame rates in most games, which is why we find the X800 XL 512MB to be more of a mismatch than anything else. A faster GPU with more memory bandwidth would be able to offer more real world benefit when coupled with 512MB of memory than the X800 XL.
That being said, let's look at the performance breakdown for the X800 XL 256MB vs. X800 XL 512MB at 1600 x 1200 with 4X AA and 8X AF enabled - pretty aggressive settings for the X800 XL to begin with.
The Half Life 2 performance boost is particularly interesting, but that was the only game we encountered where the performance boost was not only reasonable, but the game was also fairly smooth in actual game play. However, at the price of the X800 XL 512MB, you are better off just purchasing an X850 XT and getting better performance across the board, including Half Life 2.
Although the single graph on this page pretty much tells the story of the X800 XL 512MB, we've included performance results from both X800 XL cards, the X850 XT as well as NVIDIA's GeForce 6800GT and 6800 Ultra on the coming pages, if you want to see things in perspective. We included the X850 XT and 6800 Ultra in the comparisons because it is priced similarly to the X800 XL 512MB's suggested retail price.
The Test
AMD Athlon 64 ConfigurationAthlon 64 4000+ Socket-939 CPU
2 x 512MB OCZ PC3200 EL Dual Channel DIMMs 2-2-2-10
ASUS nForce4 SLI Motherboard
ATI Catalyst 5.4 Drivers
NVIDIA 71.89 Drivers
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Cuser - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
Oh, and I enjoyed the Mildred story:)Cuser - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
fishbits: First of all, I am not saying that gamers should go out and buy this card. I am just giving a possible reason to why these high memory cards are even being produced today. With all of the readers asking how 'stupid can ATI be...', I am pretty sure a company that large does not produce hardware haphazardly. There has to be a good reason, and as we can see, it is neither because it offers better game performance (as it purports to), or because gamers are begging for it.Secondly, the bells and whistles interface (aero glass) is a new 3D interface OPTION. Which means it is not necessary to use while running the OS. There is an option to use the classic XP style interface (which will soon become obsolete). And, if history is any indication, everyone will downplay the need for the pretty interface because of how much resources it uses. Then, as the hardware supporting it becomes more standard, everyone will eventually fall into line (remember when there was such a large opposition to XP's MAC'esqe look...where is that opposition now?).
Last, if ATI has such a terrible time with hardware delivery, these cards should be available in large quantities when the Longhorn Beta (available with all the bells and whistles) becomes available.
Plus, if reports are correct about the Aero Glass needing alot of video memory, how whould MS be able to show off preview copies without available hardware?
fishbits - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
overclockingoodness: Working on the new "Top Insider Story?"OrSin - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
Cuser even if MS new OS needs greated memory it will not more Video memory. Its new interface is 3d in barest since of the word. Any decent even 64 MB card will run it fine. Even if MS OS did need more video memory the OS is 1 year or more away. This card will be so old news no one will care.if any one buys 450 video to future proof thier OS, then I anti-gravity unit to sell them for thier car, so when roads are gone and we fly through the sky.
overclockingoodness - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
Why do I get the feeling that Anand has fired half of his staff? Now it seems like majority of the major reviews are handled by Anand. It's not necessairly a bad thing, but it just makes me wonder that AnandTech started churning 7 reviews a week when he was in college or getting married, but now we see far less reviews and majority of them are from either Anand, Wesley or Kristopher. Where has the rest of the staff disappeared? ;)fishbits - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
Cuser: I doubt that MS is going to release an OS in a year or so that requires a 512MB vid card to decently enjoy its UI. "Yes Mildred, the new Windows is great! You just need to open up your Dell, buy a new PCIe motherboard and swap that out, and a $400+ video card and install that too. Let's see, if you do all this yourself with the OS upgrade, we're looking at $600+ for you to still be able to get the e-mails from the kids that you always did."Many gamers even don't have the tip-top of the line to enjoy the many games they love (and will love in the future). We'd love to, but the cost is hard to justify. How then to convince folks to hand out this kind of money just for the new OS's UI? Ain't gonna happen. Few would do it, and MS surely isn't dumb enough to miss out on that many sales. We can chastise them about bloat and hardware reqs vs performance, but they're not THAT bad.
KristopherKubicki - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
You can actually buy the NVIDIA 512MB cards *right now*. I guess we now know why they didn't make a big deal of their launch :)Kristopher
deathwalker - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
What a complete and utter waste of time this card is. Another effort (usless) by ATI to climb back to the top after letting Nvidia take over with there 6800 line of graphics cards...oh how I long for the days when my 9700 pro was a thing of envy. But, alas ATI shot themselves in the foot and lost customers (me included) back to nvidia when they could not answer the bell for the 10th round.Cuser - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
I just re-read my article and I might have seemed like I was 'blaiming' microsoft for this.On the contrary, I just wanted to bring to light what a large influence microsoft is on the new standards of graphics hardware. DirectX, no matter how much it was chastised before, has become the foundation to the design of video harware. Video card makers today make cards to take advantage of the directX api...nothing more, nothing less. OpenGL seems to be fading quickly in consumer games (not as much in the professional market, however).
To this end, with the new design of the WGF, windows and application's video RAM usage may begin to rival the video games we play.
Cuser - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
IMHOI think everyone is overlooking the real reason why this much memory will soon be necessary: microsoft.
From the articles I have been reading about longhorn and it's new graphics API, I think the desire for card companies to push towards higher video memory is not because of any games now or in the near future, but to prepare for Longhorn's need for video RAM.
With OS managed video RAM and allotted GPU time, videocards with less than 512mb of RAM will not be able to give you all your OS interface has to offer.
P.S.- This is my first post, be gentle...