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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Houdani - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
ATI has earned your contempt, and deservedly so. Thank you yet again for giving the hardware suits a potent dose of reality.Clearly the games reviewed today are optimized to run on cards with less than 256MB, thereby making the 512MB superfluous. However, the folks above point out that Carmack had other notions in mind -- something which ExtremeTech appears to corroborate. If nothing else, it bears some investigation in order to understand where the difference lies.
LoneWolf15 - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
Originally, Doom 3's recommendation for Ultra High quality mode was a system with a gig of RAM and a 512MB video card so all textures could fit within VRAM. At the time, a 512MB card didn't exist, and 256MB cards were still uber-high technology (Geforce 6800Ultra and Radeon X800XT-PE).I can't think of another game however, where 512MB of graphics RAM is needed, much as articles say "Soon we will". Heck, many people just went from 128MB to 256MB, and smart game developers are going to keep their games at a level where as many systems as possible can run them (which IMO means a Geforce 6600 with 128MB of RAM, or the equivalent). Unless you're running all your games at 1600x1200 (I'm running mostly at 1280x1024 still as I get better monitor refresh rates), I don't see 512MB as being necessary for some time, and even a 128/256MB card will handle most games at that resolution given a fast enough GPU.
mbhame - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
#7: Interesting. I hadn't heard Doom III could use so much System RAM. I don't have a rig capable of touching such resolution, etc. so I couldn't verify personally.I'm gonna check out their article.
ET - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
I don't know. I'm just looking at ExtremeTech's preview of the card, and they get 32FPS for Ultra High mode (with 4xAA and 8xAF) with the 256MB card and 49.3 with the 512MB one. This is opposed to 28.8 and 29.1 for the same at Anandtech.The systems the two used are a bit different, with the Anandtech system having a faster CPU but only 1GB vs. 2GB for the ExtremeTech system. It may be that in this mode Doom3 is so memory hungry that 1GB isn't enough?
mbhame - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
#5: That *is* what Ultra mode does. Ultra mode *is* purely-uncompressed textures and id themselves, if not Carmack himself, claimed you'd need 512MB VRAM to run it all w/o swapping. And that is what was benched in Page 3 of the article.I truly hope I'm misunderstanding or overlooking something.
ET - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
Re #2: yeah, wasn't Doom3 supposed to have a mode that has all textures uncompressed and requires 512MB?Speedo - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
I see no reason to pay extra to get 512MB. #3, I don't think there's even much improvement from 128->256MB.mongoosesRawesome - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
The amount of memory on a card is the most advertised and consequently the most important feature to uninformed consumers. Does 256 MB (vs. 128MB) of memory even matter in resolutions below 1600x1200?Just as with CPU's (clock speed), people want a single measure to judge one GPU against another.
mbhame - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
May I ask why nobody is calling out Carmack on his claims of Ultra *needing* >256MB VRAM when this X800XL 512MB doesn't hardly outperform its 256MB brethren in 1600x1200 Ultra w/4xAA?!?!There is something else afoot - elsewise id's claims are utterly absurd!
So which is it???
erinlegault - Wednesday, May 4, 2005 - link
ATI needs to start acting like the lower cost alternative to Nvidia again. Why would you put 512MB on a 800XL and pay $150 more for no noticable benefit? At least a 512MB X850 XT PE would show more improvement, but they would probably charge $999 for it.