ATI's Radeon X800 XL 512MB - A toe in the 512MB pool

70 Comments

View All Comments

• 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.