ATI's Late Response to G70 - Radeon X1800, X1600 and X1300
by Derek Wilson on October 5, 2005 11:05 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Feature Overview
There are quite a few exciting new features being introduced with ATI's new X1000 series. Of course, we have a new line of hardware based on a more refined architecture. But at the end of the day, it's not the way that a company implements a dot product or manages memory latency that sells product; it's what consumers can do with the hardware that counts. ATI will not disappoint with the number of new features thtat they have included in their new top to bottom family of graphics hardware.
To provide a quick overview of the new lineup from ATI, here are the key featuers of the X1000 series.
Running on a 90nm TSMC process has given ATI the ability to push clock speeds quite high. With die sizes small and transistor counts high, ATI is able to pack a lot of performance in their new architecture. As the feature list indicates, ATI hasn't just waited idly by. But the real measure of what will be enough to put ATI back on top will be how much performance customers get for their money. To start answering that question, we first need to look at the parts launching and their prices.
Along with all these features, CrossFire cards for the new X1000 series will be following in a few months. While we don't have anything to test, we can expect quite a few improvements from the next generation of ATI's multi-GPU solution. First and foremost, master cards will include a dual-link TMDS receiver to allow resolutions greater than 1600x1200 to run. This alone will make CrossFire on the X1000 series infinitely more useful than the current incarnation. We can also expect a better compositing engine built on a faster/larger FPGA. We look forward to checking out ATI's first viable multi-GPU solution as soon as it becomes available to us.
Rather than include AVIVO coverage in this article, we have published a separate article on ATI's X1000 series display hardware. The high points are a 10-bit gamma engine, H.264 accelerated decoding and hardware assisted transcoding. While we won't see transcoding support until the end of the year, we have H.264 decode support today. For more details, please check out our Avivo image quality comparison and technology overview.
There are quite a few exciting new features being introduced with ATI's new X1000 series. Of course, we have a new line of hardware based on a more refined architecture. But at the end of the day, it's not the way that a company implements a dot product or manages memory latency that sells product; it's what consumers can do with the hardware that counts. ATI will not disappoint with the number of new features thtat they have included in their new top to bottom family of graphics hardware.
To provide a quick overview of the new lineup from ATI, here are the key featuers of the X1000 series.
- Fabbed on TSMC's 90nm process
- Shader Model 3.0 support
- Fulltime/fullspeed fp32 processing for floating point pixel formats
- New "Ring Bus" memory architecture with support for GDDR4
- Antialiasing supported on MRT and fp16 output
- High quality angle independent Anisotropic Filtering
- AVIVO and advanced decode/encode support
Running on a 90nm TSMC process has given ATI the ability to push clock speeds quite high. With die sizes small and transistor counts high, ATI is able to pack a lot of performance in their new architecture. As the feature list indicates, ATI hasn't just waited idly by. But the real measure of what will be enough to put ATI back on top will be how much performance customers get for their money. To start answering that question, we first need to look at the parts launching and their prices.
| ATI X1000 Series Features | ||||
Radeon X1300 Pro |
Radeon X1600 |
Radeon X1800 XL |
Radeon X1800 XT |
|
| Vertex Pipelines | 2 |
5 |
8 |
8 |
| Pixel Pipelines | 4 |
12 |
16 |
16 |
| Core Clock | 600 |
590 |
500 |
625 |
| Memory Size | 256MB |
256MB |
256MB |
512MB |
| Memory Data Rate | 800MHz |
1.38GHz |
1GHz |
1.5GHz |
| Texture Units | 4 |
4 |
16 |
16 |
| Render Backends | 4 |
4 |
16 |
16 |
| Z Compare Units | 4 |
8 |
16 |
16 |
| Maximum Threads | 128 |
128 |
512 |
512 |
| Avaialbility | This Week |
11/30/2005 |
This Week |
11/5/2005 |
| MSRP | $149 |
$249 |
$449 |
$549 |
Along with all these features, CrossFire cards for the new X1000 series will be following in a few months. While we don't have anything to test, we can expect quite a few improvements from the next generation of ATI's multi-GPU solution. First and foremost, master cards will include a dual-link TMDS receiver to allow resolutions greater than 1600x1200 to run. This alone will make CrossFire on the X1000 series infinitely more useful than the current incarnation. We can also expect a better compositing engine built on a faster/larger FPGA. We look forward to checking out ATI's first viable multi-GPU solution as soon as it becomes available to us.
Rather than include AVIVO coverage in this article, we have published a separate article on ATI's X1000 series display hardware. The high points are a 10-bit gamma engine, H.264 accelerated decoding and hardware assisted transcoding. While we won't see transcoding support until the end of the year, we have H.264 decode support today. For more details, please check out our Avivo image quality comparison and technology overview.
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Gigahertz19 - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
On the last page I will quote"With its 512MB of onboard RAM, the X1800 XT scales especially well at high resolutions, but we would be very interested in seeing what a 512MB version of the 7800 GTX would be capable of doing."
Based on the results in the benchmarks I would say 512MB barely does anything. Look at the benchmarks on Page 10 the Geforce 7800GTX either beats the X1800 XT or loses by less then 1 FPS. SCALES WELL AT HIGH RESOLUTIONS? Not really, has the author of this article looked at their own benchmarks included? When the resolution is at 2048 x 1536 the 7800GTX creams the competition except in Farcry where it loses by .2FPS to the X1800XT and Splinter Cell it loses by .8FPS so basically it's a tie in those 2 games.
You know why Nvidia does not have a 512MB version because look at the results...it does shit. 512Mb is pointless right now and if you argue you'll use it for the future then will till future games use it and then buy the best GPU then, not now. These new ATI's blow wookies, so much for competition.
NeonFlak - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
"In some cases, the X1800 XL is able to compete with the 7800 GTX, but not enough to warrant pricing on the same level."From the graphs in the review with all the cards present the x1800xl only beat the 7800gt once by 4fps... So beating the 7800gt in one graph by 4fps makes that statement even viable?
FunkmasterT - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
EXACTLY!!ATI's FPS numbers are a major disappointment!
Questar - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
Unless you want image quality.bob661 - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
And the difference is worth the $100 eatra dollars PLUS the "lower" frame rates? Not good bang for the buck.Powermoloch - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
Not the cards....Just the review. Really sad :(yacoub - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
So $450 for the X1800XL versus $250 for the X800XL and the only difference is the new core that maybe provides a handful of additional frames per second, a new AA mode, and shader model 3.0?Sorry, that's not worth $200 to me. Not even close.
coldpower27 - Thursday, October 6, 2005 - link
Perhaps a up to 20% performance improvement, looking at pixel fillrate alone.
Shader Model 3.0 Support.
ATI's Avivo Technology
OpenEXR HDR Support.
HQ Non-Angle Dependent AF User Choice
You decide if that's worth the 200US price difference to you, Adaptive AA, I wouldn't count as apparently through ATI's driver all R3xx hardware and higher now have this capability not just R5xx derivatives, sort of like the launched with R4xx feature Temporal AA.
yacoub - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
So even if these cards were available in stores/online today, the best PCI-E card one can buy for ~$250 is still either an X800XL or a 6800GT. (Or an X800 GTO2 for $230 and flash and overclock it.)I find it disturbing that they even waste the time to develop, let alone release, low-end parts that price-wise can't even compete. Why bother wasting the development and processing to create a card that costs more and performs less? What a joke those two lower-end cards are (x1300 and x1600).
coldpower27 - Thursday, October 6, 2005 - link
The Radeon X1600 XT is intended to replace the older X700 Pro, not the stop gap 6600 GT competitors, X800 GT, X800 GTO, which only came into being because ATI had leftoever supplies of R423/R480 & for X800 GTO only R430 cores and of course due to the fact that X700 Pro wasn't really competitive in performance to 600 GT in the firstp lace, due to ATI's reliance on Low-k technology for their high clock frequencies.I think these are sucessful replacements.
Radeon X850/X800 is replaced by Radeon X1800 Technology.
Radeon X700 is replaced by Radeon X1600 Technology.
Radeon X550/X300 is replaced by Radeon X1300 Technology.
X700 is 156mm2 on 110nm, X1600 is 132mm2 on 90nm
X550 & X1300 are roughly around the same die size, sub 100mm2.
Though the newer cards use more expensive memory types on their high end versions.
They also finally bring ATI's entire family as having the same feature set, something that hasn't been seen ever before by ATI I believe. I mean having a high end, mainstream & budget core based on the same technology.
Nvidia achieved this item first with the Geforce FX line.