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
Introduction
Today, ATI has finally launched their X1000 series. The long awaited answer to NVIDIA's 7800 series now brings Shader Model 3.0 (among other things) to ATI's platform. The expanded feature set and improved performance of the new X1000 products promise to bring ATI back in contention with NVIDIA's high end parts. For the past few months, NVIDIA has enjoyed their performance lead and will finally face some competition. Will the X1000 series be enough to win out over the 7800 series?
There are plenty of new features available, which take away the exclusive availability of high end SM3.0 features in games like Splinter Cell 3 from NVIDIA. With a top to bottom release, ATI is making sure that their parts are competitive on every level. From a performance standpoint, we can expect the high end to surpass the X850 XT by a large margin. However, the most important aspect of this launch will be whether or not ATI is competitive with performance per dollar versus NVIDIA hardware.
There are a lot of products launching today that we don't yet have in our labs. The cheapest X1300s are of interest, but we only have the more expensive version. All of the cards are the highest performing of their type. We will be very interested in testing the rest of the product line as soon as it becomes available to us.
Speaking of availability, we had strongly hoped to bring out a review of products that could be purchased at retail today. Unfortunately, no one we know of has the card on their shelves or in their web pages for sale today. Some merchants are saying that they may ship in a week or so, but this is certainly not a launch on the level of the 7800 GTX or 7800 GT. We published an insider article on this very subject last night:
Today, ATI has finally launched their X1000 series. The long awaited answer to NVIDIA's 7800 series now brings Shader Model 3.0 (among other things) to ATI's platform. The expanded feature set and improved performance of the new X1000 products promise to bring ATI back in contention with NVIDIA's high end parts. For the past few months, NVIDIA has enjoyed their performance lead and will finally face some competition. Will the X1000 series be enough to win out over the 7800 series?
There are plenty of new features available, which take away the exclusive availability of high end SM3.0 features in games like Splinter Cell 3 from NVIDIA. With a top to bottom release, ATI is making sure that their parts are competitive on every level. From a performance standpoint, we can expect the high end to surpass the X850 XT by a large margin. However, the most important aspect of this launch will be whether or not ATI is competitive with performance per dollar versus NVIDIA hardware.
There are a lot of products launching today that we don't yet have in our labs. The cheapest X1300s are of interest, but we only have the more expensive version. All of the cards are the highest performing of their type. We will be very interested in testing the rest of the product line as soon as it becomes available to us.
Speaking of availability, we had strongly hoped to bring out a review of products that could be purchased at retail today. Unfortunately, no one we know of has the card on their shelves or in their web pages for sale today. Some merchants are saying that they may ship in a week or so, but this is certainly not a launch on the level of the 7800 GTX or 7800 GT. We published an insider article on this very subject last night:
Will we add October 5 to the list of memorable dates of 2005 - at least with regard to products launching and shipping on the same day? All vendors we've interviewed tell us that there will be no new ATI SKUs on their warehouse floors on the morning of October 5. Some report that they expect shipments within a few days, and others don't really expect shipments for at least a week; and all report that their initial SKUs will be "built by ATI" branded cards. This is not reminiscent of the GeForce 7xxx nor the Intel 6xx launch earlier this year, where the product was literally waiting to be shipped a week before the launch date. On the other hand, those waiting to buy some of ATI's new SKUs won't have to wait long, according to these vendors. Several vendors will happily accept pre orders, although vendors also tell us that the initial shipments of ATI's SKUs are of relatively low volume; at least when compared to the GeForce 7xxx launches of earlier this year.We had certainly wanted to see something different today on the availability side, but there are plenty of other things to be excited about today. Let's take a look at the new face of ATI: The X1000 series.
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ChanningM - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
Where is the AA info and AF info on each test?You list 4x AA for the High End cards at 1600x1200. What about other levels of AA, and various levels of AF?
What about other resolutions? and varying levels of AA and AF at different resolutions and how they compare image quality wise? Okay, so the X1600XT loses at 1280x960 with no aa or af. What about at 1028x764 with AA and AF on? And how does that compare image wise?
Where is the discussion of the results? You just throw out graphs at me, and don't do a real disucssion of them.
In otherwords, where is the rest of the review?
Peldor - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
At this point, a fairly weak review from Anandtech, especially compared to the 7800GTX review when it appeared. Hot Hardware and Tech Report have a bit better coverage IMO.Looking at other reviews around the web, my conclusion is the X1800 cards are viable competitors in performance to the 7800 cards, but the street prices will have to come down near the 7800 cards to be a good value.
The X1600 cards look dead in the water when the 6600GT is under $150 and available in AGP and PCIe, while the 6800GT is far beyond it in the ~$250 segment.
The X1300 cards will only survive in the ~$100 and under market.
ATI is going to need that R580 sooner rather than later.
ChanningM - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
The format of the hardocp articles has grown on me, especially after reading there review + the anandtech + another.There are all kinds of AA and AF options for a reason. They look different. How do the affect peformance though? What works best?
That obviously varies by game, card and resolution. But anandtech and others just don't do the comparisons and I think that makes it difficult to compare. Especially when image quality differences between nvidia and ATI come into play with there various settings.
DerekWilson - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
We will have tables of all the data with all the numbers we ran across all the resolutions with 4xAA and 8xAF up shortly.Quite a bit of data was collected and it has taken some time to organize. You are absolutely right to want more, and we are working on getting it out the door as soon as possible.
Thanks,
Derek Wilson
jeffrey - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
Derek,You really need to evaluate your situation at this website. You are listed as "author" of the "NVIDIA's GeForce 7800 GTX Hits The Ground Running" and "ATI's Late Response to G70 - Radeon X1800, X1600 and X1300" articles. Both of these articles are not up to Anandtech standards and have prompted numerous posts for readers to visit other websites.
I am a long-time reader of the site and am only posting this because I don't want to go anywhere else. I just don't believe that your articles have been up to snuff. The posts for proofreading, wrong labels, incomplete data, etc keep appearing and back up my opinion.
If Anand did not finish your mentoring, please let him know. I know that you put a lot of time and effort into this site, but the two biggest articles of the year for GPU's have left me shaking my head in dissapointment. Please work more with Anand, or do your own homework and read some of his old reviews. If you need another person, or co-author to help you ...please swallow your pride and ask for it.
Respectfully,
Jeffrey
drifter106 - Thursday, October 6, 2005 - link
What credentials do you have to make such an accusation? What indicators do you use to support such a statement? On the contrary, considering the time frame and the rush to provide us with information it is obvious for the coherent, that he has done a good job. Glad to see information provided that will futher support my next video card selection.erinlegault - Thursday, October 6, 2005 - link
That is exactly the point! He shouldn't be rushing. The Techreport and Xbit Labs and many others offer much more informative reviews.Do you want my credentials? It shouldn't matter a report is a report is a report. You don't have to have a PhD or be a CEO to have an opinion. Any person with a University or College degree knows how to write a report that is complete and accurate.
The fact of the matter is Anand's graphics reviews have been not up to par. Period.
Tamale - Saturday, October 8, 2005 - link
lol.. the 'fact' is that this 'opinion' isn't up to 'my standards'sounds like a real fact, folks.. this guy is serios business
Madellga - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/X1800_Serie...">http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/X1800_Serie...AdamK47 3DS - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
I absolutly hate obvious marketing fluff!"16 ultra efficient extreme pipelines"
Those pipelines are about as extreme as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is extreme. Try harder next time Ati!