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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Wellsoul2 - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
I really prefer ATI so this is a disappointment.The 1300 and 1600 are pretty weak.
Might as well keep my 9600XT versus the 1300 - Can still play HL2 with noAA/AF.
The only good thing is maybe the price will drop on the x800/850 line.
The X1800 seems like a good card but why pay that money.
Why bother with the shared memory cards? It's dumb.
Cookie Crusher - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
grammar is actually spelled with an "a" ;)OvErHeAtInG - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
Yes, I have a feeling it'll be one of those cases where they make some editions and fixes to the article. Not that horrible, come on - I do agree the graphs are confusing. More important than graphs of benches, though, for me is the examination of the new AA, the architecture, features etc. Which they did a fair job ofOne remark: the bulleted lists are missing the bullets ... e.g. on page 2 the list of new features.
bldckstark - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
Yes, this is the worst article I have ever seen posted on Anandtech. Will Anandtech continue to be my first stop on my daily hardware fix? Yes. Will I ever make Toms Hardware my first stop again? No. JEEEEZ toms sucks now. If you want to complain about a site as a whole take a look at them. They actually posted articles about how to pick up chicks while gaming! Multiple articles! Good Lord.Houdani - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
Agreed! They did do a nice analysis of the new architecture.Agreed! Where are the bullets? (page 2 feature list, page 7 games list).
tfranzese - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
Everyone's always surpised by this. Why? They've done this countless times now as if it's acceptable. Seriously, don't post an article until it's done and have it proofread carefully before posting it. I honestly doubt your (Anandtech) editors are doing more than just skimming articles sometimes with the number of typos and gramatical errors I come across.I hope the quality goes back up, because it will eventually hurt your reputation.
tfranzese - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
I'll add, Anandtech is almost always my first stop to read a breaking review. Unfortunately, truths such as that below could someday change that. Today, Tech Report had the better article.Not their worst article, but things should be improving - not getting worse.
AnandThenMan - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
I agree. VERY WEAK REVIEW! Terrible. Honestly, what happened? Anandtech is usually much, much more with it. Disappointed.As for the R520, I think I'm like most people and just feel, meh.
misterspoot - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
Since the X1800 SKUs will not have the AGP bridge available (PCI-E) only, that leaves the X1600XT to attempt to give us AGP users a performance boost.Sadly, the X1600XT performs barely on par with a GeForce 6600GT -- which can be had for $150. Then, looking at the performance of the X1600XT, and comparing it to the X850 XT-PE -- surprise surprise, the year-plus old X850 XT is considerably superior.
So if you're like me and built your box nearly 2 years ago, and have no choice but to buy an AGP part, it looks like the X850 XT-PE is going to be the highest performance part you can buy. Looks like I'll be grabbing one this weekend, so my performance in raids on Molten Core is drastically improved (runs a 6600GT at 1600x900 with minimum detail settings -- suffers from mid 20fps all the time while trying to tank).
DRavisher - Wednesday, October 5, 2005 - link
The review states: "With its 512MB of onboard RAM, the X1800 XT scales especially well at high resolutions,". From what I see it scales very poorly at high resolutions compared to the 7800GTX 256MB card. Just look at what happens in SC:CT and FarCry. The XT goes from having a substantial lead in 1600x1200 to being about equal with the 7800GTX at 2048x1536.