ATI's New Leader in Graphics Performance: The Radeon X1900 Series
by Derek Wilson & Josh Venning on January 24, 2006 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
One Last Thing, there's an All-in-Wonder Version too
The All-In-Wonder version of this card isn't lagging too far behind this time around. Previous AIW launches have seen at least a little gap between the launch of the card it's based on and an announcement. This time ATI is being proactive and bringing out an AIW version of the X1900 immediately.
The card is a single slot solution, clocked a little lower, and aside from being the cheapest X1900 around, it also features all the bells and whistles AIW users have come to know and love. The price tag doesn't exactly scream bargain, but considering all the features smashed into this part it's obviously not going to be a slouch. While the specs for the part are a considerable cut from the faster cards in the series, the combination of all the positives on this card are incredible. Here's a breakdown:
All-In-Wonder X1900:
Core clock speed: 500 MHz
Memory clock speed: 960 MHz
Price (MSRP): $500
Though the All-In-Wonder series is always sold first in North America (all AIW parts bought here are built by ATI), we haven't seen much in the way of availability for this part today. The card is listed at ATI's own store as out of stock and will ship when available. While the focal point of the launch is on the three main products we tested today, we would have preferred that ATI hold off on the announcement of this part until volume was available. We are more inclined to believe ATI's promise that the AIW will be available in the next couple weeks now that we've seen them deliver so well on this hard launch, and we'll try to test one as soon as possible to see how the reduced clocks affect real world performance.
The All-In-Wonder version of this card isn't lagging too far behind this time around. Previous AIW launches have seen at least a little gap between the launch of the card it's based on and an announcement. This time ATI is being proactive and bringing out an AIW version of the X1900 immediately.
The card is a single slot solution, clocked a little lower, and aside from being the cheapest X1900 around, it also features all the bells and whistles AIW users have come to know and love. The price tag doesn't exactly scream bargain, but considering all the features smashed into this part it's obviously not going to be a slouch. While the specs for the part are a considerable cut from the faster cards in the series, the combination of all the positives on this card are incredible. Here's a breakdown:
All-In-Wonder X1900:
Core clock speed: 500 MHz
Memory clock speed: 960 MHz
Price (MSRP): $500
Though the All-In-Wonder series is always sold first in North America (all AIW parts bought here are built by ATI), we haven't seen much in the way of availability for this part today. The card is listed at ATI's own store as out of stock and will ship when available. While the focal point of the launch is on the three main products we tested today, we would have preferred that ATI hold off on the announcement of this part until volume was available. We are more inclined to believe ATI's promise that the AIW will be available in the next couple weeks now that we've seen them deliver so well on this hard launch, and we'll try to test one as soon as possible to see how the reduced clocks affect real world performance.
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DerekWilson - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
this is where things get a little fuzzy ... when we used to refer to an architecture as being -- for instance -- 16x1 or 8x2, we refered to the pixel shaders ability to texture a pixel. Thus, when an application wanted to perform multitexturing, the hardware would perform about the same -- single pass graphics cut the performance of the 8x2 architecture in half because half the texturing poewr was ... this was much more important for early dx, fixed pipe, or opengl based games. DX9 through all that out the window, as it is now common to see many instructions and cycles spent on any given pixel.in a way, since there are only 16 texture units you might be able to say its something like 48x0.333 ... it really isn't possible to texture all 48 pixels every clock cycle ad infinitum. in an 8x2 architecture you really could texture each of 8 pixels with 2 textures every clock cycle forever.
to put it more plainly, we are now doing much more actual work with the textures we load, so the focus has shifted from "texturing" a pixel to "shading" a pixel ... or fragment ... or whatever you wanna call it.
it's entirely different then xenos as xenos uses a unified shader architecture.
interestingly though, R580 supports a render to vertex buffer feature that allows you to turn your pixel shaders into vertex processors and spit the output straight back into the incoming vertex data.
but i digress ....
aschwabe - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
I'm wondering how a dual 7800GT/7800GTX stacked up against this card.i.e. Is the brand new system I bought literally 24 hours ago going to be able to compete?
Live - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
SLI figures is all over the review. Go read and look at the graphs again.aschwabe - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Ah, my bad, thanks.DigitalFreak - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Go check out the review on hardocp.com. They have benchies for both the GTX 256 & GTX 512, SLI & non SLI.Live - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
No my bad. I'm a bit slow. Only the GTX 512 SLI are in there. sorry!Viper4185 - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Just a few comments (some are being very picky I know)1) Why are you using the latest hardware with and old Seagate 7200.7 drive when the 7200.9 series is available? Also no FX-60?
2) Disappointing to see no power consumption/noise levels in your testing...
3) You are like the first site to show Crossfire XTX benchmarks? I am very confused... I thought there was only a XT Crossfire card so how do you get Crossfire XTX benchmarks?
Otherwise good job :)
DerekWilson - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
crossfire xtx indicates that we ran a 1900 crossfire edition card in conjunction with a 1900 xtx .... this is as opposed to running the crossfire edition card in conjunction with a 1900 xt.crossfire does not synchronize GPU speed, so performance will be (slightly) better when pairing the faster card with the crossfire.
fx-60 is slower than fx-57 for single threaded apps
power consumption was supposed to be included, but we have had some power issues. We will be updating the article as soon as we can -- we didn't want to hold the entire piece in order to wait for power.
harddrive performance is not going to affect anything but load times in our benchmarks.
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
See my comment above. They are probably running an XTX card with the Crossfire Edition master card.OrSin - Tuesday, January 24, 2006 - link
Are gamers going insane. $500+ for video card is not a good price. Maybe its jsut me but are bragging rights really worth thats kind of money. Even if you played a game thats needs it you should be pissed at the game company thats puts a blot mess thats needs a $500 card.