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
Details of the Cards
There are actually 4 products being launched today, three of which we were able to get our hands on for this article. We have actually spotted all three of these cards we tested around the internet today, so availability is immediate, and we couldn't be happier. As for pricing, ATI's MSRPs are as follows:
Radeon X1900 XTX -- $650
Radeon X1900 CrossFire Edition -- $600
Radeon X1900 XT -- $550
The CrossFire Edition version of the X1900 is clocked the same as the X1900 XT except for its I/O connectors and compositing engine. The X1900 XT weighs in with some very high clock speeds, especially for the number of pixel pipelines it supports. If you are worried about the CrossFire card bringing down the XTX, don't be. The XTX only sees about a 4% increase in core clock speed and a 7% increase in memory clock speed over the stock X1900 XT.
So, while the price gap between the XTX, XT, and CrossFire versions of the card would seem to indicate sizeable performance differences, we can definitively say that this is not the general case. The XTX is only marginally faster even on paper, and, as we will see, in the real world, real performance is what matters. Our advice is to save your money and go with the cheaper XT. 18% more cost for at best 7% more performance is all that the XTX gives.
There are actually 4 products being launched today, three of which we were able to get our hands on for this article. We have actually spotted all three of these cards we tested around the internet today, so availability is immediate, and we couldn't be happier. As for pricing, ATI's MSRPs are as follows:
Radeon X1900 XTX -- $650
Radeon X1900 CrossFire Edition -- $600
Radeon X1900 XT -- $550
The CrossFire Edition version of the X1900 is clocked the same as the X1900 XT except for its I/O connectors and compositing engine. The X1900 XT weighs in with some very high clock speeds, especially for the number of pixel pipelines it supports. If you are worried about the CrossFire card bringing down the XTX, don't be. The XTX only sees about a 4% increase in core clock speed and a 7% increase in memory clock speed over the stock X1900 XT.
| ATI X1000 Series Features | ||||
Radeon X1900 XT(X) |
Radeon X1600 |
Radeon X1800 XL |
Radeon X1800 XT |
|
| Vertex Pipelines | 8 |
5 |
8 |
8 |
| Pixel Pipelines | 48 |
12 |
16 |
16 |
| Core Clock | 625(650) |
590 |
500 |
625 |
| Memory Size | 512MB |
256MB |
256MB |
512MB |
| Memory Data Rate | 1.45GHz (1.55GHz) |
1.38GHz |
1GHz |
1.5GHz |
| Texture Units | 16 |
4 |
16 |
16 |
| Render Backends | 16 |
4 |
16 |
16 |
| Z Compare Units | 16 |
8 |
16 |
16 |
| Maximum Threads | 512 |
128 |
512 |
512 |
So, while the price gap between the XTX, XT, and CrossFire versions of the card would seem to indicate sizeable performance differences, we can definitively say that this is not the general case. The XTX is only marginally faster even on paper, and, as we will see, in the real world, real performance is what matters. Our advice is to save your money and go with the cheaper XT. 18% more cost for at best 7% more performance is all that the XTX gives.
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bob4432 - Thursday, January 26, 2006 - link
Good for ATI, after some issues in the not so distant past it looks like the pendulum has swung back in their direction.i really like this, it should drop the 7800GT prices down maybe to the ~$200-$220(hoping, as nvidia want to keep the market hold...) which would actually give me a reason to switch to some flavor of pci-e based m/b, but being display limited @ 1280x1024 with a lcd, my x800xtpe is still chugging along nicely :)
Spoelie - Thursday, January 26, 2006 - link
it won't, they're in a different pricerange alltogether, prices on those cards will not drop before ati brings out a capable competitor to it.neweggster - Thursday, January 26, 2006 - link
How hard would it be for this new series of cards by ATI to be optimized for all benchmarking softwares? Well ask yourself that, I just got done talking to a buddy of mine whos working out at MSI. I swear I freaked out when he said that ATI is using an advantage they found by optimizing the new R580's to work better with the newest benchmarking programs like 3Dmark 06 and such. I argued with him thats impossible, or is it? Please let me know, did ATI possibly use optimizations built into the new R580 cards to gain this advantage?Spoelie - Thursday, January 26, 2006 - link
how would validating die-space on a gpu for cheats make any sense? If there is any cheat it's in the drivers. And no, the only thing is that 3dmark06 needs 24bit DST's for its shadowing and that wasn't supported in the x1800xt (uses some hack instead) and it is supported now. Is that cheating? The x1600 and x1300 have support for this as well btw, and they came out at the same time as the x1800.Architecturally optimizing for one kind of rendering being called a cheat would make nvidia a really bad company for what they did with the 6x00/Doom3 engine. But noone is complaining about higher framerates in those situations now are they?
Regs - Thursday, January 26, 2006 - link
....Where in this article do you see a 3D Mark score?mi1stormilst - Thursday, January 26, 2006 - link
It is not impossible, but unless your friend works in some high level capacity I would say his comments at best are questionable. I don't think working in shipping will qualify him as an expert on the subject?coldpower27 - Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2679...">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2679..."Notoriously demanding on GPUs, F.E.A.R. has the ability to put a very high strain on graphics hardware, and is therefore another great benchmark for these ultra high-end cards. The graphical quality of this game is high, and it's highly enjoyable to watch these cards tackle the F.E.A.R demo."
Wasn't use of this considered a bad idea as Nvidia cards have a huge performance penalty when used in this and the final buuld was supposed to be much better???
photoguy99 - Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - link
I noticed 1900x1440 is commonly benchmarked -Wouldn't the majority of people with displays in this range have 1920x1200 since that's what all the new LCDs are using? And it's the HD standard.
Aren't LCDs getting to be pretty capable game displays? My 24" Acer has a 6 ms (claimed) gray to gray response time, and can at least hold it's own.
Resolution for this monitor and almost all others this large: 1920x1200 - not 1920x1440.
Per Hansson - Wednesday, January 25, 2006 - link
Doing the math:Crossfire = 459w - 1900XTX = 341w = 118w, efficiency of PSU used@400w=78% so 118x0.78=92,04w
Per Hansson - Friday, January 27, 2006 - link
No replies huh? Cause I've read on other sites that the card draws upto 175w... Seems like quite a stretch so that was why I did the math to start with...