Radeon x1800xt: ATI Radeon X1800 XT Specs

ATI Radeon X1800 XT (512 MB) review: ATI Radeon X1800 XT (512 MB)

ATI shot a blank with its dual-card CrossFire release two weeks ago, and while its next-generation Radeon X1800 XT ($549) is a powerful Direct3D gaming tool, it doesn’t hold up in design elegance, dual-card flexibility, or current availability when compared with Nvidia’s competing GeForce 7800 GTX cards. The availability issue will likely resolve itself on November 5, which marks the retail debut of this card, the flagship in an entire new generation of graphics cards from ATI unveiled today. The physical problems, though, will be hard to get around. Its saving grace is its Half-Life 2 performance: it dominates Nvidia. If you’re more inclined to the Doom 3 or Quake universe, however, this new Radeon’s scores are lacking. ATI earned itself victorious upstart status with its last generation of Radeon cards. This time around, its performance victory is less decisive, and a number of other issues hurt its profile. Between ATI’s new card and Nvidia’s GeForce 7800 GTX, Nvidia gets the nod.

ATI’s new Radeon X1800 XT 3D card

Until today’s announcement of the 512MB ATI Radeon X1800 XT ($549) and the rest of the Radeon X1000 series of 3D cards, ATI appeared to be behind the times. It had no dual-graphics-card competitor to Nvidia’s SLI technology and no support for emergent 3D features. The Radeon X1800 XT and the rest of the new cards bring a number of advances, but ultimately, they’re not enough.

The flagship Radeon X1800 XT, in particular, is not designed as well as its main competitor, the Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX. The Radeon X1800 XT’s 3D scores are appropriately speedy, and we appreciate ATI incorporating parts of its new Avivo video technology in all of its Radeon X1000-series parts. In its primary function as a 3D graphics card, however, the Radeon X1800 XT is blazingly fast at Direct3D-based games, but enough usability and design limitations hamper it from earning our outright recommendation. For all-around 3D gaming performance, ATI didn’t do enough to knock Nvidia’s GeForce 7800 GTX off its throne.

Two of our biggest gripes have to do with the Radeon X1800 XT’s design. The most obvious is its double-wide form factor, ironically the same criticism we made of Nvidia’s GeForce 6800 Ultra during last generation’s head-to-head. The Radeon X1800 XT takes up two internal expansion bays—thanks to its extra large fan—and it looks bulky and cumbersome compared to Nvidia’s lean, single-slot GeForce 7800 GTX. The more confounding problem, however, has to do with doubling up your cards.

ATI unveiled its dual-card CrossFire technology last week. An answer to Nvidia’s SLI dual-graphics-card technology, the difference with CrossFire is that you have to purchase a separate, more expensive CrossFire Edition (CFE) of a card in the same chip family in order to link two cards together (pairing a Radeon X1800 CFE with a Radeon X1800 XT or XL, or a Radeon X1600 CFE with a Radeon X1600 XT or Pro). With Nvidia, all GeForce 6600-, 6800-, and 7800-series cards come SLI ready; there is no second, pricier version to worry about.

ATI does let you link two different cards within the same family, however—the XT and the XL versions, for example—where the more restrictive SLI mode requires that the two chips be exactly the same (although, with a forthcoming driver update, no longer from the same vendor). But SLI doesn’t require you to pay a premium to simply add another card. Currently, ATI has suggested that CrossFire cards will cost $50 more than their regular counterparts. Worse, when we asked about the release date for the matching X1800 CrossFire Edition card, all ATI could tell us was «sometime in Q4.»

That frustrating ambiguity has haunted ATI’s release dates since the last generation’s Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition, sometimes renamed the «Press Edition,» as it was seeded in quantity to journalists for reviews leading up to its announce date, then became scarce to nonexistent at retail. We’re not calling the X1000 series a paper launch, as the Radeon X1800 XT’s slower cousin, the Radeon X1800 XL, and the low-end Radeon X1300 cards should be available today. It won’t reassure anyone, however, to learn that the Radeon X1800 XT isn’t set for actual retail release until a month from now: November 5, 2005. Nvidia’s last two launches, of its GeForce 7800 GTX and 7800 GT cards, were timed with wide retail availability on the day the products were made public, a preferable approach to ATI’s «all promise, eventual delivery» method.

Nvidia has claimed Shader Model 3 (SM 3) support as an advantage over ATI’s last generation of Radeon cards that lacked it in both its GeForce 7800-series chips and the entire GeForce 6000 series that preceded it. With the Radeon X1000 series, ATI catches up and gains SM 3’s advanced pixel-rendering capability, an important feature for a few current games such as Far Cry and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, as well as a number of titles due out soon, such as F.E.A.R. and next year’s Gears of War. With SM 3 and also high dynamic range lighting support, the Radeon X1800 XT is primed to run alongside Nvidia in supporting the latest visual bells and whistles that make 3D games more immersive than ever.

ATI’s X1000-series cards do have one advantage over Nvidia’s GeForce family. ATI recently announced an initiative called Avivo, which, similar to Microsoft’s Viiv, is a combination of products aimed at the home theater. You can’t receive a TV signal with the Radeon X1800 XT or any other Radeon X1000-series cards, but what they can do as part of the Avivo family is decode all kinds of video formats, including the forward-looking H.264 codec that’s going to become important for HD Video and Microsoft’s new Windows Vista operating system. You also get a number of deinterlacing enhancements for improving video image quality. You’ll never get as refined an image when you convert an analog video signal through a digital processor as you would with just a straight analog signal (like from your cable box to your television), but more and more people are combining their PCs with their home entertainment systems. Seeing as you likely will be watching at least some video on your PC, any aids to image quality are welcome, and ATI’s Radeon and Avivo currently offer the most advanced set of features.

If you have video inclinations, you’ll especially appreciate ATI’s dual digital-video outputs. You can expect that ATI’s various board partners will mix and match outputs like always, so you may find some cards using the same chip with one analog CRT connector and one digital LCD output. But at least the raw capability is there. You’ll also find an S-Video jack for outputting to a television.

Although we aren’t thrilled with its design and wish that it brought more to the table than simply catching up with Nvidia’s feature set, the ATI Radeon X1800 XT’s performance is hard to knock, at least for certain types of games. The results remain consistent with last generation’s conclusion that ATI fares better at Direct3D-based Half-Life 2 and Nvidia dominates at the OpenGL 3D API and Doom 3. The difference this time around isn’t as dramatic as it was with last generation’s cards, which makes it hard to declare one the outright performance winner.

Conventional wisdom was that with more games coded in Direct3D than OpenGL, you’d rather have superior Direct3D performance if forced to choose. That division has become muddied; a number of upcoming high-profile titles will use the OpenGL-based Doom 3 engine (the forthcoming Quake 4 and Quake Wars, in particular). If those games live up to expectations, we expect both will get major play among hard-core gamers—those most likely to spend upward of $500 on a 3D card. Thus, while fast Direct3D capability remains crucial, OpenGL prowess has gained in importance.

Our colleagues at GameSpot kindly provided us with test results this time around, and the scores are very near where we imagined they would be. Half-Life 2 results show that the ATI Radeon X1800 XT is the fastest single-card solution for this game, especially at high resolutions. At 1,600×1,200, the ATI Radeon X1800 XT was 22 percent faster than the Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX card, a remarkable difference. Don’t let the disparity in memory between the two cards fool you, either. The textures in Half-Life 2 currently aren’t large enough to take advantage of the Radeon’s 512MB allotment. You can bet that in the near future you will want that much memory, so we’re glad the Radeon has it; but for now, it’s sheer horsepower that gives ATI’s card the edge here.

As expected, the Doom 3 test reveals another story. If you thought the 22 percent difference in Half-Life 2 was substantial, here, the ATI card loses to the GeForce 7800 GTX by 26 percent at 1,600×1,200. Worse, the $549 Radeon trailed the $400 GeForce 7800 GT card on all of the Doom 3 tests. The disparity between the two cards at each task suggests that now, more than ever, it’s important for you to pick your next graphics card based on the games you want to play, an unfortunate trend. Ultimately, though, we have to leave the single-card performance edge with ATI, for the sheer volume of Direct3D games compared to those coded in OpenGL.

From a value standpoint, we also thought it would also be interesting to compare two sets of dual-card setups to the ATI Radeon X1800 XT. The pair of 256MB PNY Verto GeForce 7800 GT cards in SLI mode dominated on the tests, as we expected them to, by a wide margin at every resolution. You’ll pay $800 for those, though, not counting an SLI-compatible motherboard. The pair of 256MB Radeon X850 XT cards in CrossFire mode also beat out the Radeon X1800 XT but by a much slimmer margin (although the CrossFire test bed had a slightly slower CPU compared to the others). We wouldn’t expect a dramatic performance increase if we’d bumped that test bed to an Athlon 64 FX 57 from the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ we had installed on it, but for the $700 to $750 you’d pay for the CrossFire setup, you get relatively little performance gain over the high-end single cards. We expect a price drop for all previous generation Radeon cards by the time the new Radeon X1000-series CrossFire Edition boards hit stores, but for now, Nvidia has a clear edge if you want to double up.

Half-Life 2 custom demo (in fps)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

1,600×1,200 with 4X antialiasing and 8X anisotropic filtering    1,280×1,024 with 4X antialiasing and 8X anisotropic filtering    1,024×768 with 4X antialiasing and 8X Anisotropic filtering   

2x 256MB PNY Verto GeForce 7800 GT (SLI Mode)

85 

100 

122 

256MB ATI Radeon X850 XT CrossFire Edition (w/256MB Radeon X850 XT)

71 

83 

115 

512MB ATI Radeon X1800 XT

69 

81 

113 

256MB Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX

57 

71 

107 

256MB ATI Radeon X1800 XL

51 

61 

91 

256MB Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT

48 

60 

93 

256MB ATI Radeon X850 XT

44 

53 

81 

256MB ATI Radeon X800 XL

38 

45 

69 

Doom 3 demo #3 (in fps)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

1,600×1,200, high quality, with 4X antialiasing and 8X anisotropic filtering    1,280×1,024, high quality, with 4X antialiasing and 8X anisotropic filtering    1,024×768, high quality, with 4X antialiasing and 8X anisotropic filtering   

2x 256MB PNY Verto GeForce 7800 GT (SLI Mode)

81 

95 

103 

256MB ATI Radeon X850 XT CrossFire Edition (w/256MB Radeon X850 XT)

69 

84 

95 

256MB Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX

54 

72 

94 

256MB PNY Verto GeForce 7800 GT

47 

65 

89 

512MB ATI Radeon X1800 XT

43 

61 

85 

256MB ATI Radeon X850 XT

37 

51 

72 

256MB ATI Radeon X1800 XL

36 

51 

73 

256MB ATI Radeon X800 XL

31 

43 

62 

3DMark 2005 (in fps)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

1,600×1,200    1,280×1,024    1,024×768   

2x 256MB PNY Verto GeForce 7800 GT (SLI Mode)

9,324 

10,684 

11,722 

256MB ATI Radeon X850 XT CrossFire Edition (w/256MB Radeon X850 XT)

7,830 

9,169 

10,191 

512MB ATI Radeon X1800 XT

6,549 

7,710 

9,240 

256MB Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX

5,812 

6,713 

7,749 

256MB ATI Radeon X1800 XL

5,105 

6,011 

7,216 

256MB PNY Verto GeForce 7800 GT

5,026 

5,896 

6,888 

256MB ATI Radeon X850 XT

4,256 

5,123 

6,193 

256MB ATI Radeon X800 XL

3,571 

4,325 

5,256 

Test results provided by Sarju Shah, associate editor, GameSpot.

ATI driver used: Catalyst 5.9 (WHQL), Beta X1x00 drivers (for X1000-series cards), Catalyst CrossFire (WHQL)
Nvidia driver used: ForceWare 78.01 (WHQL)

Graphics test bed: 2.4GHz Athlon 64 FX-57; (2) 512MB Corsair XMS 3200XLPRO DDR memory 1,024MB DDR SDRAM running at 400MHz; Seagate 7200.7 160GB NCQ SATA hard drive; Asus A8N SLI motherboard; Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2

ATI CrossFire test bed: 2.4 GHz Athlon 64 X2 4800+; (2) 512MB Corsair XMS 3200XLPRO DDR memory 1,024MB DDR SDRAM running at 400MHz; Seagate 7200.7 160GB NCQ SATA hard drive; ATI Xpress 200 CrossFire reference motherboard; Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2

GeCube Radeon X1800XT 512MB | bit-tech.net

Written by

Tim Smalley

February 23, 2006 | 11:50

Tags: #512mb #all-in-wonder #benchmark #radeon #review #x1800 #x1900 #xt #xtx

Companies: #ati #gecube

1 — Introduction2 — Test Setup3 — F. E.A.R.4 — Call Of Duty 25 — NFS: Most Wanted6 — Quake 47 — Age of Empires III8 — Final Thoughts…

Core Clock: 625MHz
Memory Clock: 1500MHz

With the release of ATI’s Radeon X1900-series video cards, ATI’s Radeon X1800-series has received a significant price drop. Along with the Radeon X1900XTX, X1900XT and X1900 CrossFire Edition cards, ATI also released the All-In-Wonder X1900 — a card designed to be the most complete card on the market.

While it’s hard to deny that fact, because it comes with a great bundle and decent gaming performance, it lacks one key feature which would make it the most complete video card on the market. Unfortunately, the card lacks integrated support for HDCP content protection — something that’s going to become increasingly important when HD-DVD and BluRay launch later this year.

We had a look at the reference ATI Radeon X1800XT in November, and found that it performed reasonably well — it was comparable to the faster GeForce 7800 GTX’s, like XFX’s Extreme Gamer Edition. Today, we’re revisiting the performance delivered by the Radeon X1800XT with GeCube’s implementation. With the release of the Radeon X1900-series, the Radeon X1800XT has come down to a price that’s very similar to the All-In-Wonder X1900.

The card looks like any other Radeon X1800XT and you would be hard pushed to see a difference between this card and the reference board we looked at in November. It uses a dual slot cooler that exhausts the air out of the back of the case — it’s a little warmer than the GeForce 7800 GTX, and is subjectively a little louder than it too. During gameplay, we didn’t hear the fan speed up at all, and the noise emitted by the card was very tolerable.

Under the heatsink there are eight 1.2ns Samsung DRAMs rated to 800MHz (1600MHz DDR) with a 2.0v input voltage — there should be a little room for overclocking in them and we’ll attempt to find that out later. The memory chips are cooled directly by the heatsink using thermal pads. Under the fan enclosure, there is an ATI Rage Theater 200 chip for Video-In Video-Out functionalities.

The box is well packed and the card comes packed inside a bubble wrap bag for additional protection. The bundle includes a selection of cables, connectors and software, along with a user manual. There is one game included, Delta Force Xtreme from Novalogic and there is also PowerDVD 5 and PowerDirector 2.5 ME Pro included to make use of the cards’ VIVO functionalities. To finish the bundle off, there are two DVI-to-VGA adapters, a single 6-pin power adapter and cables for S-Video In/Out, Component Out and Composite In/Out. There are also extension cables to enhance the S-Video and Composite connectivity, too.

1 — Introduction2 — Test Setup3 — F.E.A.R.4 — Call Of Duty 25 — NFS: Most Wanted6 — Quake 47 — Age of Empires III8 — Final Thoughts…

a new star of the ATI line — Ferra.

ru

Introduction

Despite the fact that the share of high-performance solutions on the video card market is within 1-2 percent, the lion’s share of profits is made by manufacturers of graphic processors and finished cards in this segment. Due to the large margin, even relatively small sales volumes bring very good dividends. Besides, we shouldn’t neglect the marketing functions of top solutions: they play an image role and are a kind of locomotive for other motherboards, forming to a large extent the very prism through which a potential buyer will look at the rest of the company’s products.

The year 2004 showed that not everything can go smoothly with top solutions: even if they give a significant lead over their predecessors and there is a demand for them, alas, you can’t always buy them freely. Problems with the availability of top solutions existed for both vendors involved in the production of graphics solutions for the desktop, until the end of the year, however, in 2005, NVIDIA radically changed this practice. The video card GeForce 7800 GTX, announced on June 22, was available to the buyer almost immediately after the announcement, and on June 30, the first samples of serial retail cards from NVIDIA partners arrived in Russia.

Against this background, information about ATI’s forthcoming response to the onset of new NVIDIA products was very contradictory: both the preliminary announcement dates and product specifications changed, but already in September there appeared information about the release of the latest ATI solutions, scheduled for October 5th. A new line of ATI shader models version 3 was introduced to the world at X-Hour, consisting of four main models:

ATI Radeon X1800XT

  • Availability after November 5, 2005
  • TSMC 90 nm manufacturing process
  • 625 MHz core clock
  • 16 pixel records per clock
  • 16 texture units
  • 256-bit GDDR3 memory with 1.26 MB access time 901 MB 750 MHz (1.5 GHz effective)
  • 16 memory controller writes per clock
  • 8 vertex shader units
  • Support for Pixel Shaders & Vertex Shaders 3. 0 and Microsoft DirectX 9 API.0c
  • Optional support for permanent anisotropic filtering up to 16X inclusive
  • Adaptive anti-aliasing for smoothing inside transparent textures (not supersampling!), total maximum level 6x (14x in CrossFire mode)
  • CrossFire technology after the appearance of appropriate motherboards and MasterCard- versions; availability not yet announced

ATI Radeon X1800XL

  • Availability after October 5, 2005
  • Process with production rate 90 nm at TSMC factories
  • Core clock 500 MHz
  • 16 pixel writes per clock
  • 16 texture units
  • GHz)
  • 16 memory controller writes per clock
  • 8 vertex shader units
  • Support for Pixel Shaders & Vertex Shaders 3.0 and Microsoft DirectX 9.0c API
  • Optional support for permanent anisotropic filtering up to 16X inclusive
  • Adaptive anti-aliasing for smoothing inside transparent textures (not supersampling!), total maximum level 6x (14x in CrossFire mode)
  • CrossFire technology after the appearance of the corresponding motherboards and MasterCard versions; availability not yet announced

ATI Radeon X1600XT

  • Availability after November 30, 2005
  • TSMC 90 nm manufacturing process
  • 590 MHz core clock
  • 0014
  • 4(!!!) texture units
  • 128-bit GDDR3 memory with access time 1. 26 ns, capacity 128 MB
  • Memory frequency 690 MHz (effective – 1.38 GHz)
  • 4 writes to the memory controller per cycle
  • vertex shader blocks
  • Support for Pixel Shaders & Vertex Shaders 3.0 and Microsoft DirectX 9.0 API c
  • Optional support for permanent anisotropic filtering up to 16X inclusive
  • in CrossFire mode)
  • CrossFire technology after corresponding motherboards and MasterCard versions; The accessibility has not yet been announced

ATI Radeon X1300 PRO

  • Availability after October 5, 2005
  • TECHNOMENT with the production rate of 90 NM at the TSMC
  • Frequency 590 MHz
  • 4 Pixel records per
  • 4
  • 256 MB 128-bit GDDR2 2.5 ns access time
  • 400 MHz memory clock (800 MHz effective)
  • 4 memory controller writes per clock
  • 4 vertex shader units
  • Support for Pixel Shaders & Vertex Shaders 3.0 and Microsoft DirectX 9. 0c API
  • Optional support for permanent anisotropic filtering up to degree of anisotropic filtering 16x inclusive
  • Adaptive anti-aliasing for anti-aliasing inside transparent textures (not supersampling!), total maximum level 6x (14x in CrossFire mode)
  • CrossFire technology after the appearance of appropriate motherboards; it is possible to work two boards in parallel through the appropriate driver

    Finally ATI fans got an improved architecture with full support for pixel and vertex shaders 3.0. Among the improvements announced is a Ring-Type memory controller, extended advanced support for branching and DFC, which resulted in 320 million transistors for ATI for the X1800 series — almost 2 times more than with the same 16 pixel pipelines on X800/X850. On the one hand, this approach may allow in the future to make more technologically advanced graphics based on this architecture, on the other hand, the practical application of these innovations will appear after more than one generation, if it appears at all, especially considering the fact that an alternative shader 3. 0 architecture already exists on the market. more than a year. But in any case, the emergence of new ATI solutions will speed up the appearance of applications oriented towards version 3 shaders.

    We should also note the new anisotropic filtering method, first used in ATI-cards, which makes it possible to obtain an image with minimal effect of the plane tilt angle on the quality of anisotropic filtering. As an option, the presence of such a function is only a plus. On the other hand, such a technique can really only show itself on large inclined planes: in modern applications, the number of polygons has grown so much that it will be very, very difficult to see this, but for old games this feature can come in handy. In any case, the expansion of one way or another demanded functionality is never superfluous. 😉

    Anti-aliasing in new ATI products has received its own alternative NVIDIA Transparency AA, which is designed to perform anti-aliasing inside transparent textures. The advantage of ATI in this case is the support for gamma correction, however, the picture on ATI AA4 x + Adaptive transparent textures subjectively looks less clear compared to NVIDIA AA4 x + TAA SuperSampling.

    In general, innovations in functions that the advanced user associates with heavy modes have raised the quality of the previous generation solutions (X700/X800) to a new level. As for direct comparison with NVIDIA technologies used in the GeForce7 series, we will leave the right to determine exactly what the end user needs — as they say, «saving the drowning is the work of the drowning themselves.» Neither I nor anyone else can decide for a particular person what he wants to get yet — our task is only to give a complete picture of certain technologies.

    In the upcoming articles on new ATI cards, we’ll present a few screenshots that will show you the presence/absence of visible advantages of certain methods.

    Today, we will consider that ATI Radeon X1800 image line in comparison with the already existing NVIDIA solutions, and in the following materials we will see how the new ATI architecture will show itself not only in current applications, but also in upcoming potential hits of the gaming industry — F. E.A.R. and Serious Sam 2.

    Board description. Part I: Radeon X1800XT

    Here is a reference card from ATI — it is on this design that the final market products from its partners will be built. Taking into account the experience of previous top solutions, card manufacturers can bring their personal innovations only to their own cooling system, packaging and delivery kit. However, the unification of top-level maps is already an objective reality of today.

    The first glance at the top from ATI stops at the two-slot cooling system, as well as at the length of the board, which is too modest to call the tongue. On the other hand, the ATI engineers did not go beyond the limits of the competing solution in terms of the length of the board, which means that its considerable dimensions will not interfere with installation and normal operation in spacious cases.

    Of course, the use of a two-slot design improves the release of warm air outside the case, but is it really necessary? I think that, first of all, stable operation is important for the user, which can also be obtained on a single-slot design for modern top-end motherboards, however, apparently, the current revisions of the R520 chip require a powerful cooling system. This fact does not seem surprising, given the 625 MHz frequency of the graphics processor, which consists of 320 million transistors and 512 MB of video memory.

    The radiator of the cooling system consists of an aluminum substrate, which also performs the function of removing heat from memory chips, and, in fact, the radiator itself, made of copper.

    The fins are thin and neat, which increases the efficiency of heat transfer and the final price of the cooler too. However, this issue should not worry the user — in any case, he buys a ready-made product at a very specific price, based on which the attractiveness of a particular product will be built.

    Contact of video memory chips with an aluminum substrate is carried out through a thermal interface resembling pads in appearance. But the GPU is already closely adjacent to the copper heatsink, which uses heat pipe technology to better dissipate heat over the entire surface of the heatsink.

    The fan used in the cooling system is similar to that used for the Radeon X850 series — the same very unpleasant noise at startup, but during operation the speed decreases and the noise becomes more or less bearable.

    The board is equipped with a standard six-pin connector for connecting an additional power supply, which in this case is enough to provide a stable power supply for the new flagship of the ATI line.

    The general design of the video card is very, very uncharacteristic for ATI boards: the arrangement of elements, power supply circuits, memory chips and the ATI Rage Theater chip reminds painfully of the top NVIDIA NV4x and G7x boards.

    When looking at the back side of the video card, the initial impressions are only confirmed: the design is really very similar to that in NVIDIA solutions, but there is also a striking difference: there are no seats for memory chips on the back side of the PCB, which is entirely placed on the front Part. Apparently, ATI has decided to switch to high-capacity chips for the XT version of its high-end line.

    The size of the GPU die compared to the R423/480 is impressive despite the thinner 90nm process – not surprising given the nearly doubled number of transistors. However, if an attentive reader opens a review of any board based on the NVIDIA G70 GPU, he can be sure that the die of the NVIDIA solution is somewhat larger.

    Looking closely, we see that this chip was produced on the 37th week of 2005, which corresponds to mid-September of this year, i.e. the chip was ready not long before the announcement. The frequency of the graphic processor is already 625 MHz — it was decided to produce it at this frequency in order to successfully compete with the 7800GTX, which has one and a half times more pixel blocks.

    Apparently, due to the fact that the chips of the latest revision, which will be used for the XT version, have been produced relatively recently, a sufficient number of these cards will be available not earlier than the beginning of November.

    As for the video memory, we have simply unprecedented characteristics: 512 MB GDDR3 in a new design and with an access time of 1.26 nanoseconds (K4 J52324 QC BJ12), operating at a frequency of 750 MHz! How effectively such a scheme will function in practice, we will check a little later, but for now, giving you the opportunity to admire the ATI Rage Theater chip responsible for VIVO

    we will move on to the description of the X1800 variant with more modest characteristics and lower cost.

    Board description. Part II: Radeon X1800XL

    So, for now, the junior model of the X1800 line is Radeon X1800XL, made by ATI’s reference board. We do not rule out that in the future less productive solutions from this series may appear — a rejection from X1800XL/XT, which are used only with full-fledged R520 chips.

    In fact, the X1800XL board sample given to us for testing differs little from the top card: the design of the PCB is absolutely the same, except for a slightly different shape of the mounting frame and its own cooling system, which this time occupies only one slot:

    But, if everything is more or less in order with the temperature regime of the younger version, then with the noise produced — alas, everything is far from being as cloudless as it might seem at first glance. Not only is the cooler clearly from the category of songbirds that prefer to emit high-frequency trills, but also the speed changes quite sharply during operation.

    However, nothing prevents Hightech Information Systems from installing a VGA Silencer special cooler, which will allow a fastidious user (there are quite a few buyers of such cards 😉 ) to get a quiet X1800XL version.

    Since the PCB itself is exactly the same design as the X1800XT, you can also find a six-pin “tail” on it to supply additional power.

    The board, just like the Radeon X1800XT, has an ATI Rage Theater chip responsible for executing VIVO functions.

    The similarity in the design of Radeon X1800XT and X1800XL, on the one hand, facilitates the production of boards, and on the other hand, significantly increases the cost of the junior model. NVIDIA released its own cheaper PCB for 7800GT just for this purpose. However, we will return to the issue of cost a little later, when we consider the graphics processor and memory, but for now we will show you the views of the back side of the board

    which, as we have already noticed, is absolutely identical to the top solution in the ATI line. This is just great, so with a sense of accomplishment, we turn to the description of the GPU itself and video memory: at the very beginning of August, while the heart of X1800XT was released quite recently. To all appearances, in August the frequency potential of the current R520 revision was clearly insufficient to release a product that could become a full-fledged competitor to NVIDIA GeForce 7800GTX.

    If not so little has already been said about the graphics processor, with the exception of a frequency of 500 MHz (we recall that XT has 625, which is 25% more), then we can say more about the memory.

    This time the characteristics are obviously more modest than those of X1800XT — 256 MB of GDDR3 memory operating at the nominal frequency of 500 (1000) MHz versus 750 (1500) for XT. However, the memory marking (K4 J55323 QG-BC14) quite unambiguously tells us about the access time of 1.4 ns, which corresponds to a memory frequency of as much as 700 (1400) MHz.

    Why did ATI need to install such an expensive and fast memory on a card where the memory frequency allows you to get by with much cheaper chips?

    Indirectly, this question can be answered by some rumors about the characteristics of the R520, which appeared long before the announcement. Then it was about installing exactly 1.4 ns memory for a frequency of 700 MHz on the top version… And now we get a card with an early version chip and exactly the same design as on the top, with 1.4 ns memory, but only with reduced frequencies.

    You don’t have to be a Nostradamus-level visionary to assume that the first XL is a rejection of the original top-end version of the R520, which for one reason or another was not put into production. It is clear that the stocks of such cards can run out quite quickly, and then ATI will only have to adjust the new design for the X1800XL to install cheaper memory in the old form factor (for example, the 2.0 ns GDDR3 BGA already familiar to us) and thereby reduce the production cost of the board without compromising the reference characteristics of the Radeon X1800XL.

    So, we got acquainted with the characteristics of the latest top-level ATI solutions, and with reference boards based on them. How all this will look in practice in the latest gaming applications and popular tests will be discussed later.

    Stay with us.

    Radeon X1800 XT — Technical City

    ATI
    Radeon X1800XT

    • PCIe 1.0 x16 interface
    • Core frequency 600 MHz
    • Video memory size 512 MB
    • Memory type GDDR3
    • Memory frequency 1400 MHz
    • Maximum resolution

    Description

    ATI started Radeon X1800 XT sales on October 1, 2005 at a suggested price of $549. This is a desktop video card based on the R500 architecture and 90 nm manufacturing process, primarily aimed at gamers. It has 512 MB of GDDR3 memory at 1.4 GHz, and coupled with a 256-bit interface, this creates a bandwidth of 44.80 Gb / s.

    In terms of compatibility, this is a two-slot PCIe 1.0 x16 card. An additional 1x 6-pin power cable is required for connection, and the power consumption is 113W.

    We don’t have any test results for the Radeon X1800 XT.

    General

    Information about the type (desktop or laptop) and architecture of the Radeon X1800 XT, as well as when sales started and cost at the time.

    memory capacity 44.80 GB/s of 14400 (Radeon R7 M260)

    9000
    Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon X1800 XT. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference video cards, since for laptop ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model.

    Video connectors


    Recommended processors

    According to our statistics, these processors are most often used with the Radeon X1800 XT.


    Core 2
    Duo E8400

    33.3%


    Core i5
    8265U

    11.1%


    Ryzen 7
    2700X

    11.1%


    Core i3
    2350M

    11.

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