ATi X1000 preview

We have taken a closer look at ATi’s new series of graphic cards based on the R5xx-architecture. We supply you with information about the new cards and of course performance tests with the flagship X1800 XT

ATi X1000 is the family name for the series of graphic cards that ATi is launching. Earlier we’ve seen relatively small steps in the PR-rating name unless it has been a new architecture that has been introduced. And this is the case with R520 or more correct R5xx which we’ve been reporting a lot about here at NH and it is this architecture that is the heart of the X1000-series. All the way down to the low end X1300-series through the mid end X1600-cards up to the high end X1800-series.

ATi really wants to show that the graphic cards it has launched are something completely new compared to what you can find on the market today and we have reached a rather interesting situation since ATi has been having trouble with the R520-architecture. It will namely launch all R5xx-based cards at the same time, not only the top models which is what usually happens and what e.g. nVidia has done with its GeForce 7800-series where there still are only high end versions available.

Last Wednesday ATi released all information on its new circuits and even if all cards won’t be available in stores today it has chose not to delay any of the new series. As ATi launched its CrossFire-technology last week it really feels like ATi has dropped a bomb on the market. ATi everywhere you look. But the reason for this isn’t really a positive story as ATi has been having a lot of problems lately. Before we move on with the X1000-series we will walk you through what has happened up until the launch and the announcement of the R5xx-architecture.

ATi has according to them not launched a new graphic card architecture for over a year and a half, which was when it launched the R420-architecture in the form of the Radeon X800-series. ATi has been doing well with its R300 earlier on and why fix something that isn’t broken. ATi has since the launch of R300 continued to build on that architecture more some updates now and then such as the R4xx-series. It has without a doubt made a great job with keeping the foundation competitive until when nVidia launched its GeForce 6-series at the end of last year when it started to get a little old. ATi was still competitive with its X8xx-series despite that nVidia’s NV40-architecture brought some new features such as Shader Model 3 and other features that spawns from that support.

At the same time nVidia launched its SLI-technology which made it possible to connect two GeForce 6-graphic cards in the same system to get an almost twice as good theoretical performance. In real life the technology wasn’t as efficient but sometimes it comes pretty close, but what was pretty clear was that it left ATI far behind when you wanted the best you can find on the graphic card-market. Already back then we heard rumours about ATi’s coming graphic circuit which would be a totally new architecture in difference to the R300-relatives we had on the market then. Support for Shader Model 3 and loads of pipelines were the main portion of the rumour.

Unfortunately we had to keep waiting and listening to rumours spawning from all over the place as the first information we got indicated that ATi would launch its R520 circuit in the beginning of June wasn’t true. Or more correct as ATi had problems with its new architecture, or even more precise the new 90nm manufacturing process which is the most crucial component of the R520 puzzle. Instead it was nVidia who launched a new architecture at the end of June, the architecture called G70 was mainly an updated version of the NV4x which was a stable foundation to improve, just as R300 was to ATi. As nVidia launched GeForce 7800 GTX ATi had to find itself left behind with quite a margin even on the single card market as the top model Radeon X850 XT wasn’t able to keep up any more. R520 was really needed but unfortunately ATi was still having problem with the manufacturing process for R520 which was very weird as it did not have any problems with the other 90nm-circuits, among others RV515 and the Xbox 360 circuit Xenon.

Finally, after loads of tape-outs during four months of looking for the fault the breakthrough finally came. The error was one small transistor, an error that took 4 moths to find and 24 hours to fix. The result was an increased frequency of no less than 160MHz. Through the intensive testing of the R520-architecture ATi has according to itself been able to produce an architecture that is more mature than anything it has ever launch before. Whether this will weigh up for the delayed launch remains to see.

Now that ATi has launched its new graphic card-series it has done it in an original way, it has not only launched a new series of high end-series but also low and mid end versions all based on the same architecture. This means it offers the R5xx-architecture’s features and possibilities to all consumers, not only the high end-enthusiasts. Alas there is one exception and that is the RV530-architecture that had the same transistor problem as R520 and in a hard decision ATI chose not to experiment with the RV530-architecture in the same way as the R520 where it constantly was trying to find the missing link. This means it had to correct this later on which in turn means that the circuit will be delayed. Before we move on with the different cards ATi will launch, or has launched we want to explain the various names of the new cards.

X1800 – Number of the Beast

Those who have been following our reporting here at NH know that R520-circuit will be called X1800 and it is in this series that we will find the new flagship. RV530 will in turn be called X1600 and will be ATi’s new mid end-series. Finally we have the minor, RV515, which will be called X1300 and is geared towards the low end section.

Below you will find a list of the various models ATi will release.

Availability

The event held by ATi on September 30th to October3rd in Ibiza as an odd one, not only the place but the content as well. ATi has namely only launched three of its graphic cards, but the rest will follow soon. The interesting with this event was that the circuits that were launched today didn’t get much of the focus. The focus was instead on ATi Radeon X1800 XT which will be the new flagship in ATi’s assortment, but this card will not be available as of today even though the information is. The reason for this is simply the limited quantities which we could also see at Ibiza. ATi says it will not make the same mistake again that it did with the Radeon X800 XT PE where the availability was right out none more or less, a lot because of that most cards was shipped with OEM-computers. ATi also announced that it has increased its production volume with ~600% and that everyone will be able to get a Radeon X1800 XT before christmas. Below is a complete list of the new graphic cards and the availability.

As you can see it is Radeon X1800 XL, Radeon X1300 Pro and Radeon X1300 that has been launched and is available in stores. Radeon X1800 XT will arrive in large quantities in a month and the X1600-series, whose transistor problem has to be solved before the launch, will arrive within a month after X1800 XT. The preview we’ve published here today discusses the R5xx-architecture and the cards that has/will be launched. But the first tests we have to offer will focus on Radeon X1800 XT, which was the card we had for testing in Ibiza. More information about this later in the article, but now it’s time for a closer look at carious card-series.

Radeon X1800 is the series that is the one that everyone is talking about, for obvious reasons, as the top models are the ones that always gets the most attention even though they aren’t the ones that sells the most. The Radeon X1800-series, or R520, is a highly anticipated graphic card-series and we can finally supply you with all the details.

X1800 a mighty circuit built up by 320 million transistors made with 90nm technology. That is about 20 million more than GeForce 7800 GTX which then has 24 pixel pipelines compared to X1800’s 16. The word “pipeline” is something ATi is something to downplay and during all the presentations we heard it talked about shader processors instead and the number of pixels it can handle during each cycle. Our impressions is that the number of pipelines is to graphic cards is what frequency is to the processors, more or less one of many necessary components to reach optimal performance. Something we will really see when the first unified shader graphic circuits shows up, where pixel and vertex shaders are brought together to make one pipeline. The memory controller and the internal bus which ATi calls “Ring Bus” is also an interesting bit. The memory bus has an internal width at 512-bit but for the memory chips it is only a 256-bit bus. The X1800-series new controller is something we’ll talk more about later.

ATi has with the launch of the R5xx-architecture chosen to alter the number of shader processors between the different series, while the models within the series has pretty much the same. Whether this will change in the future remains to see. But the two cards ATi will launch in the X1800-series is as follows;

Model:	ATI Radeon X1800 XT		ATI Radeon X1800 XL
GPU-frequency:	625MHz		500MHz
Pixel fillrate:	10000 MP/s		8000 MP/s
Memory frequency :	1.5GHz		1.0GHz
Memory Bandwidth:	48GB/s		32GB/s
Memory:	512MB	256MB	256MB
Cooler:	Dual-slot		Single-slot
Price:	549 USD	499 USD	449 USD

Radeon X1800 XT is the undisputed king of the family and the stock frequency at 625MHz for the GPU is nothing but impressive. Compare it with GeForce 7800 GTX and its stock frequency at 430MHz, which is weighed up by its 24 pixel pipelines though. Also the bandwidth and the frequency of the memory is as impressive, it is pretty close to using the support for up to 1600MHz GDDR3.

Despite that there isn’t much difference between the X1800-cards in the architecture the difference you can see in the specifications you can see above are more than enough to separate them. Both the GPU and memory especially the later has lower frequencies. This has made it possible for ATi to use a slim cooler for X1800 XL which won’t cover up any additional PCI-slots. Both of these cards will appear in our tests further into the article and you will see that there is clear difference between the cards. We will also go more in depth on the X1800-series architecture and the new features it offers, but first we will take a closer look at the two other series ATi has launched based on the R5xx-architecture. Next up is Radeon X1600.

Radeon X1600 is based on the same architecture as X1800 and even if it shares most features and properties with its bigger brother there are considerable differences between them.

X1600 consists out of about half as many transistors as X1800 and what it has saved up on is the number of pixel shaders processors (pipelines), down to 12. Just as many as Radeon X800 GT and GeForce 6800. The memory bus has been narrowed from a 512-bit internal and 256-bit memory bus with X1800 to a 256-bit and 128-bit version for X1600. Other features such as Pixel Shader Model 3.0 and 2 x Dual-link DVI are still there though.

The two models of Radeon X1600 that ATi will introduce are as follows;

Model:	ATI Radeon X1600 XT		ATI Radeon X1600 Pro
GPU-frequency:	590MHz		500MHz
Pixel fillrate:	7080 MP/s		6000 MP/s
Memory frequency :	1.38GHz		780MHz
Memory Bandwidth:	22GB/s		12.5GB/s
Memory:	256MB	128MB	256MB	128MB
Cooler:	Single-slot		Single-slot
Price:	249 USD	199 USD	199 USD	149 USD

Also the X1600-series makes use of the 90nm manufacturing process as the top model’s, X1600 XT, GPU works at almost 600MHz. Even if the lower number of pipelines drags down the efficiency there is plenty of fillrate with this mid end card. The memory bus has been reduced but running at 1.38GHz X1600 XT has a quite acceptable memory bandwidth. X1600 Pro will have considerably slower memories at 780MHz.

The prices start at 149 USD and goes up to 249 USD for the top model X1600 XT with 256MB memory. Both models are available with both 128MB or 256MB configurations and will be equipped with single-slot coolers. More details on the X1600-series’ features later on as dig deeper into the R5xx-architecture, but first we’re going to take a closer look at the low end Radeon X1300-series.

The last piece of the puzzle of ATi’s R5xx-architecture is Radeon X1300-series and moving from the high end X1800, through the mid end X1600 down to the low end version of the R5xx-architecture, Radeon X1300.

The X1300-series has believe it or not the same base architecture as X1800 but just as the X1600-series it has removed more pixel pipelines to cut the manufacturing costs and thus the price. The X1300-series will have to suffice with four pixel pipelines (pixel shader processors) and backs them up with two vertex shader processors. Despite that the chip contains over 100 million transistors and it will according to ATi it is the first time be the first time a low end card has so many transistors, which simply depends on the architecture and all of its features.

As it has reduced the computing power with the X1300-series by limiting the circuits to 4 pixel shaders it has chosen to use a simpler version of the memory controller than the two more expensive versions have. X1300 doesn’t have an internal ring bus but has a very flexible memory handling with everything from 32-bit, 64-bit up to 128-bit. The series also supports ATi’s HyperMemory 2 which also uses the computer’s ram as graphic memory over the PCI Express-bus.

Because of the support for HyperMemory 2 is has declared three different versions of Radeon X1300, where two will be available already today:

Model:	ATI Radeon X1300 Pro	ATI Radeon X1300		ATI Radeon X1300 HyperMemory
GPU-frequency:	600MHz	450MHz		450MHz
Pixel fillrate:	2400 MP/s	1800 MP/s		1800 MP/s
Memory frequency :	800MHz	500MHz		1.0GHz
Memory Bandwidth:	Max 12.8GB/s	Max 8.0GB/s		–
Memory:	256MB	256MB	128MB	32MB	128MB
Cooler:	Single-slot	Single-slot		Single-slot
Price:	149 USD	129 USD	99 USD	79 USD

Radeon X1300-series has just as many pixel pipelines as ATi’s current low end series, X300, but just as with X1800/X1600 this is fixed with high frequencies. Considering the cards will cost from 79 USD up to 149 USD it is hard to imagine that the performance would be anything but mediocre. But there is plenty of room to improve the current low end cards Radeon X300 and GeForce 6200. With R5xx-architecture as the foundation there is a lot of interesting features making the cards look very affordable.

We have so far mentioned the X1000-series interesting features over and over again and now it is time to take a closer look at these. First we will discuss ATi’s multi-GPU technology Crossfire which in now way is a technology specific for R5xx but with the new cards reaches a totally new level of potential.

Crossfire was launched a bout a week ago and then it was for the current generation of ATi’s graphic cards. Nothing weird about that but unfortunately the launch was far from a huge success mainly because it didn’t have graphic cards fast enough to compete with nVidia’s best SLI-setup with dual GeForce 7800 GTX. But also an apparent limitation, the first generation of Crossfire only supports resolutions up to 1600×1200 at 60Hz. For a system that is intended for playing at high resolutions this is an obvious limitation. Fortunately the next version of Crossfire was just a week away, but before we move on to the R5xx-architecture’s Crossfire-support we will walk you through what’s “wrong” with the X8xx-series’ support.

It all goes back to the fact that the X8xx-series has been designed to use only a Single-link DVI-output. It simply means that almost all X8xx-graphic cards use a TMSD circuit to send signals at 165MHz which doesn’t have room for more than 1600×1200 px resolution at 60Hz. You can work around with connecting directly to a DVI-monitor e.g. but for it to work with the TMSD circuit with the CrossFire-cards and the different rendering alternatives that ATi used it required that you stuck to this rather low resolution. For a regular system 1600×1200 px is not a low resolution but when you have a dual-GPU system you’re demands get much higher and it becomes a more obvious limitation. ATi wanted to offer full compatibility with all cards on the market and it simply had to pick a 165MHz TMSD for its X8xx-based Master CrossFire-cards.

Above you can see how the two graphic cards work in a CrossFire-setup and how the signals are sent through the DVI-port to a special port on the CrossFire-card which sends the signal to the monitor. Now it is time find out how ATi has solved this with the X1000-series.

The R5xx-architecture will bring CorssFire to a new level as ATi has specified all X1000-cards to use dual Dual-link DVI-outputs. This makes it possible to power very large LCD-monitors such as Apples 30" Cinema HD display with 2560×1600 px resolution. And not the least eliminates the bottle neck for high resolutions with Crossfire as Dual-link DVI-outputs offers considerably higher bandwidth. There is enough bandwidth to send 2048×1536 px resolution at 70Hz with 14X antialiasing. In other terms the resolution will most likely not be a problem with X1000-CrossFire setups. The Compositing Engine used with the CrossFire-cards to handle the video signals has been tweaked and will be upgradeable through software.

Radeon X1800/X1600 CrossFire

Radeon X1300 CrossFire

It has also developed a unique solution for the Radeon X1300-series as it can’t handle the same bandwidth and resolutions so ATi has removed the Compositing Engine completely and the external cable that connects the two cards. This makes it possible to use two regular Radeon X1300-graphic cards in a CrossFire setup as you won’t need a Master-card with extra circuits. For the X1800 and X1600-series you require special Master-cards, just as with the X8xx, to make a working CrossFire-system. ATi was friendly enough to announce what models it will release and at what prices.

Exactly when the X1000-series’ CrossFire-card will appear isn’t final yet, except for the X1300-series which won’t need any special CrossFire-models. Unfortunately it didn’t show any X1000 CrossFire systems during the event in Ibiza so we will have to return to CrossFire and the X1000-series in a later article. Now it is time for a closer look at the heart of the R5xx-architecture and what ATi has been working with the past year.

One of the big news with Radeon X1X00-series is as you probably already know the support for Shader Model 3.0The green team has already been offering this since the NV4X generation so anything else would be pretty weird. On the other hand you can’t really say that nVidia, or the owners of these cards, has had much use of SM3.0 so far.
But as both players now are playing along the game developers might start implementing SM3.0 for real now. You can read more about Shader Model 3.0 in our Shader Model 3.0 article.

With Shader Model 3.0 ATi had to move on to high precision calculations. Even if it has lost momentum compared to nVidia the green giant has offered 128 bits floating point precision since the failure GeForce 5800 Ultra. In difference to nVidia’s first attempt ATi has been working hard with making the best out of 128 bits precision, which the GF 5800-series hardly had. This high precision is hardly dedicated to colors as there aren’t monitors which can handle that kind of depth and instead the precision will be used with other operations. With higher precision you can make more, longer and more complex shaders before round off errors occurs which has become even more important now that ATi has full support for Dynamic Branching.

Dynamic Branching

Dynamic Branching is among others IF- and ELSE-statements in a shader, with the help of branching you can write considerably more complex shaders and at the same time increase efficiency. E.g. if you combine several shaders into one that uses dynamic branching it will result in better performance as you avoid state changes and you can at the same time terminate the shader early if an argument is false. ATi has earlier said it is hard to reach a high level of efficiency with dynamic branching, but apparently it seems it has been able to surpass the earlier problems.

Radeon X1800

Radeon X1600

Radeon X1300

To reach the efficiency it has claimed being necessary for implementing dynamic branching ATi has made the R5xx-architecture “Ultra threaded”. X1800 can handle up to 512 threads and then you should keep in mind that each thread can apply up to six shader instructions to up to four pixels. It has also created dedicated components for the branch-control to load off the general ALUs in the shader pipeline. This means that Dynamic Branching’s eventual problems such as pipeline stalls are minimized.

Another big step is to “disconnect” the various components on the card. E.g. X1800 still has “just” sixteen pixel pipelines while it has two extra vertex shader pipelines, which means it has one vertex pipe per two pixel pipes. If you go down through the slower cards the variation gets even bigger and it is apparent that ATi has really thought through the use of the transistors.

ATi has always reworked its memory controller. It has added support for GDDR4, associative cache and above all ATi has added what it calls a 512 bit Ring Bus. One of the biggest news is that you can fragment the data further, by going from 4 x 64 bits-channels to 8 x 32 bits, which gives an optimal flow of data. You simply get one channel per chips.
The concept with the Ring Bus is really quite simple as it moves some of the complexity further out on the chip. That way it is easier to get pure signals and thus higher frequencies.
ATi has also increased the flexibility of the programming which makes it easier to fine adjust the controllers depending on the purpose. E.g. Catalyst AI now has direct control over the memory controller and can apply different optimizations for the controller depending on what you’re playing.

The memory controller with Ring Bus

The memory channels for each hip

HyperZ, ATi’s HSR-method (Hidden Surface Removal), will also take advantage of the higher precision with more precise calculations while the Z-buffer compression will support new and more efficient compression algorithms.

HSR brings us HDR. surely it’s true that ATi’s earlier cards has had some support for HDR but with X1000 ATi goes all the way with full support for even higher precision. ATi has support for 32 bits integer precision and 64 bits integer and floating point precision and combinations. To trump nVidia in the area it has bragged so much about ATi has fixed one of nVidia’s big achilles heals. The problem we’re talking about is using FSAA with HDR. The new chip has support for both FSAA and HDR in any imaginable configuration without compromises.
ATi has also taken a step further with 3Dc and introduces 3Dc+. The news is support for one component data which now can compress up to 50%. Perfect for reducing the drastic bandwidth HDR-textures requires.

Last but not least are some very nice news with AA and AF. ATi has once again peaked at nVidia and introduces its equivalent for nVidia’s “TAA”. With “Adaptive Anti-Aliasing” ATi can finally use antialiasing with alpha textures with the help of Super Sampling. Alpha textures are textures containing areas you can see through. The textures are often used to create fences, ladders or other “see through” objects. Earlier MSAA-solutions hasn’t been able to reduce the small corners these textures has had but now ATi has finally been able to come up with a solution. It has also optimized the memory controller for 6x FSAA while earlier had been optimized for 4x FSAA.

Adaptive Anti-Aliasing (Example from ATi)

When it comes to Anisotropic filtering ATi has finally after many years cracked and realized that that it is time offer an AF-mode that isn’t dependant on the viewing angle. With a new Quality Mode you can now turn off the optimization that ATi has been using since the first Radeon-card.

There’s even more to tell about ATi’s new graphic cards but unfortunately we don’t really have time to write more, or test the different technologies further so even if they may look good on paper we can’t deliver a personal judgment until later. Next up is ATi’s answer to nVidia’s Pure Video-circuit, namely AVIVO.

AVIVO is ATi’s answer to nVidia’s PureVideo and brings a lot of new features for video treatment. Video is an area that ATi, until the GeForce 6×00-series, always has been the leading actor, but with PureVideo nVidia flew past ATi.

AVIVO is here to reclaim the throne, if you want to believe ATI. AVIVO is a part of the R5xx-architecture and can be found with all graphic card in the X1000-family, even the low end Radeon X1300, which will result in some interesting options if it can keep what it promises.
The first is Multi-Vector Adaptive De-Interlacing which can be translated to motion adaptive de-interlacing. With this de-interlacing method it tales in consideration the motions between frames and applies per pixel-ordered de-interlacing. The technology reminds of what nVidia does with PureVideo and so far we haven’t seen much of what AVIVO which really makes it hard to tell which technology is better.

Simple de-interlacing compared to Advanced de-interlacing (Image from ATi)

Further on the cards has hardware acceleration of encoding, decoding and transcoding of a long row of popular video format such as WMV9, H.264 and MPEG2. This will load off the processor when you watch a movie on you computer. ATi also promised that AVIVO’s features will be compatible with all software, in difference to Pure Video which requires nVidia’s own DVD-decoder.

ATi has also increased the video precision to 30 bit from the traditional 24. This means that operations such as scaling resolutions and other post processing effects can be done with fewer artefacts. This means that fewer gradients will be visible when suing dithering for displaying the result on monitors that only supports 24 bits colors. It uses 10-bit signal handling all the way but as most of today’s LCD-monitors only have 8-bit panels which makes the X1000-architekture’s 10-bit support not that interesting, but at least it is future proof. According to ATi 10-bit panels are on the way, although at a high price to begin with. But above mentioned Dithering method will according to ATi result in a similar image quality with an 8-bit panel to what a real 10-bit panel can show. It all sounds very promising but unfortunately ATI wasn’t able to display this when we wanted to discuss it.
It has also improved the possibilities for video in with a 12 bits AD-converter, a 3D-comb filter and hardware accelerated de-noise-feature.

The “problem” with AVIVO are that many of the features has to be evaluated in real life practice before we can actually judge them but as we haven’t had time to do so, however you can look forward to a AVIVO vs. PureVideo comparison later on this fall/winter. If AVIVO delivers what ATi promises it is looking like a mighty good choice for future Media PCs (HTPC) where also low end cards full audio and video functionality.
A very important part of a graphic card is its drivers and if it was something that ATi spent a lot of time discussing in Ibiza it was the drivers for the X1000-family. Before we move on to the performance tests we will take a closer look at ATi’s plans for Catalyst.

ATi has gone from being a rather mediocre driver maker to being one of the leading brands when it comes just that. ATi’s Catalyst driver package is updated once a month and we’ve seen loads of new features being introduced and bugs being fixed since Catalyst was introduced. According to ATi about 2.12 million Catalyst drivers are downloaded each month and the versions of Catalyst Control Center increase for each launch. When ATi launched Catalyst 5.7 38% of the downloaded drivers were the CCC-version.

ATi also says that it has been working hard on Windows Vista versions of its Catalyst-drivers and today you will have about 80% of Windows XP’s performance with Vista Beta 1. When Windows Vista Beta 2 is released it is expected to be at about 90% and at the launch of Vista the performance will be about equal in Windows Vista as with Windows XP. However this feels like more or less as a given as both ATi and nVidia will have had a lot of time to write their drivers.

As we earlier mentioned during the X1000-architecture ATi has put some new technologies into Catalyst for antialiasing and anisotropic filtering and this is something that we will take a closer look at in a follow up later on.

Another unavoidable was Catalyst’s support for processors with dual cores. nVidia has already drivers coming that will offer a noticeable improvement when using processor with dual cores and ATi says that it is working on the exact same thing. It seems it hasn’t come as far as nVidia and it says that the drivers will be released when they are done. Already today the Catalyst-drivers will have about 10% better performance in 3Dmark05 with dual core processors and the final drivers are expected to arrive in 2-3 months.

ATi has several other new features coming with Catalyst, it was pretty clear with that, and will go for a more user friendly interface and pump out new features at each launch. A more convenient CCC-interface which also is faster is a top priority at ATI.
ATi won’t slow down now but will keep the same speed as before with releases each month. We will of course keep reporting about ATi’s Catalyst-drivers. You just have to follow our news reports here at NH.

Now its time to move on to the performance tests with Radeon X1800 XT/XL and we start with taking a closer look at the test system, a crucial detail for this review.

Test system
Hardware
Processor	AMD Athlon 64 4000+
Mainboard	Sapphire CrossFire Edition
Memory:	1 GB Kingston HyperX (2x512MB, 2-3-3-7 timings)
Graphic cards :	ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB reference card ATI Radeon X1800 XL 256MB reference card Leadtek GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB (430/1200MHz)
Harddrive:	Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160GB SATA
Power supply:	Enermax 600W
Software
Operating system :	Windows XP SP2 32-bit
Drivers:	ForceWare 78.03 Catalyst 8.173

Now we’ve come to the performance tests in this preview. This entire article has suffered from a very tight deadline, and as we’ve mentioned earlier the event ended on Monday. Unfortunately this meant we had to runt the benchmarks with computers supplied by ATi in Ibiza. There weren’t enough systems to go around so we had a limited amount of time to run the tests. We at NH teamed up with three other sites to try and make the best of it but unfortunately we had problems which limited the results to fewer than we had hoped for. And even more unfortunately the systems was far from optimized as for memory and processor speeds, but this is something we will solve with our follow up.
We’ve chosen to use 1600×1200 px resolution at maximum image quality to really push ATi and nVidia’s cards to the limit. The struggle between ATi Radeon X1800 XT and nVidia GeForce 7800 GTX is in the center of attention here but we also have some tests with ATI Radeon X1800 XL, alas we weren’t able to finish all tests with this card.

ATI gave us reference cards to bring home but with only a few day to write, proofread and edit the article there wasn’t any room to run our own tests but we hope the preview we have will be able to calm you until we have a complete comparison of the different X1000-cards with overclocking results and everything that brings.

First up are some synthetic tests with the popular 3Dmark-programs from Futuremark. They don’t really say much about the real performance but gives you a hint of what the cards are capable of and at the same time 3DMark is a well known and often used tool in the enthusiast community.

In 3Dmark05 is the most demanding test of the three and we can see that ATi takes a clear lead with X1800XT, over nVidia’s flagship GeForce 7800 GTX with about 18%. At the same time we see that X1800XL doesn’t quite keep up with nVidia’s card despite it has the same foundation as its bigger brother. But the lower frequencies apparently do a lot. When the complete systems performance becomes the limiting factor the difference between the cards becomes considerably smaller but the tendency is the same where X1800XT has a small advantage over GeForce 7800 GTX.

Next up is ID Software’s popular FPS-game Doom 3. Doom 3 was a very demanding game when it was launched about a year ago and is still one of the toughest games to run even for the fastest graphic cards of today. nVidia has always performed better with Doom 3 so it is going to be very interesting to see how ATi will manage with the X1800-series.

Doom 3 v1.3 Demo1, 1600×1200 HQ, 0xAA 8xAF GeForce 7800 GTX   92.6   Radeon X1800 XT 512MB   85.5   Radeon X1800 XL 256MB   63.6     0 22 44 66 88 110

Doom 3 v1.3 Demo1, 1600×1200 HQ, 4xAA 8xAF GeForce 7800 GTX   53.5   Radeon X1800 XT 512MB   43.9   Radeon X1800 XL 256MB   36.5     0 12 24 36 48 60

Doom 3 v1.3 Demo1, 1600×1200 UQ, 4xAA 8xAF GeForce 7800 GTX   49.8   Radeon X1800 XT 512MB   41.8   Radeon X1800 XL 256MB   34.4     0 12 24 36 48 60

As we earlier mentioned we’ve chosen to focus on the performance at high resolutions and with a game like Doom 3 this really shows in the final performance results. nVidia has apparently done almost everything right with its Doom 3 optimizations because not even X1800XT has a chance of performing equally to GeForce 7800 GTX here. Radeon X1800XL is having a hard time to keep up even without any antialiasing and when we activate 4x antialising we can see how more or less the performance is cut in half. The huge amount of memory that X1800XT (512MB) has doesn’t seem to make any difference here as the difference between the cards remains the same even when we use the extra tough Ultra Quality mode. A clear victory for nVidia and GeForce 7800 GTX in this test.

Call of Duty 2 is a really fresh FPS-game which hasn’t even been launched in its final appearance yet but it has released a single player demo for those who wants to try the sequel to the extremely popular Call of Duty. Call of Duty 2 is a really demanding game and has a lot of details which makes you almost loose you breathe at occasions, which would be a fatal mistake if you actually do it in-game. We’ve used FRAPS to measure the average performance in Call of Duty 2.

Call Of Duty SP Demo 1600×1200 Max Q, 0xAA 0xAF Radeon X1800 XT 512MB   37.9   GeForce 7800 GTX   26.7   Radeon X1800 XL 256MB   24.4     0 10 20 30 40 50

Call of Duty 2 SP demo 1600×1200 Max Q, 4xAA 16xAF Radeon X1800 XT 512MB   27.7   GeForce 7800 GTX   22.5   Radeon X1800 XL 256MB   10.8     0 8 16 24 32 40

When we say that Call of Duty 2 is a very demanding game it is hardly an understatement. The results speaks for themselves as even the most extreme graphic cards has a hard time to reach playable performance with this game when you raise the level of details. Of we then add antialiasing and anisotropic filtering all cards more or less go below playable FPS, even Radeon X1800XT. Besides that X1800XT is the fastest card when we look at the results from Call of Duty 2, which might be because of the large amount of memory considering the reports we’ve heard about Call of Duty 2. Both X1800XL and 7800 GTX end up way behind X1800XT which might very well be because of the smaller buffer at only 256MB. This is something we will take a closer look at in the coming sequel.

The last two tests from our adventure in Ibiza is a classic in the form of Far Cry and a newcomer in the form of a demo, namely F.E.A.R. The first doesn’t really require an introduction and despite that it is a rather old test it is still a very tough one. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to test Radeon X1800 XL in Far Cry and F.E.A.R so we will have to save that to our follow up article.

Far Cry v1.33 Demo Hol, 1600×1200 Max Q, 0xAA 0xAF Radeon X1800 XT 512MB   85.3   GeForce 7800 GTX   83     0 20 40 60 80 100

Far Cry v1.33 Demo Hol, 1600×1200 Max Q, 4xAA 16xAF Radeon X1800 XT 512MB   69   GeForce 7800 GTX   55.2     0 16 32 48 64 80

In Far Cry it’s pretty even between the two combatants when we “only” use max image quality without antialiasing or anisotropic filtering. But when we turn this on things start to happen, 7800 GTX loose a lot of ground and Radeon X1800 XT shows what you can do with an efficient memory controller and 1.5GHz GDDR3-memory. From hardly any difference to 25% advantage is quite impressive by ATi’s new flagship.

F.E.A.R is one of the latest games on the market and the single player demo that has been released was tested with FRAPS to see what another of the future 3D-games demands from a graphic card.

F.E.A.R SP Demo 1600×1200 Max Q, 0xAA 0xAF GeForce 7800 GTX   61.9   Radeon X1800 XT 512MB   56.4     0 16 32 48 64 80

F.E.A.R SP Demo 1600×1200 Max Q, 4xAA 16xAF Radeon X1800 XT 512MB   41.3   GeForce 7800 GTX   30.4     0 10 20 30 40 50

Just as with Call of Duty 2 F.E.A.R hasn’t been released yet but we can clearly see that we are talking about a very demanding game with the latest graphical effects. Without antialiasing and anisotropic filtering 7800 GTX takes command but just as with Far Cry we get another picture when we turn these things on. GeForce 7800 GTX drops about 50% of its performance while Radeon X1800 XT handles considerably better and takes back the lead with about 36%. Without a doubt X1800XT’s high memory bandwidth will fit F.E.A.R very well, and the amount of memory may very well play an important part as well.

This will have to be the end of our benchmarks for now and it is time to sum up our impressions of ATi’s next generation of graphic cards.

The Radeon X1000 is a rather unique family of graphic cards considering that all cards have been launched at the same time. Practically ATi has launched replacements for every card it has on the market today which should get some interesting results for both ATi, the distributors and retailers. But if we look beyond this we can understand ATi. Times have been tough and especially the last six months as nVidia launched its GeForce 7800-series. Both its multi-GPU platform, CrossFire and its new graphic card architecture R520 has been having problems and have been delayed many times. In the mean time nVidia has continued to promote SLI, Shader Model 3.0 and GeForce 7800. nVidia knows that these occasions don’t come very often and it really made its best to take advantage of the situation to the fullest, especially as nVidia itself was in the same position pretty recently with its GeForce 5800 Ultra and was left tragically behind. It’s a give and take relationship, just as all markets.

Now it is finally ATi’s turn to give something back which both ATI and we the consumers are happy with. While the development of R5xx has been delayed for along time the launch was done very fast. Which has had a bad side effect that we haven’t been able to investigate the performance of ATi’s new cards thoroughly. But with today’s preview we’ve started something we will finish in the next part.

Radeon X1800 is the series that will take on nVidia’s GeForce 7800-series as it looks today and here ATi has two different models to bet on where Radeon X1800 XL has to be looked upon a direct competitor for GeForce 7800 GT. The flagship Radeon X1800 XT is coming soon and will be available in stores within a month though as X1800XL is already today. Alas it is yet another month that nVidia can brag about having the fastest graphic card on the market in the form of GeForce 7800 GTX. Radeon X1800 XT has shown some really nice potential in our preliminary tests but it would’ve been wrong to say that we are overwhelmingly impressed by it. If the card had arrived about the same time as GeForce 7800 GTX the story would have been different. Now it feels like it is too little to late and as we will have to wait for yet another month until we actually see the card in stores. Except for the 3D-performance the X1800-series, and other cards in the X1000-family, have a very good base architecture. The support for CrossFire in high resolutions and the advanced audio and video features via AVIVO offers a lot of value. Dual-link DVI outputs is a clear advantage but as with the other features we haven’t had the time to check them more thoroughly. We will in short publish an extensive performance comparison with the different graphic cards ATi has launched but also articles about AVIVO and such should be expected.

We have also taken a closer look at the low and mid end cards in the X1000-family but the judgments on these will have to wait until we publish the sequel where we will test also these cards. That they share the base architecture with the X1800-series is something we think is a good thing as it not only then can support the same 3D-graphical features such as Shader Model 3.0 but also such things as AVIVO throughout its assortment of products. It is primarily in these segments that ATi will make the most progress depending on how nVidia plays its cards. But so far it has not launched any low or mid end cards of the GeForce 7-series and until any of these arrives Radeon X1300 and Radeon X1600 will most likely be very popular choices among the buyers.

ATi’s launch of the X1000-family is far from a failure as we can see some impressive potential all the way through the line of products. The problem is that the delays have affected our judgment. ATi has just caught up to nVidia more or less instead of surpassing them. There is a lot of potential with the new efficient architecture which would scale up extremely well with more “pipelines” but at the same time we don’t know what progress nVidia has been making the latest couple of months. ATi has answered to most of the things nVidia has introduced earlier and even surpass them sometimes. CrossFire will now really start battling SLI, the R5xx-architecture has support for Shader Model 3.0 with all new ATi-graphic cards and AVIVO covers most audio/video functionality where nVidia’s PureVideo circuit has been dominating lately.

ATi has managed to pull off a stable launch of its X1000-family and the key to success is that it has chosen to launch all three series at the same time. But it has not really brought any revolutionizing features to the market but only catches up to nVidia. ATi looks to be fit for fight again with its new architecture and the question is if or what nVidia has to answer with or simply if the balance has been restored.

We thought it might be fun for our readers to see what happened behind the scenes at ATi’s event in Ibiza and if you want this is something will keep doing, adding some “extra material” to our future articles and product launches that is. We will focus on the hardware bit here as well since we can’t share all tasty details.

ATi held its European event between September 30th and October 3rd, a choice which left us with mixed feelings. Of all places in the world it had chosen Ibiza and even if it was “off season” we still had some bad feelings about this, even though we were hopeful. The even had been given the fitting name BEACHmarking Ibiza 2005 and as the event went on there were more “marking” than “beach” which leaves a pale computer nerd with even more mixed feelings.

We can’t complain about the hotel and even if yours truly should be whipped over and over and over again for forgetting his bathing suit so he couldn’t use the pools, and had to leave the event after not being able to taste the sweetness that is Ibiza.

Believe it or not but it was liquid nitrogen that was the dominating liquid at the entire event, except for San Miguel which was seen now and then. The reason for this is that ATi had invited our Finnish neighbors and overclocking gurus Macci and Sampsa. Their task was to simply push a Radeon X1800 XT-system as high as it was possible. To make this possible ATi had ordered some liquid nitrogen, but unfortunately the smallest amount you could order in Ibiza was 400Kg… So if you think Sampsa looks small we can assure you it is simply because of the monstrous LN2-tube.

Unfortunately their attempts were ruined by the power supplys that didn’t manage to keep an overclocked system running. Sour grapes, but X1800 XT showed some really nice potential by overclocking 860MHz at GPU and 1880MHz at memory. Exactly how well X1800 XT and the other cards overclock will be answered in our follow up article. Those who wants to see this system in action we have a short movie starring Macci and Sampsa.
– Download movie (Mov, 29.1MB)

This was a short summary of the event at Ibiza and if you like these short summaries and wants to see more of them, r you simply think it’s a waste of time please share your opinions in the forum. Where we will continue to discuss ATi’s latest creation.

Ibiza – On the plane heading home…