X-bit labs

ATI RADEON X1000: Brand-New Graphics Architecture from ATI Explored (page 13)

Category: Video

by Alexey Stepin , Yaroslav Lyssenko, Anton Shilov

[ 10/05/2005 | 12:05 PM ]

RADEON X1300 PRO

The RADEON X1300 PRO doesn’t differ from the RADEON X1600 XT at first sight, yet there are really a number of significant differences between these two graphics cards.

Unlike other members of the RADEON X1000 family, the RADEON X1300 PRO is equipped with a single DVI connector, the place of the other being occupied by a 15-pin D-Sub output. That’s why there’s no possibility to put a second TMDS transmitter here. A VIVO chip can be installed, but it is missing on our sample of the card, just like on our RADEON X1600 XT.

The power circuit is visibly simplified, and the wiring is different around the memory chips. Unlike on the RADEON X1600, GDDR2 memory is installed here, and on both sides of the PCB. Infineon’s HYB18T256161AF-25 chips have a 16Mx16 structure, so eight such chips were required for the 128-bit memory bus. The capacity of one chip being 256Mbit, the total amount of onboard graphics memory is 256 megabytes. These 2.5ns chips are rated for 400 (800) MHz frequency and are clocked exactly like that by the card.

There are fewer resistors on the RV515 case than on the RV530. The die area is also smaller, since the chip contains only 4 vertex and 2 pixel processors and the number of Z-compare unit is reduced from 8 to 4. The chip on our sample of the card was manufactured on the 32-th week of the current year, just like the GPU of our sample of the RADEON X1800 XL, but here we most probably deal with a final revision of the chip. Just as described by the specification, it is clocked at 600MHz. The cooling system is exactly the same as the one deployed on the RADEON X1600 XT, so there’s no sense in repeating the description.